In our culture of constant performance, we are taught to fear the quiet periods — the winter seasons of our own transformation. We scroll past other people's harvests and wonder why our own field lies bare. But what if these periods are not signs of stagnation, but essential for the growth that follows?
I think about this a lot, living in southern Tasmania. The Huon Valley has real seasons — not the blurred, air-conditioned sameness of a Sydney year. Here, winter means something. The orchards go dormant. The river runs high and grey. The light leaves early. And then, months later, the apple blossoms arrive with a force that still catches me off guard, even after years.
The myth of eternal summer
We want to be in constant bloom. We want the harvest without the dormancy, the transformation without the disorientation, the butterfly without the dissolution inside the chrysalis. And our culture reinforces this — every productivity system, every motivational post, every "new year, new you" campaign carries the same implicit message: you should always be growing, always be producing, always be becoming.
But nature teaches us that nothing blooms all year round. The trees in the valley lose their leaves not because they are dying, but because they are conserving energy for what comes next. The ground looks empty, but underground, root systems are deepening. The stillness is not nothing. It is preparation.
When we find ourselves in a period of low energy, lack of direction, or quietness, our instinct is often to panic. We try to force a new beginning before the old ending has fully processed. We sign up for a course, start a project, make a plan — anything to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what comes next.
The seasons I've learned to recognise
In my work with clients, and honestly in my own life, I've come to see four distinct seasons of personal change. They don't map perfectly onto the calendar, but the pattern is remarkably consistent.
Autumn is the season of letting go. Something that once sustained you — a role, a relationship, a belief about yourself — begins to lose its hold. This can feel like loss, and in many ways it is. But it's also the beginning of making space. The leaves are falling because the tree has decided, at some deep level, that it needs to travel lighter for a while.
Winter is the season of not knowing. This is the one most people find unbearable. You've let go of the old thing, but the new thing hasn't arrived yet. You're in between. You might feel purposeless, foggy, even a little frightened. Our culture has almost no tolerance for this season. We pathologise it. We medicate it. We hustle our way through it. But winter has its own intelligence.
Spring is the season of emergence. Small, tentative, easily missed. A new interest surfaces. An old curiosity returns. You feel a flicker of energy that wasn't there last month. Spring doesn't announce itself with fanfare. It arrives like the first green shoots after rain — quiet, fragile, and easily trampled if you're not paying attention.
Summer is the season of expression. The new growth is established. You're creating, connecting, contributing from a place that feels authentic rather than forced. This is the season everyone wants to live in permanently, and it's the one that makes all the others feel worthwhile. But summer is only possible because of what came before it.
"Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible."
Trusting the dormancy
The hardest thing I ask of the people I work with is this: can you trust the season you're in? Not enjoy it, necessarily. Not pretend it's comfortable. But trust that it has a purpose, even when you can't see what that purpose is.
Transformation requires these fallow periods. It is in the dark, quiet soil that the seed breaks open. That breaking open is not gentle — anyone who has been through a genuine period of change knows this. But if we rush the process, if we force ourselves into premature spring, we arrive at our new season exhausted and fragile, without the root system to sustain what's trying to grow.
I've seen this pattern so many times: someone goes through a difficult period, panics at the discomfort, and immediately fills the space with activity. A new job. A new relationship. A new city. And sometimes those things are exactly right. But sometimes they're a way of avoiding the necessary work of winter — the slow, quiet process of composting old beliefs and making room for something genuinely new.
A different kind of patience
If you're in a winter season right now, I'm not going to tell you to enjoy it. That would be dishonest. Winter is often lonely, confusing, and uncomfortable. But I will suggest this: try to resist the urge to turn on the artificial lights. Let it be dark for a while. Let it be quiet. Pay attention to what surfaces when you stop trying to force the next thing into existence.
Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is simply stay with what is — not fixing, not planning, not performing our way through it — and trust that something is happening beneath the surface that we cannot yet see.
The blossoms will come. They always do. But they come on their own schedule, not ours.