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Honor Your Winter: Why Spiritual Rest and Seasons Matter
- Karma Penguin
- Jan 21
- 5 min read
If there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way, it’s this: spiritual rest and seasons don’t care about your calendar.
They don’t care that you planned the trip, prepped the meetings, packed the outfit, outlined the pitch, or built the momentum. They show up when they show up — and if you ignore them long enough, they don’t go away. They get louder. They start canceling things for you.
That’s what happened to me.
I had a two-week business trip lined up: meetings, a conference, client-facing everything. There was even a day trip to Disneyland baked into the plan. And then my daughter wasn’t well, so we couldn’t fly. One by one, the pieces fell away until the whole thing was canceled.
I was genuinely disappointed. I had wanted it. I had prepared. I was ready to do the thing.
And at the same time — and this is the part I almost didn’t want to admit — I felt relieved.
Not “relieved because I’m lazy.”
Relieved because my body had been waving red flags for a while and I had been politely ignoring them.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t have the energy to put on a face and perform competence with clients. I didn’t have the fire in me to pitch hard and chase accounts. I wanted to sleep for days and days and days. I wanted to regenerate. I wanted salty popcorn and Pellegrino in silence. That was the real craving underneath the ambition.
That’s when it clicked: this wasn’t me failing. This was my winter arriving.
Spiritual Rest and Seasons: The Part of Growth We Keep Calling “Nothing”
We’re taught to treat rest like a pause button you press only after you’ve earned it.
But in real life, rest isn’t a pause. It’s a phase. A season. A necessary part of becoming.
Think about any living thing: growth isn’t a straight line. There’s expansion, yes — but there’s also dormancy. Recuperation. Integration. The quiet, unglamorous work of rebuilding resources.
Winter isn’t the opposite of growth. It’s the part where your system is doing growth underground.
When we don’t understand that, we start calling winter names it doesn’t deserve:
“I’m unmotivated.”
“I’m behind.”
“I’m not doing enough.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
Nothing is wrong with you. You may simply be in a season where your nervous system is prioritizing survival and repair over output.
The Emotional Truth: Disappointed and Relieved Can Coexist
This is what winter actually feels like for many of us: mixed emotions.
You can be sad something fell apart and grateful you don’t have to hold it together. You can miss the momentum and feel your body exhale when the pressure lifts.
That’s not inconsistency. That’s honesty.
And it happened again for me — not just with the trip.
Yesterday I had a full day planned: meetings, work blocks, collaboration — the kind of day where you need clarity and energy. But one by one, everything got canceled.
Under normal circumstances, I might have tried to “salvage the productivity.” I might have forced myself to fill the open space.
But the night before made it clear: I wasn’t meant to push.
I had been up all night. Between my daughter waking from nightmares — crying, uncomfortable — and my own brain refusing to shut off, I was wired in that exhausting way where your body is desperate for rest but your nervous system keeps scanning for danger.
I woke up singing You Are My Sunshine.
Do you know how surreal it is to have that stuck in your head at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 5:30 a.m. — and then, as if that’s not enough, your brain switches to Miss Rachel songs?
I finally got a nap at 6 a.m. Not real rest — a thin slice of it.
So when the day cleared itself? I didn’t just feel “free.” I felt my nervous system unclench.
And that’s the point: sometimes cancellations aren’t interruptions. They’re signals. They’re the universe — or your body — saying, You don’t have the fuel for this right now.
When You Ignore Winter, Burnout Doesn’t Stay Polite
This is where a lot of us get confused.
We think we can override winter with willpower. We treat exhaustion like a mindset issue. We try to outthink what’s happening in the body.
But winter doesn’t respond to pep talks. It responds to permission.
When winter is ignored long enough, it often becomes burnout — not because you’re weak, but because you kept performing strength when your system was asking for recovery.
The truth is: many of our most “ambitious” seasons are also our most dissociated ones. We’re getting things done, but we’re not inside ourselves while we do it.
Winter is the season that tries to bring you back.
What Honoring Your Winter Actually Looks Like
Honoring your winter doesn’t mean quitting your life. It means changing the pace you’re living it at.
It can look like:
letting the canceled plan stay canceled
choosing rest without writing a defense brief
simplifying decisions (food, clothes, plans)
allowing comfort without turning it into a moral issue
letting your nervous system have fewer inputs
This is one of my favorite reframes:
Winter isn’t where you “fall off.” Winter is where you stop abandoning yourself.
Sometimes that’s as small as letting yourself admit: I’m beyond exhausted. I don’t have it in me today. And I don’t need to pretend I do.
What to Do Today If You’re in Winter
One gentle action. Not ten.
Pick one:
Don’t reschedule what fell away today
Take a nap without calling it “wasted time”
Eat something grounding and stop narrating it as good or bad
Step outside for three minutes and breathe like you mean it
Ask: What would make today 5% easier on my body?
No silver lining required.
The goal isn’t to “use rest well.”
The goal is to let rest be rest.
A Gentle Return
If you’re in winter, you’re not behind.
You’re in a sacred, necessary season that our culture doesn’t know how to respect.
And if you’re anything like me, you may still feel the disappointment. You may still wish the trip happened. You may still want the momentum and the outcome.
But winter is asking a different question than your goals are asking.
Winter asks: Can you stop performing long enough to recover?
For some people, journaling helps create that space — not to fix anything, but to unload honestly and let the nervous system settle. Our 2026 Digital Daily Alignment Journal was created as an open, pressure-free place for that kind of real-life reflection — including the days that are nothing but exhaustion, canceled plans, salty popcorn, and Pellegrino.
If it feels supportive in this season, you can find it here:
You’re not failing.
You’re honoring your winter.
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