because I'm a plant

Spring is here (or at least first spring, that temperamental few weeks in March and April in the northern hemisphere) and it has me reflecting on the annual shift that I feel internally each Equinox. It’s hopeful and lighter, though still a bit awkward and unpredictable. The shift in the light as the days extend and the tentative auburn and green shoots poking through last seasons dried leaves and thawing soil. The birds singing in the budding branches. Even today when there is a light dusting of snow blowing through, I know it’s winter’s last gasp and I can remember that my heavy winter jackets can officially get stored away soon. My spring wardrobe is (fractionally) more colourful and that reflects so much of how this season feels.

The layered blooming of different species of bulbed flowers in the next few weeks always awakens something within me. Some tangible affects are the way I have been feeling motivated in bursts to go through rooms and let things go, taking more external action on things I care about, spending more time out in the world (up from very hermit-like) and interacting with others (again, up from barely to some).

What I’m saying is, I’m basically a plant.

In astrology, Aries season—Spring’s inauguration—is the start of the zodiacal year. It’s a cardinal sign, which is any sign that begins a new season. Cancer: Summer, Libra: Fall, Capricorn: Winter. It initiates. There’s momentum and a shift to it, a shift to the collective energy and the feeling of the climate around us. It’s ruled by Mars and the fire element; power and heat. The life force unfurling out of it’s gestating slumber. It’s young and fresh and perhaps a little self-serving and inconsistent, prone to extremes. Today it needs some sun and tomorrow, rain. It fluctuates and it unfolds in layers. Bursts of aggression and force. The budding, blossoming, awakening of all that has been at rest is resilient and unrelenting, aggressive and multifaceted. Bugs are hatching and animals are giving birth. Life is awakening. From the 12^th house of the liminal and unconscious, we move into the 1^st house that brings us into the world, into consciousness, our rising from the conceptual into the physical plain.

You feel it too, right? Sure, we all have different relationships to seasons. If you’re like my oldest, you might find this season unbearable at times if the pollen torments your sinuses too. Whatever you feel about Spring generally, in the northern hemisphere at least, the environmental shift is undeniable.

Realizing how much this particular seasonal shift mirrors my own energy stores every year, it’s had me reflecting so much on the arbitrary new year that we celebrate around the world. When we move from one calendar year into the next in January. The ads about weight loss and goal setting and resolutions don’t line up with the actual environmental markers around us. I mean, first off, fuck diet culture. But also, just look around. January is bleak. The hard, cold earth, the distant sun and freezing air, the grey bare branches, the shorter days. And as I am a plant, it reasons that this is a time for hibernation, for the seeds I shed to await the right climate, for reserving my stores for Spring’s demands. Not a time for momentum or change.

The only thing I can come up with is that this is a product of Capitalism or it’s being used as a tool of it. As so many roads lead back to these bigger structural systems.

Just hear me out.

The culture of unrelenting productivity ties our consistent output to what tethers our value. Our worth so inextricably linked to what we do that feeds that system requires that we devalue anything that can not be measured by tangible external rewards. Physical “transformation,” financial gain, a life in pictures not necessarily in substance. What this system demeans and undervalues? Rest, emotional labour, the mental load, the cyclical nature of our energy capacities.

In January, the gyms fill up with folks forcing themselves to go from often zero to 100, driven by a story that a new year means you should be motivated to, what? Upend all your habits? Right after the most indulgent month of the year for most? When we are most vulnerable and likely in most need of contemplation, compassion and rest. If anything, winter is when our bodies need more food and rest and stillness in the darkest, coldest months. But this too, we are told, is a slippery slope. If we listen to our needs for rest, maybe we won’t be able to get motivated ever again. If we stop even for one moment, will we ever be able to get back up?

Or is it possible that if we can learn to stop, truly practise rest (regularly), that we will restore enough energy to see another, more sustainable and even more humane way of being in wholeness? Listening to our shifting needs and perhaps not needing to constantly ping pong from extremes. I do know that we won’t know unless we try.

But again and again, instead we override our innate needs and urges because we’re being fed this story that January and the darkest months of the year are the times to push and create and, if we don’t, we are failing somehow. This is just one of so many ways we are programmed to override our cyclical natures. Instead of actually questioning the illogic of the system and culture that feeds us this BS, we internalize and punish ourselves. When we most likely need this time to build up our stores of energy. Then by the time Spring arrives, we think we’ve already missed our chance to shift into the next iteration of ourselves.

As if chances don’t present all the time, as if the permission you give to allow for what is now and listen to what you actually need moment to moment is the problem. Something to override and tame. To punish into submission.

It perpetuates this story that we don’t actually know what we need and when we can’t maintain the impossible pace set out for us, we outsource. We outsource our inner knowing, looking for solutions and cures and fill our carts with things we hope will be just what we were missing.

Looking for the answer to our inability to shift when all we really need is to be with what is and listen to what our body is telling us.

It’s simple, sure, but not at all easy to push against all that we have been told, are being sold. All the ways our bodies, our nervous systems, remember and warn us against listening to that quiet whisper. Some innate primal inner knowing that we’ve been overriding to survive.

This is also not to say that I think you should be suddenly motivated and energized in Spring, as I have been feeling more of late. There is not one way to be. One right way. As cyclical beings, we are all in different points of death and rebirth all the time. In fact, maybe you DO feel energized in January. You do you.

Even just talking about January is kinda bumming me out.

I am often in this push and pull between learning to trust my energy needs and fighting the fear and punishing thoughts when I just can’t bring myself to do task after task after task. Life keeps life-ing and there are always more items on my to do list.

These don’t stop because I need breaks and boundaries from them. All the more reason for breaks and boundaries, no?

I find that when I give myself breathing room, things I think can not possibly wait still tend to come together on the other side. And the ones that don’t, maybe weren’t meant to. That I can accomplish with more ease and less forcing. But it’s a practise. Imperfect and messy and non-linear. Learning how to be present and quiet and how to notice what is. What void I am filling with lists and projects and stories? Whether it’s a punishing voice or a whiny plea or even gentle permission, there is information there that wants my attention. It’s a lot. One thing at a time.

When that punishing voice questions how long I’ve been reading my smutty book instead of doing xyz, I’ve begun to ask myself: who is this serving? Whose voice is this? More often than not, it’s the messenger of the system of relentless productivity that has no end and is, frankly, insatiable. A system that I don’t want to uphold any longer. But it’s a daily, even hourly, battle.

Wherever possible, I get to choose to honour and trust to give myself time for stillness and restoration when my body and mind want it. That wanting it is information enough. I also get to follow this shifting feeling now when I am ready to take on more and expand into more. Learning to trust that times of rest are as fleeting (in the big picture of life) and vital as times of momentum. This season of regrowth and blossoming and birthing, inconsistent, playful, impulsive, sometimes hot-headed. Perhaps it’s about holding what is here now. In this temporary, but vital season of initiation. Trusting that we expand and contract as we are ready and don’t need to override our inner wisdom to move towards what we want and need.

You get to be the plant that you are, at this moment. Whether you’re the seed, or germinating, rooting, blossoming or fertilizing. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be in your cycle of creation.