Wintering, Leaning into Rest - What Your Body & Soul Needs (Replay)

In this soul-nourishing episode of The Daring Well Podcast, host Rita Mercer, licensed counselor and holistic wellness & mindset coach, invites you to embrace the sacred practice of “wintering” — a season of rest, renewal, and deep self-connection.

Through the lens of nature’s wisdom, Rita explores how every season of life — joy, loss, abundance, and stillness — holds purpose and meaning. Just as trees shed their leaves to prepare for spring, we too must honor our seasons of slowing down to restore our minds, bodies, and spirits.

Rita shares her own journey through perimenopause, learning to listen to her body, honor her energy, and set healthy boundaries with compassion and courage. You’ll discover how pausing isn’t weakness, but a powerful act of healing and preparation for new growth.

✨ In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What it truly means to “winter” and why rest is essential for growth
• How to recognize signs that your body and mind need to pause
• Ways to cultivate inner peace through reflection, boundaries, and self-care
• Gentle reminders to redefine productivity and self-worth
• How to trust life’s seasons and flow with grace

🌸 Whether you’re navigating transition, burnout, or emotional fatigue — this episode is your invitation to slow down, tune in, and find the sacred beauty in stillness.

Transcript

00:00

Introduction

Welcome to The Daring Well Podcast with Rita Mercer. Dear, as the season changes, I hope that this replay episode will serve as a sweet reminder, an invitation to just slow down and tune into a new rhythm of rest. All right, let's get into it.

Hello, my dear. In today's episode, we're talking about the concept of wintering, and we're gonna explore this idea of leaning into rest. So this concept of wintering, it goes way beyond the literal season of winter.

So you might be wondering, what exactly is wintering? Well, it's not just about hibernating during those cold winter months. The concept of wintering, it's an invitation.

It's an invitation to pause. It's about leaning into a deeply personal journey, so that you can retreat, reflect, and renew your mind, body, and spirit. We're gonna take cues from nature as we think about these winter months.

You can observe how during winter, shorter days, there's longer nights, the trees, and the plants, they start to strip down even to their leaves, they strip down their branches, and even wildlife, if you notice, they become a little bit less active.

Nature teaches us that in life, we have many seasons, seasons of joy and seasons of pain, seasons of lack, and seasons of growth and abundance. It all adds up, my dear. It all adds up to a huge point of growth.

This natural cycle of pause and stillness, it's a great reminder so that you can tune in to your body and to see what your body is craving. What is it craving more of? Maybe it's more rest.

Maybe your body or your mind is craving more time to reflect. Maybe for you, wintering means a time for waiting and a time for building and preparation. Whatever feels true to you, tune in to that.

In this season of wintering, I encourage you to honor what your body needs. Pause to tune in to that.

2:48

Wintering: A Necessary Pause

Wintering, it also signifies a change or a transition, such as a loss, such as a disappointment, a change in a relationship, change in health, or emotional difficulties.

If these moments of life feel like, ooh, I just have to keep pushing through, then that's a signal. That's a signal that we need to slow down.

Life will get our attention and if you don't do it, if you don't slow down, life will force us to slow down. It will force us to stop. It will force us to go into these seasons of rest so that we can heal our mind, body, and spirit.

Just as trees shed their leaves and conserve energy during winter, we too need periods of withdrawal so that we can do our internal work. In the spirit of wintering, I will be leading a couple of retreats, both online and in person.

So please be sure to sign up to get on the email list so that you can get all the details. And that's at daringwell.com/retreat. And that's daringwell.com/retreat.

4:12

Embracing Personal Wintering

So as we talk about wintering, I want to be fully transparent. As I come to grips with perimenopause and the many changes in my mind and my body, I'm learning to embrace this season of wintering.

In my young and in my old age, I'm learning to pivot when I need to, and to stop resisting it, and learn to lean into it.

As I'm learning and leaning into my season of wintering, I'm just doing a lot of reflection, a lot of focusing on the things and the people that bring me joy. I'm focusing more on things that light me up.

