Welcoming The Sun
Although I have experienced the turning of winter into spring for 42 years now, it still fills me with amazement to have a truly warm day with blue sky and sun after several months of winter. Winter can be a beautiful time of year, and at the same time we have to protect ourselves from the cold. There is significantly less light, too, and all this can lead to an experience of “surviving” the winter. Many people experience mild depression in January and February, and others simply refer to the February blahs. For some, the time of cold darkness in winter can touch on past emotional times of darkness, such as the loss of a loved one or other trauma. As spring approaches, we not only witness the thawing of winter outside of us, but we can bring that warmth, light and energy into our souls and heal past winters of the heart.
Life is all about learning, and as a wise woman in my life often reminds me, we will not stop learning until the day we die. Sometimes life can bring us harsh lessons, such as losing a dearly loved person or pet, going through a war or natural disaster, or enduring sexual or physical abuse. The human psyche is pretty amazing in its ability to protect us from losing our minds at these times; people often freeze a part of themselves in order to cope and survive the hardship. Although this coping technique saves us at the time, many people don’t thaw out and resolve that frozen part and thus live a partial life, a mere shadow of their true potential. Society generally encourages us to stuff away the messy stuff; if something is uncomfortable, we are told to go for a drink or drown our sorrows in a shopping binge. In this way, we put away this frozen piece of our heart into a closet and shut the door. We can appear normal on the outside to others, and if we are successful at distracting ourselves, we may even feel relatively good.
However, when we spend quiet time alone, that frozen piece of our heart can start knocking on the inside of the closet door, and often, it knocks loudly. This can be pretty scary, especially living in a culture that denies trauma and tells us we should always feel happy or else we are a failure. I’d like to turn conventional wisdom on its head and acknowledge the rich gift that knocking is giving us. Isn’t it absolutely amazing that our broken heart will raise a red flag until the day that we take on healing its hurt? Don’t you love how we can’t lose that little piece of our heart, even when we lock it away and perhaps even throw away the key? I think this is one of the wonders of life.
So now that we understand the gift of the heart’s knocking... even though it feels like there is a horrible monster inside that closet... at least now we can intellectually understand that in fact it is a little frozen piece of our heart, a piece without which our heart is incomplete. The next step is to refrain from pushing it away, because this only distresses it. Instead, we can make the noble choice of healing and sit down outside that closet door and be with the knocking. Listen to it. And begin to murmur soft words of comfort to the little piece of our heart that separated off to save us.
Even this may feel like a very big challenge, and here is where spring can be our teacher. First, spring teaches us that it is truly possible to thaw winter. Second, there is great power in bringing persistent warmth and a bit of breeze to any situation – it can move mountains, and in this case, thaw mountains. As you walk outside this spring, actively open your being to these lessons and develop certainty in your ability to warm up to the frozen pieces of your heart.
Sherap Andrea Winn, MEd
Lifecycles Wellness
94 Cumberland Street, Suite 805
Toronto, Ontario M5R 1A3
(647) 428-7200
sherap@lifecycleswellness.com
www.lifecycleswellness.com
