Wintering in The West: Reflections on on The Season of Stillness
Stripping it back
Winter is the season that strips everything back, leaving the trees to stand bare, giving permission to the winds to rise and the rain to fall.
It can feel uncomfortable, not just in its chill, but in the knowing that it’s coming. A season that disrupts, yes – but the cold, biting air that winter brings isn’t just reminding you to add an extra layer as you step outside, it’s quietly and deliberately interrupting your thoughts and inviting you to stand in the season of stillness, to truly notice what change is.
In the starkness of winter, we find a rare clarity – to embrace the quiet and to connect to the feeling of coming home. In the long hours of darkness, there’s room for growth, there’s time to lean into what matters most.
"Yet winter also belongs to the wild and here on the west coast its raw beauty in its wind, sea and stone is ever-changing."
Inside our homes, we turn towards warmth, both the physical and the emotional kind. There’s palpable satisfaction in stacking wood for the fire and watching the flames soften the room, smells of comfort food from the slow cooker, the glow from an advent candle reminding us to mark each day, gathering around the family table, creating warmth through presence not perfection, small, ordinary rituals rooting us in something steady, something that only winter makes room for.
Yet winter also belongs to the wild and here on the west coast its raw beauty in its wind, sea and stone is ever-changing. Winter decorates and turns the ordinary to art, where even on the dullest of grey days we might be lifted by bright red cheeks of little faces singing festive songs carried by the biting westerly winds. On solitary walks along the shore or across the Burren, people become scarce but conversations are more connected, the water stings but the smiles are brighter for it. These moments are real and they carry us forward.
"We learn to sit with the stillness and lean into our comforts to carry us through the season."
Winter may be the most demanding of them all, the chapter of greatest change, the kind of change that isn’t always obvious but perhaps the most significant. We learn to sit with the stillness and lean into our comforts to carry us through the season, we learn again and again that every season has its own renewal and perhaps winter is the silent hero in our story.
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