132 ~ Desire in Winter: Stop Forcing Momentum Based on the Calendar

What if January isn’t your starting gun? We take on the “new year, new you” myth and offer a saner approach to growth: listen to your body, respect the season you’re in, and choose go time when you’re truly resourced. From Brenda’s love of winter hibernation to Catherine’s focus on boundaries and a personal resource bank, we explore how sustainable change comes from timing and capacity, not from a date on the calendar.

Across the hour, we map out the many ways a year can begin—Lunar New Year, the spring equinox, school-year resets, or personal milestones—and why honoring your actual season often beats forcing momentum. We dig into practical strategies for building real fuel: better sleep, simpler meals, saying no to low-value commitments, Do Not Disturb blocks, and stepping out of other people’s business so you can manage your own energy. For anyone balancing a nine-to-five, caregiving, or a full household, we share bite-sized practices to rest inside a busy life and make the day feel kinder without dropping your goals.

This conversation centers desire as a daily spiritual practice, naming what you want, noticing what nourishes you, and moving when your body says yes. Expect honesty about failing forward, leveraging community momentum without abandoning self-trust, and letting winter be winter so spring can actually bloom. If you’ve felt odd for extending December into January, consider this your permission slip to slow down, refuel, and then go farther than a one-week resolution ever could. 

Thank you so much for tuning in today. If this resonates, follow the show, and share it with a friend who needs permission to rest. Your season, your pace; When does your year really begin? Let's Go.

Transcript

Meet Brenda And Catherine

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Questioning New Year Go Time

Winter As A Season Of Rest

SPEAKER_00 1:12

On the Desire is Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked: being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, family, friends, listeners. I am here with the lovely Brenda. Thank you so much for tuning back in to the Desire as Medicine podcast. And today we've got something for you. We always have something for you, but today there's like a little bit of a collective buzz around this thing, this idea of when the hell is the new year and when is new me new you? And when is go time? And I personally am like, I don't really know why everybody's talking about it. Like, go when you want to go, don't go, who cares? Like, do you? But I was talking to Brenda about it earlier, and she's like, I just think that winter is a time to rest. And I'm thinking, well, I think anytime before we get something done, it's time to rest. Like, how can we go? Like, you can't move the car without gas. Like, you kind of need to be fueled before there's a go time. And winter, we're in New York City. She and I both. So it makes sense that in winter it's freezing outside, that we're not like, oh, let's just get our mini dresses, our sun dresses on, and let's go hang out and frolic. Like it's not a frolic kind of time. If we were in Australia, well, it would be summertime. Not wintertime. So I'm pointing to that different parts of the globe are experiencing different things at this time. So for somebody else, like I'm Central American, so in our countries right now, is this a good time to visit because it's a winter, but you don't suffocate to death when you're outside because it's that kind of hot in June, July? Like it's that kind of hot by the equator. And so let's talk about it. What is this idea? Like, I'm gonna pass it over to Brenda of you have an idea or an opinion around winter New Year's. Like, let's talk about it.

Multiple Calendars, Many New Years

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Let's talk about it. I love this topic, it's so juicy. So, in the last in the last episode, I talked about closing the nine-year collective cycle in 2025, and here we are in 2026. So I noticed, even though I love to rest over the winter, and I especially love to rest as the descent of the end of the year comes. So it's Thanksgiving, it's Hanukkah, it's Christmas, it's New Year's, those days are like to me, the descent of the year, right? And it's resting and unplugging and being with family, not working. Come the new year, there's this idea that it's go time. And I'm calling bullshit on it. And it's not that you can't have go time, it's not that you can't go if that's what you want to do. You can certainly go. But I noticed this year for me, because I've been in this huge, huge cycle of digestion of the last nine years, which I talked about on the last episode. And I've been writing about it and digesting and gleaming all the gold from the last nine years. And there was no way that that was gonna happen in December. And that come January 1st, I was gonna be like, well, let's go. December's over, the end of the year is over, the end of the cycle's over, it's done. No. It's continuing on. There's juice there. And I didn't realize how much pressure I even put on myself that the calendar turns to the new year and last year's done. And now it's go time. It's winter, it's time to rest, and we can continue to recycle our lessons from the year before. We can continue to be quiet and rest and hibernate even into January or February. I think it's correct. If we look at nature, if we look at how animals hibernate, they literally get all their nuts and they go to sleep for a couple of months. And there's a reason for that. Like you said, it's really cold. They're resting, it's so that they have energy. They're storing up their energy for this for the spring, for renewal, for when it's go time, for when the flowers are blooming and there's things to do and animals to catch. So I just want to give a lot of permission to anyone out there who's like, oh my God, it's winter, or I'm still wrapping up the holidays, even though it's February, or my holiday decorations are up and it's February, that that's okay. You can rest. You don't have to go just because the calendar turned to January or February. We talk a lot about attuning to our bodies and asking your body, what does your body want? My body wants a lot of rest.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

