What Penguins Can Teach Us About Getting Through the Hard Seasons of Life

A commitment to show up and write my truth | Day 278 of 365

Today is World Animal Day, which feels like a fair excuse to write about penguins. I did name my whole brand after one.

The more I read about them, the better the name fits. Emperor penguins spend the Antarctic winter pressed together in a huddle of thousands, shuffling in tiny steps so that nobody is stuck on the windy outer edge for long. The ones on the outside work their way in. The ones in the warm middle drift out and take their turn facing the wind. Nobody owns the good spot.

I, on the other hand, have spent a good part of my life standing in a metaphorical blizzard telling anyone who asked, "No, really, I've got it."

The penguins would not have believed me for a second.

Getting Through the Hard Seasons of Life Takes a Huddle

This has been one of the hardest stretches I've lived through. We left the apartment that felt like home, put most of what we own into storage, and stepped into a chapter with far fewer guarantees than I had pictured. Some days I wake up grateful and steady. Other days there are bathroom tears and a long, quiet question about whether choosing this much uncertainty was brave or completely unhinged.

Probably some of each.

I used to believe the people who made it through the hard seasons of life had some special tolerance for cold. After living inside one, I think they simply had people nearby and let those people come closer. That has been true for me, more than I'd like to admit.

My husband has carried so much of this. He packs and unpacks the car and handles whatever needs handling, and when I'm running low he says, "Just take our daughter. I'll get the rest." My team somewhat kept the work moving while the ground shifted under all of us. Friends have listened without trying to fix me, and the practitioners looking after my body and nervous system have stayed steady when I wasn't.

That's my huddle, and I am more grateful for it than I know how to say in a blog post.

A Huddle Is Something You Choose

Here is the part I'm still learning. Asking for warmth is a decision, and you get to make it on purpose.

Not everyone belongs in the middle with you. Some people want the whole story and never take a turn on the windy side, or hand you advice when you needed company. Others leave you steadier than they found you, without making a big deal of it.

Pay attention to which is which. Notice who you feel calmer around after a conversation, and who leaves you more tired. Then move toward the first kind. I spent years feeling guilty about that, as if choosing the people who help me was somehow unkind to everyone else. These days I call it good judgment.

If you're someone who is very good at being everybody else's warm middle, this may be harder than it sounds. You know exactly how to shelter other people, and stepping inward yourself can feel like cutting in line. It isn't. In a huddle, everyone gets a turn.

Shared Responsibility Looks Like Love

Emperor penguin parents don't do identical jobs at the same moment. The female lays a single egg and passes it to the male, who keeps it warm on his feet through the worst of the winter while she walks to the sea to feed. When she returns, the work shifts again. One carries while the other gathers, and then they trade.

I find that beautiful: love that doesn't demand a perfect fifty-fifty split every second. Some seasons one person carries more because the other is grieving, or doing something only she can do. And sometimes the kindest thing you can do is let yourself be carried without treating their care as evidence that you failed.

For years I confused strength with being the person who could manage anything alone. If I needed too much, I assumed I had mishandled my life. I'm slowly unlearning that. Strength, it turns out, includes knowing when to hand off the egg.

Move Toward the Warmth

Maybe your hard season looks nothing like mine. Maybe you're grieving someone, or waking up to a life you barely recognize. You might be so good at holding everything together that nobody has noticed how cold you are.

Tell one person. Not the whole colony, just one. Let a friend bring dinner or let your partner take the morning shift, and then actually let them.

You don't owe anyone an explanation for not handling the cold more gracefully. It's cold.

And if you're the one standing in the warm middle right now, remember that the penguins don't stay there. There are seasons for giving warmth and seasons for needing it, and I'm learning to treat both as part of the same winter.

I'm still in it. Our things are still in storage, and plenty of this chapter is unfinished. But I'm warmer than I was, because I stopped insisting on facing it alone.

It's still cold out here. I'm just not standing in it by myself.

About the Author | Day 278 of 365

I'm a soul-led coach, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist, currently navigating healing, uncertainty, temporary chapters, motherhood, work, big transitions, grief, nervous system healing, overstimulation, emotional growth, and the ongoing lesson that life works a whole lot better when we stop trying to carry everything alone. Today that lesson looked like thanking the people who have stood around me through one of my hardest seasons, and remembering that letting someone in close is part of how a winter gets survived.

Day 278 of 365. Still showing up, and standing a little closer to the warmth. 🐧