Tired of feeling like a sausage..

I have reached that point of the year. The point when I am getting tired of my winter clothes. I am someone who has really fallen for winter over the past few years, but I am now getting tired of wearing two pairs of trousers, thermal bases and big cosy jumpers. I am tired of layers on layers.

I am tired of feeling like a sausage.

This is the poetic way that my husband describes that tight, restricted, limiting feeling that comes at the end of a cold day in many clothes. It’s the feeling that is only relieved by peeling off those layers and being free of them.

That’s where I am right now.

I am tired of being constricted, restricted, over-layered and hemmed in. I am longing for the feeling of lighter layers, lighter clothes, lighter days, lighter times.

And in this place, not quite Spring, not quite warm, no longer the comfort of deep wintering, I feel the push-pull, a desire to break free, to escape. It’s not comfortable.

But after a week or so like this, last night, lying awake, I felt a revelation shimmer and shift through me.

This is exactly how I should be feeling.

This uncomfortable feeling is absolutely right.

Because what I am feeling is also the burgeoning desire of Nature for Life as it lets go of the deepest grip of winter.

It’s the glorious good-butter yellow of a crocus that extends open so wide at the hint of sun, but closes tightly as the shadows shift over it.

It’s the ‘it’s-coming-but not-quite-yet’-ness of a thin skin of frost melting on an early morning roof.

And, if I wish to live more rhythmically and more connectedly, which I do, instead of trying to distract myself away from it, plan my way out of it or jettison myself out of winter in desperation, I need to be in this place for exactly what it is. A liminal place on the cusp, a place between cocooning and expression.

It is not comfortable, it’s not supposed to be, but it’s exactly right.

Because when I stop resisting it and get comfortable with this not-quite-here-and-not-quite-there energy it gives me the space to engage with what might have been working through me over winter.

In accepting it, I stop trying to make things happen and open up to what might be trying to make itself known.

In not fighting it, I get to enjoy this, for me, the most difficult of seasons.

And so, I choose to settle with it for a little longer. I’m being patient and observing life changing all around me. I am trusting.

And maybe accepting the double socks for a bit longer…