So when you say you're calling bullshit, you're just basically saying, if I were to put it simply, we can't really live by the calendar.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah, we don't have to live by the system, corporate America, the government, everyone, everything, culture that says January's here. What do you want for your new year? Who do you want to be? Let's go to the gym. Everyone's at the gym. My Alexa's going off. Alexa agrees. But everyone's at the gym in January, the first week, and then it it tapers off because it's false energy. It's not real. It's like they want this thing, but they don't have the follow-through. So maybe they just weren't ready.

Redefining Go Time In Winter

SPEAKER_00 7:30

So what does go time mean to you? Is it that go time to you means spring, or does it mean something else? For like when you speak about the person that makes the New Year's resolution of the gym and they start in January, January 1st, and then they've lost seam. Well, yes, it's it's false, it's not false motivation. It's it's uh potentially discipline that has faltered, right? Willpower that has faltered, something there's something else occurring, that that piece. But when I think of New Year and you're you're suggesting spring, definitely Aries people and uh some people go by the equinox at that point. Um, some people have Chinese New Year, like there's all different kinds of New Year's, right? We don't necessarily have to go by January. We're in the the States, so yes, in the United States of America, we celebrate New Year's and we think of this like there's a turn of calendar year. And then we have tax season, which happens sometime in April, and there's a whole new beginning there, and then you have, well, the school system. And that school systems have a completely different new year, which starts in September. So there are all sorts of different beginnings that are occurring. And I hear you talking about your own cycle and how you weren't necessarily complete in December, and you're in January, you were still sort of closing things up and mining for gold. I would argue that when you're in the personal development, I don't think there's a strong start-stop like that. I think we're constantly working on things. So I'll put that to the side, but I'll just come back to you and say, what does go time mean for you?

Extending December Into January

SPEAKER_01 9:18

This is a great question. It's gonna be a paradoxical answer. You're gonna laugh. Because, okay, I'm not a bear or a squirrel. I'm not literally hibernating, right? We just get our our wisdom from the animals who are hibernating. I've been resting and quiet and behind the scenes, so creative, writing, being with friends, recording with you. So it is go time for me. But she's all laughing, I told you. But it's it's a different kind of go time. It's following the truth of my body and listening to what inspiration is coming through. It's like a quiet, it feels like a quiet go time, like I'm just snuggled up over here by the fire on my couch, writing and digesting. Where other times, hibernating or resting for the winter has meant truly doing nothing, like really just watching Netflix and resting and sleeping so much more. So there's not really one way to do it. So this is my winter go time this year. And who knows what it will be in the future.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

So I guess what you're saying is you're calling bullshit on that it should look one way. Exactly.

