The Quiet season

Winter has always had a reputation problem.

We complain about the long nights, the stillness, the way it slows everything down. We treat it as an inconvenience, a pause between “real life” in summer and spring. But nature knows better. Winter is not wasted. Winter is where roots grow deep. For a long time, I didn’t believe that.

In the middle of one of my hardest seasons, I remember standing over a pot of soil I had planted months earlier. I kept watering it, waiting, hoping. But nothing seemed to be happening. Just dirt. Just silence.

I was tired, restless, and grieving, and I wanted proof that something, anything, was changing.

But winter doesn’t give us proof. Winter asks for trust. That pot of soil became a mirror for my life. At work, I was still showing up, still giving everything, but on the inside I felt like that patch of dirt: barren, unproductive, lifeless. I thought I had failed. I thought stillness meant nothing was happening.

It took me years to understand that quiet is not the same as emptiness. Quiet is preparation. Growth is happening even when we cannot see it.

This is why I no longer view burnout or depletion as a personal weakness, but rather as an invitation into a deeper season. A winter season. A season where we are asked to rest, to root, and to trust that what is unseen still matters.

In my research and in my life, I have learned this:

  • Nature does not waste winter.

  • As Indigenous teachings remind us, dark seasons hold their own wisdom.

  • Every cycle of flourishing requires stillness before the sprouting.

When we honour the season of quiet instead of resisting it, something remarkable happens. We begin to see that creativity, energy, and purpose are not lost forever, but are simply waiting for the right conditions to emerge again.

The world teaches us to fear stillness, to equate productivity with worth. But what if the quiet was never our enemy? What if winter were always the teacher?

That is the heart of my work: helping schools, workplaces, and people see that well-being and creativity are not found by forcing growth, but by tending to the soil, even in the quiet seasons.

So let me leave you with this question:

In a world facing burnout, disconnection, and ecological collapse, let us choose well-being together. Our future depends on it.

Previous
Previous

The Season of Renewal

Next
Next

The Theft of Creativity