Making Peace with Winter
Learning to savor the season we're in.
Hello and welcome! If you’re new here, I’m Bailey Gillespie, a writer from Northern California. I write weekly from the tension of suffering and joy, exploring the more tender places of life with God. You’ll find essays shaped by spiritual formation, women’s wellness, and great literature. I hope you’ll stay a while and discover something here that’s helpful. <3
QUICK NOTE: You’re invited to a special wellness workshop exploring how to embrace winter and savor the season you’re in! Click here to fill out an interest form for a fun virtual event my friend Taylor Parra and I are hosting.
I’m not a winter girl.
Which is funny because I am a January baby. But being born and raised in California, I am a heat and sun-lover through and through. I feel like my healthiest and truest self while being nurtured by the warmth of sunlight. Heat also soothes my chronic pain, allowing the muscles to relax. Give me an afternoon sprawled out on river rock in the brightness of summer, soaking up rays like a napping lizard, and I am perfectly happy.
Winter feels like the antithesis of this.
In California, I live near the Sierra Nevada foothills which still get very cold, wet, misty, and sometimes snowy. It’s nothing like the Midwest or New England, but as you can imagine, we Californians have less tolerance for the cold and thus throw a fit when five days go by without sunlight.
Over the years, I have tried making peace with winter.
We’ve had some fun together, and most of these memories revolve around my birthday (1/28) or Christmas:
ice skating
four-wheeling in the snowy moonlight
literature-themed tea parties
And let us not forget the Great Snowman Demolition Day of 2002 when my dad, brother, and I built a colony of snowman in our front yard, then proceeded to destroy them in as many creative ways possible. (As our family slogan once went: “That’s what country people do.”) We smashed, chopped, blow torched, and used our ATV to bulldoze straight through these poor snowpeople. We also caught it on video camera. I have no idea what inspired this idea, but it was iconic and really cathartic.
I want to appreciate winter, though. Deep down in my bones, I know it is needed. I believe God crafted all four seasons for the wellbeing of our souls and for this good earth, so in the spirit of listening to your life, I have to ask myself these questions:
What lesson or invitation does God have for us in winter that’s unique to this season?
Even if there’s no snow on the ground, what interior winter am I facing that God longs to reach with his love and light?
After the brutal heat we’ve endured in the Sacramento Valley the last two years, I’m opening my heart toward the cold a bit more. I think the movie Frozen, of all things, was one of the first pieces of art that truly romanticized winter for me. I loved the wintry soundtrack and its Nordic influences. I also loved the joy it inspired during a time that usually left me hollow from seasonal depression.
I want to enter winter’s mystique and learn to appreciate its quiet beauty. I’m hoping the slowness of its rhythms will help calm my hyperactive mind, which so easily mistakes rest for boredom. And we need both, don’t we?
I also want to discover the fun and wonder hidden inside the coldest and darkest months of the year. So, I’m slowly learning to make peace with winter.
I have my friend Taylor Parra to blame thank for this. Last February, I invited her onto my podcast — LISTEN TO YOUR LIFE1 — where she was very sneaky and made a case for winter without my consent. Taylor is a cool and absolutely hilarious beekeeper, mom, writer, and much more who’s passionate about living faithfully within the seasons in which we find ourselves. She also has a daughter named Winter. I was astonished to learn this.
Who actually loves wintertime enough to name a child after it?
It turns out Taylor does.
However, she lives on a homestead in Pennsylvania where the days are colder and darker during winter with dusky moonlit fields surrounding her home. And I live in Big Suburbia (stealing that phraseology from Grace Leuenberger) surrounded by Dunkin Donuts and what we lovingly call “the sad Savemart.” Our winters are not so very different from our falls and springs, except for a distinct lack of wildflowers.
This year, I’m making peace with winter by not resisting the cold and by nourishing myself in slower, intentional ways.
I’m starting each morning with homemade bone broth. This has evolved into a full broth fast for the month of January, which looks like starting and ending the day with a mug of broth and having one light meal in between.
I’m not working. Our local college is on winter break for three weeks, so I’m trying to use the time wisely for rest.
I’m enjoying red light therapy, strength classes, and infrared saunas.
I’m reading books (novels!) for enjoyment again, not just for growth or self-improvement: The Mythmakers by John Hendrix, Mary Oliver poetry, the Brambly Hedge children’s books, Marmee (a Little Women retelling) by Sarah Miller, and The Eights by Joanna Miller.
I even bought myself a pretty new journal and ballpoint pen to capture favorite quotes from the books I read this year. I’ve not done this before and look forward to finding quotes more easily.
I’m getting acupuncture treatments for my digestion.
I’m using sun-catchers to cast light from the windows. As of now, I only have one disco ball, but I’m hoping to get one of these glass lovelies next.
I’m using the Calm app for sleep hygiene, including their new EMDR bilateral stimulation audio. Just the other night, I listened to a sleep story, The Capital of Christmas, about the delight of strolling through holiday markets in Strasbourg, France. I slept like a baby and was pleased to see an excellent sleep score on my Garmin watch the next morning. I’m a believer!
I’m investing in local, in-person community again. In December, my new friend Julie and I hosted our first Inkwell Local gathering at her home, and I’m so looking forward to having a monthly meet-up with fellow creatives.
I’m making birthday plans. I only have a couple years left in my thirties (absolutely shocking), so I want to savor all the remaining joys and lessons this wonderful decade has to offer.
Lastly, I’m also collaborating with my friend Taylor of The Local Wild. We’re co-authoring two pieces here on Substack later in January and then hosting a virtual wellness workshop called THE HEART OF WINTER, exploring how to savor the season you’re in. This gathering is for anyone longing for rejuvenation, deeper heart connection, and gentler practical ways of making peace with the winters of our lives. <3 Please come! We're going to have a lot of fun.
I hope you’re having a peaceful start to the New Year, friends. I’m really looking forward to sharing new stories and writing on some topics that are near and dear to my heart very soon, and I hope you’ll stay with me.
Here are two reflection questions for the road (and I’d love to hear your real answer in the comments):
What do you love most about the season of winter?
What do you find hardest about living well during wintertime?
May God’s peace be with you — today, and always.
With love,
Bailey
Listen to Your Life offers weekly, soulful essays that explore the more tender parts of life. Subscribe for free, or support my work by becoming a paid subscriber for $5/month. It would mean the world to me.
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You can find my podcast episode with Taylor Parra here on Spotify. You can also search for it on Apple Podcasts.
you had me howling at the snowman demolition! my word - that is gold! now I know who to contact when i get tired of good ole "frosty." wishing you rest as you winter this year. and, perhaps, you'll have extra reasons to walk along some of the acacia in your photo (it looks like the silvery, naturalized, "wattle" type to me! :)) <3
This Southern California girl finds herself in New England of all places these past couple of years. I've also lived in Colorado. And although both are absolutely STUNNING, they are also COLD. And this beach girl will probably never get used to it, although I have learned to make peace with it ... mostly.
Glad to have found you and your Substack, Bailey! Can't wait to read more.