Rest While Working A 9 To 5

SPEAKER_01 10:48

And I what I was pointing to is even though I've been in the personal development industry for so long, I know that every day is new. I I say my desires every single day, every morning and every night. I am well aware that there is no start or end time to any year or month or day. But something was different this year from 25 to 26 that I felt and I realized how much pressure I even felt, how much external pressure to put down everything that was happening in December or last year. And now it's now it's new year. Now it's just time to go. Now it's time to look forward. And this year I noticed that pressure and I just completely let it go. And January has been an extended December for me. And there is so much permission in that because it doesn't have to look a certain way. And I also really truly want to add for all the people listening and maybe cursing at me right now, who have a nine to five job, it's a different story. It looks different if you have a nine to five, and you have to get up and go to work every day. So when I was teaching, the new year would come and I was back in the classroom. So I was going. I was tired. And so what I would say to that is if that's you, if you're like, wow, I am really tired and I need more time off, how can you make it easy for yourself? Inside of working, inside of your nine to five or whatever it is, taking care of your kids, running your house, how can you rest inside of that? Make it a little bit easier for yourself. What can you put down? What can you say no to? Where can you ask for help? Those questions are game changers to the people in the back who are saying, I can't do that. I have to do X, Y, or Z. And I would just ask you, is that true? Because there is another way.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

So go time for you looks different. It's not always the same either. Exactly. So new year, new you doesn't look the same. Go time doesn't look the same, rest doesn't look the same, December doesn't look the same, January doesn't look the same, and you're just calling bullshit on the people that are saying it should look a particular way.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Exactly.

unknown 13:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

I'm feeling extremely like a manifesting generator right now. I'm feeling extremely feminine and very embodied, and there really is no rule. It's taken me a long time to be okay with that. And it it's honestly the core of and the truth of really who I am.

Resource Bank And Boundaries

Decide, Go, Fail, Learn, Repeat

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Thank you for sharing that. I'll share my perspective on the topic. So I love resolutions. I think that you can do it January 1st, like you could do it today or tomorrow. You can do it pretty much whenever you want to do it. It's up to you. And go time for me doesn't really happen unless I'm resourced. And so for me, go time is whenever I have enough in the bank. And when I say bank, I don't mean financial bank, I mean resource bank. I mean, did I eat well? Did I sleep well? How are my boundaries doing? Am I overextended anywhere? Am I overly attached? Am I in somebody else's business? Am I literally like in my own business, managing my own energy and managing my own life? Because guess what, folks? It's really hard to go after big things when you're involved in other people's bullshit. Like there's just not enough of you. And I love this, uh, one of my coaches is like when you're in somebody else's business, like who's in yours? Like who's managing your life? Who's taking care of what you want to do? You just can't be in both places. Something's gonna fall short. So if you're over there on somebody on the other side of the street handling somebody else's life, you can't be on your own side tending to yourself. And so hopefully, if you're listening to this, you're someone who has big dreams and goals, and you have big aspirations to do big things for yourself, whatever that looks like for you. And whatever day that you're listening to this, I hope you can claim it and decide that you're gonna go for what you want. You're just gonna go get it. And you may fail, and you just stand up and you go again, and you'll learn and you dust yourself off. And even if you do this 20 times and you still don't get to where you want to go, you know 20 ways that it wasn't gonna work. Like going after what you want is hard. Deciding to do it with the collective is hard in in some ways. It's hard in the ways that what if you're not resourced, you don't have the energy to go for it 100%. And at the same time, if you do have the energy for it and you do have a group of friends and you guys are all going for something, you know, whether it's the same thing or different things, and you can find a collective, there's so much energy in that as well. Like you can play this game of life and play this game of leaning into your desires however you want to do it. But I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that you have the same 24 hours that everybody else does. That includes all the good people in the world, all the bad people in the world. Everybody has the same 24 hours. If you want to do the best you can with yours, decide what you want, lean into it, but you need to be resourced. And that may not look like the same level of resource for other somebody else. My question I would give you is what can you implement? Can you put your phone on to do not disturb? Can you completely turn off your phone? Can you make yourself less available somewhere so that you can be with yourself, tending to yourself? And if you can't, okay. What can you do? And just stay with that question like, what can you do? What can you do? What can you do? We really invite you. Go time is when you decide, but whether or not you'll be able to stick with it depends on how resourced you are on the way in. And with that, we say thank you so much. May you reach your dreams, reach and touch your desires, and when you hold them, just picture us clapping for you and applauding you and everything that you've done. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.