Lessons from Winter and Rising into Spring
Letting Go, Honouring the Seasons, and Letting the Sacred Masculine Lead the Rising
For those of us coming to completion with our Venus Return, entering into spring is extra potent.
On March 29th, it marks the end of our Venus 18 month Leo overstory. Venus will begin her next descent and rising cycle in Pisces just as we turn to spring.
With these two energies conspiring with each other, this Winter I feel more clarity for my next steps than I have felt in a long time. Did I ever tell you I went down a really obsessive rabbit hole of trying to find my purpose?
During winter, the best visual I can share about what the experience feels like for me is this one ↓
Imagine you are in the cosmos and floating in the ether. It’s the void. The womb of the great mother. Here you can disassemble each of your atoms and have a look at each piece that makes you.
You get to choose what pieces come back and what you leave behind. This process is a little more amplified with the overlay of Venus’s descent to the underworld and her rising.
This is the cycle of stripping down to your bare bones, with each step towards your descent another mask, another layer is stripped off you, whether you want to or not. Until you reach the underworld naked of all your false selves and of all the lenses that cloud your perception.
This is, in essence, captured in the myth of Inanna. You can fight this energy all you want. But it will proceed without you.
Going through it consciously is a game changer. It is designed to return you to your personal power by removing every layer that is “not-self”. It’s like every pattern of thinking or behaviour that is not working in your life is pulled up on the screen in front of you and highlighted.
In this process, will you deny and push through life as you’ve been doing? Or will you choose to consciously SEE who you are and choose what to let die and what you’ll bring back with you.
This winter, I mourned the loss of a lot of little pieces of myself. To my surprise, it was easier to let go of many of these patterns once I objectively looked at their track record. And it was grim.
So clear was the evidence that no matter how much I pushed in those directions, I would never succeed in the way I imagined. I had exhausted my options in making everything work in my old ways of being, and there was nothing left for me to try except to surrender and lovingly accept defeat that this was not the way for me.
To cry for what could have been “if only” XYZ was different.
To rage at why it didn’t work.
And to kneel at the feet of my underworld in surrender ready to be shown a new way forward.
Scary AF.
In the spirit of sharing my own examples of lessons I’m carrying with me into Spring and how I consciously work with the energy of Mother Earth and the seasons in my life, here it goes:
Leaving behind my identity of “entrepreneur”. (Who am I now that I no longer have a business? How am I supposed to fulfill my purpose without this?)
Accepting that I do not have long quantities of time to work on my passions and creativity. I need to make do with 15 minute increments and take the odd hour when it comes. (What is the point of living this way if nothing will get done … yet the universe is conspiring to show me evidence that it is possible.)
Learning that I don’t have to have an all-or-nothing attitude. Small steps still lead you somewhere closer to your goal. Your goal might not get accomplished fast, but taking a small step is better than doing nothing at all. (Urgh, my timelines to get anything done will take me forever now!)
Letting go of “hobbies” I know I will never return to. This one was HARD. I gave away my Cricut and all its accessories to my cousin who is lit up by her newfound options. Oddly enough, this felt so right — I beam with joy at the thought. I cleared my cupboards of extra crafting activities I will never use and kept the ones that light me up — watercoloring, writing, reading, annotating, and journaling. (Fine, I’ll admit to also keeping some stamps and my wax seal supplies.)
Consolidating my goals and my creative pursuits. Another “letting go” and streamlining. Gosh, being a manifesting generator with such a wide variety of interests is freeing and limiting all at once. I wish I could ask myself “When are you going to fit this in your schedule” as a benchmark for taking up something new. However, I tend to think I can do three days work into what most people plan to do in one … so that’s out. I suspect the natural planning superpowers of Spring and the element of Air will be great guides in teaching me gentle discipline. I enrolled in Foundations of Ritual with Daniel Foor from Ancestral Medicine and his co-facilitator
, and I can’t wait to see how the lesson unfold.
I used to dread the arrival of spring, feeling like I had to endure another six months before autumn returned and I could feel at home again in my cocoon. For the first time, I am entering Spring with anticipation, curiosity and a genuine excitement to play with this energy in a way I never wanted to before.
You see, I’m fabulous at navigating the underworld, but terrible at the ”rising” part. In the process of descent and rising one of the biggest shockers I learned was that you cannot rise without a healthy masculine.
Well f**k.
Took me a while to accept this and find a gentle curiosity in exploring what this can look like.
Oddly enough, I began to realize just how wounded the sacred masculine is today. Among this hurt, there are many men that are striving to embody what the sacred masculine looks like in today’s timeline. Those are my next teachers as we enter the territory of masculine energy of Spring (Air) and Summer (Fire).
And so the journey continues into the known unknown.
Welcome Spring, I am ready to step into your classroom.
Be gentle as I tiptoe my way from my dark cave into your bright sunlight.
As I adjust to your gentle wind on my face.
As I breathe in your smell of rain soaked earth and blooming flowers.
I ready myself to be your student and listen to your roar.
Until next time … stay rooted and be true to your rhythm.
xo,
