The deeper time of year: gathering women through autumn and winter

Credit: Helen Jordan

In Copenhagen, you can feel the year turning. The light leaves earlier. The trees let go of their leaves. The city is still busy, but the natural world seems to be moving in another direction.

I find myself wanting to follow it.

In classical Chinese medicine, autumn is a season of gathering inward, while winter is associated with stillness and storing energy. Autumn and winter are the yin half of the year. Yin speaks to rest, receptivity, depth and the quiet conditions in which life is nourished.

For women who spend much of their lives thinking, deciding, leading and taking care of others, this can feel unfamiliar. We are skilled at staying in our heads. We can analyse a problem from every angle, make a plan and keep moving, even when our bodies have been telling us for months that something needs attention.

Midlife can make those signals harder to ignore. Energy changes. Ambitions may change, too. A career or life we worked hard to create may still matter deeply, while the way we inhabit it no longer feels quite right.

This is a moment worth giving time to. Beneath the question of what to do next are often deeper ones: What gives me energy now? What am I ready to stop carrying? How do I want to use my experience and influence in the years ahead?

The warmth of being together

There is a Nordic image I keep coming back to: women sitting together in a sauna while the world outside is cold and dark.

There may be conversation, or there may be silence. No one has to fill every pause. Away from the demands of the day, there is room to feel what is happening and speak more honestly.

The sauna has held a special place in Finnish life for generations. Women have gathered there to bathe and talk; historically, it was also a place where women gave birth. I’m drawn to that image of women together in warmth, close to the body and to the passages of life.

Midlife can feel like another kind of birth: the sometimes uncomfortable work of bringing your next phase of life into being. You don’t leave behind the woman you have been. You draw on everything she has lived and learned, while making room for desires, strengths and ways of being that are ready to emerge.

Other women can help us stay with that process. In a circle, we can speak openly without needing to present a polished version of ourselves. We hear something of our own experience in another woman’s story. Over time, we witness the changes each of us is making, both the visible decisions and the quieter shifts that come before them.

Getting out of our heads

Many ambitious women are very good at understanding themselves intellectually. We can explain why we are tired, list our competing priorities and articulate what ought to change. Yet we may still live in much the same way.

That is why embodied practice matters to me. In the SophroMidlifeCircle, we use breath, gentle movement, awareness and reflection to bring attention back into the body. We notice tension before it becomes our normal state. We learn to recognise what drains us and what restores us. We make space to feel an answer, rather than immediately argue ourselves into one.

This is work we can take into a meeting, a difficult conversation or a decision about what comes next. With practice, we can recognise when we are pushing past our limits, steady ourselves and choose how to respond. We can meet the demands of our lives with a clearer mind and a stronger connection to ourselves.

For me, this is part of the nourishing quality of yin. We allow time for something to become clear before demanding an outcome. That inward movement can give us the energy and discernment to act.

What might be different by spring?

My invitation is to spend autumn and winter doing this work with other women. We’ll explore our unique energy, practise presence and look honestly at how we are living now and what we want to bring forward.

By spring, I want each woman to leave with more than an insight she had one evening and then lost in the rush of daily life. I want her to know the practices that help her return to herself. To recognise what supports her vitality. To be clearer about what deserves her time and what no longer does. To make choices from that place, in her work and beyond it.

That is the transformation I’m inviting you into: a renewed sense of being, and a more deliberate way to live and lead from it.

The SophroMidlifeCircle will meet both online and in person. You can read more about the circle here.