Winter has never been my favourite season. I’ve always struggled to find joy in the chilly, short days of winter. The cold weather makes me feel sluggish and unmotivated which often leads to seclusion and loneliness. However, Australian winter is unique in that it’s usually warmer out of your home, than in it. Our little townhouse seems to trap in cold weather like a fridge, so every day I leave in search of the sun.
One thing I respect about winter is the slower pace. It’s the season of stillness and rest. A period of regeneration, reflection and introspection. In a society that is driven by productivity and action, winter is the opposite. It’s the yin to our yang.
Winter gives us permission to slow down. She gently points us in her quiet soft way towards our inner self, towards this annual time of peace and reflection, teaching us to embrace the darkness. What happens outside of us, is often a reflection inside of us too.
Here are a few quotes that help me see the beauty in the darkness. They are all ‘Australian friendly’. By that I mean, they are not about snowcapped mountains and Christmas. The Northern Hemisphere is quick to forget that there is an entire Southern Hemisphere going through winter while they are enjoying summer. (I know because that was me before I moved here).
The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination.
– Terri Guillemets
“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you…. In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savour belonging to yourself.”
— Ruth Stout
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck“Winter is nature‘s sleep.”
— H.S. Jacobs
“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono
“Nothing burns like the cold.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives.”
― Garry Zukhav
“They who sing through the summer must dance in the winter.”
― Italian Proverb
“Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.”
― John Boswell“One can follow the sun, of course, but I have always thought that it is best to know some winter, too, so that the summer, when it arrives, is the more gratefully received.”
— Beatriz Williams
“I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future – the timelessness of the rocks and the hills – all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
— Andrew Wyeth
“It seems like everything sleeps in winter, but it’s really a time of renewal and reflection.”
— Elizabeth Camden
“There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself.”
— Haruki Murakami
“Winter either bites with its teeth or lashes with its tail.”
— Montenegro Proverb
“In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.”
— Henry Rollins“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
– Hal Borland
“In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”
— Albert Camus
Art Therapy with Kimberly 