Winter has never been my season.
I’ve always been cold-averse. I am the kind of person who starts negotiating with spring the minute the first real frost shows up. And I say that as someone who lives in New England… where winter doesn’t knock politely. It moves in, rearranges the furniture, and stays long enough to make you question your life choices.
But this year, I made a quiet vow:
“I’m going to try to fall in love with winter”
Not tolerate it. Not “get through it.” Not bribe myself with visions of crocuses, and sunshine, and the garden I get to create each spring…
Actually fall in love with it.
Because I’ve noticed something about myself: the way I resist winter isn’t just about temperature. It’s about what winter represents—slowness, stillness, limitation, waiting. The same things many of us struggle with when life feels uncertain or heavy.
And winter, being winter, decided to test the vow I made nearly immediately.
We’ve had the most snow I’ve ever seen at my house. Not the pretty “light dusting” kind of snow. Not the snow that makes you question why you even have a snow blower, and if you should get rid of it…real snow. The kind that stays. The kind that piles into weeks. The kind that makes the world feel paused. Even now, we’ve still got nearly two feet on the ground, like the earth is refusing to exhale.
It’s been endless.
And yet… something in me has shifted.
Not dramatically. I’m not suddenly a person who romanticizes ice storms. But I’m closer than I’ve ever been to not despising winter.
And weirdly, the thing helping me get there most is not a productivity hack or a cold-weather wardrobe glow-up.
It’s how I’m choosing to look at the season.
Winter Has a Nervous System Effect
I don’t think we talk enough about how seasons can shape our mood and regulation.
Winter limits light, movement, and spontaneity. It quietly removes options. And when you already run warm—energetically, emotionally, creatively—winter can feel like the world is telling you to dim yourself.
That can trigger a kind of internal friction:
- I want to go, but I can’t
- I want warmth, but everything is cold
- I want change, but nothing is moving
When I realized that, something softened.
Because it meant I wasn’t “bad at winter.”
I was having a completely human response to a season that requires a different rhythm.
So instead of forcing myself to perform like it’s June, I started asking a better question:
What does winter ask of me?
The Practice: Making Winter a Teacher Instead of an Enemy
This is what I’ve been trying.
A few simple practices, not perfection:
1) Leaning into small warmth on purpose
Not as “coping,” but as ritual: tea, soup, thick socks (most of the time double layers), a fire, a candle. Tiny signals to my body that we are safe and can still find that warmth.
2) Finding beauty without forcing it
Winter is blunt. But it has a kind of purity to it—silence after snowfall, the sparkle on branches, the way sound changes. I’ve started trying to notice it the way children do, like the world has been made anew after a snowfall.
3) Letting “slower” count as living
Winter doesn’t reward hustle. It rewards steadiness. It’s a season that teaches endurance, patience, and faith that life is still happening under the surface even though you can’t see it.
And this is the part that surprised me most:
4) Re-reading my own writing has become part of the practice
I’ve been rereading my YA fantasy novel lately, and seeing the world through the characters’ eyes, through their courage, tenderness, and resilience. It has been reminding me that seasons aren’t just weather.
They’re mirrors.
They show you what you do when things get hard.
They reveal what you cling to.
They ask what kind of person you become in the waiting.
There’s a line in my book that I keep returning to, especially on the days the cold feels endless:
“Perhaps Winter is only lingering to see if we will still be grateful when Spring arrives.”
When I wrote that, I meant it for the story.
This year, I’m realizing it might be for me, too.
I’m Not in Love With Winter Yet… But I’m Closer
I’m still counting down to spring, I’m not going to lie.
But I’ve stopped fighting the season like it’s personally insulting me.
I’ve stopped treating winter as a thief and started treating it as a teacher. Perhaps one that’s a little stern, a little relentless, but ultimately not without gifts and important lessons.
Maybe winter is lingering to see if we’ll still be grateful when spring arrives.
Or maybe winter is lingering to teach us how to be grateful before it does.
Either way, I’m listening.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m learning how to live inside the season I’m in.
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