The value of retreat in seasons of wintering.

Some words get overused. One of them is “vulnerability.”

We must appreciate, that for some people, they have to protect themselves from being vulnerable. Past hurts might still wounds and not yet scars.

This is especially so for people in situations of inequality, power imbalances, being subjugated or diminished in various familial and social contexts.

When we have difficulty opening up more of ourselves, we must at least ask, has there been a wounding? If so, this needs healing.

The improv teacher Pat Madson said,

Turtles are a good model, since they make progress only when they stick their necks out.

Let’s not forget: The turtle’s shell is brilliantly designed. We all need this shell to retreat into every now and then.

Season of Retreat

To retreat is not an admittance of defeat. To retreat, is especially necessary if the season of your life is one of “wintering.”

Wintering seasons may not be cherished nor welcomed, because they often happen in critical junctures, such as the periods of losses, health failures or significant changes in life circumstances.

Rarely do we choose periods of wintering.

Writer Katherine May provides a beautiful assessment of wintering: 

Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered. In our relentlessly busy contemporary world, we are forever trying to defer the onset of winter. We don’t ever dare to feel its full bite, and we don’t dare to show the way that it ravages us. A sharp wintering, sometimes, would do us good. We must stop believing that these times in our life are somehow silly, a failure of nerve, a lack of willpower (emphasis mine). We must stop trying to ignore them or dispose of them. They are real, and they are asking something of us. We must learn to invite the winter in.

Some seasons call for us to stick our necks out. Other times, we need to retreat into our shells. 

Wintering, compels us to retreat and to hide. “Winter,” adds May, “Is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”

In such times, we need to honor the need to hide away. We need spaces and places for this metaphorical “turtle shell” to vanish from sight.

“Hiding is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light.”

~ David Whyte, Consolations.

To retreat, is not just a “treat” for oneself. It is the *right* way to treat ourselves, as nature would have her way. Here’s May once again: 

Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt.

When the world has gone mad-busy and lost its bearings to the frenzy of the hustle, we may need to re-treat, to re-compose, and re-imagine where our life needs to go––and stop being so stubborn.

So the reflection is this:

How do we honour our need for this shell to hide in at different seasons of our lives? Can we allow periods of retreat?

(This is a modified excerpt from the upcoming book, Crossing Between Worlds: Moving and Being Moved Through the Transitions of Life.)