I'm focusing more on self-care, more on self-love. I'm focusing on tuning my body, so tuning into my body, and feeling less apologetic. I lived so many years apologizing just for literally everything.

So in these days, I'm learning to be less apologetic about needing more rest, and I'm not going to lie, I love my naps, and Peri Menopause is teaching me to find ways to embrace comfort.

And for me, that looks like dressing in layers, because at any moment, I could go from super cold to super hot, and in this season, I'm choosing more comfort. I'm choosing the things that I need in this season.

I'm choosing comfort and rest over grinding and just pushing through. In this season, I'm being more cognizant of my boundaries. I'm being more cognizant of how I communicate.

I'm being more cognizant of my time and my energy. I was literally just sharing these words of wisdom with a dear loved one just the other day.

I was just encouraging her that all money is not good money, meaning that you don't have to chase after people who don't honor you, who don't honor your skills, who don't honor your expertise, who don't value everything that you bring to the table.

And all the while, they're disrespecting your time, they're disrespecting your boundaries. And so that's something that I've had to learn as a woman that you can't compromise in those spaces where you can't show up as your true self.

And so again, just reminding yourself to have good boundaries, to pause to rest when you need to, to check in with yourself. Pause into rest, to reflect, or pivot if you need to.

7:03

Rest: A Path to Growth

It's not about seeing wintering as a weakness, it's not about seeing wintering as a failure or giving up, or staying stuck. Instead, wintering, it's an active process of healing. It's an active process of strengthening.

It's a process of renewal and preparing for new growth and new opportunities and new chapters.

My dear, please give yourself permission to lean into grace, to be a little more gentle with yourself of how you treat your body, of how you honor your needs and honor your time and honor your energy and how you honor your truth.

My dear, from this day forward, give yourself permission to believe that healing isn't always linear and that rest is not a sign of laziness or being unproductive. Rest is a necessary piece of growth.

In this hustle culture of grind, grind, grind, the idea of stillness may seem counterintuitive. I get it. It may feel uncomfortable or it might even feel downright scary.

But these are the beautiful moments, my dear, where we can strip down, just like nature, we can strip down the outer layer of being the strong one.

We can shift our identity and our sense of self-worth from moving and producing and doing all the things and find the joy, find the power of stillness, the joy and the power of just slowing down.

8:56

Reflecting on Overwork

So as you're internally fighting that idea of wintering, let me just ask you to pause and check in with yourself. So and be honest with yourself.

So how long have you been the strong one for all of your family, for all of your friends, for everyone in your community? How long have you been putting on a brave face while you're internally screaming and crying deep inside?

How long have you been putting the other's needs before yours? How long does it take you to recover? So this is a good question.

How long does it take you to recover when you've pushed yourself too hard? By trying to earn your worth, by being overly productive, 26 hours out of the day. And yes, I did say 26 because many of us are pushing ourselves past the limit.

You've already tried borrowing from the next day, and you're simply wearing yourself out. You're exhausted. You're tired and you're overwhelmed.

How long, how long does it take you to recover? After grinding and pushing your mind and your body past its limits?

So all of these questions, they're not meant to bring you into a place of shame or a place of guilt, but to give you more encouragement that, my dear, if what you're doing is not working, then it's time to switch it up.

That's kind of the unclinical definition of insanity, of doing the same thing and expecting different results. So if what you're doing is not working, then switch it up.

If what you're doing is putting your mental or your physical health at risk, then it's time to pause. If what you're doing is causing a strain in one of your relationships that you hold most dear, it's time to pause.

If what you're doing is stretching you too thin, then that's another good sign to pause. Then let this also today, let today's message be a gentle reminder to love yourself. Love yourself enough to lean into wintering.

Just for a season, tune into your body, slow down, and pause. So, if not now, then when? When will you pause?

Will you pause when you're overwhelmed? Are you waiting for a serious wake up call with your health? In a perfect world, there would be a perfect time to pause.

And I get it that we're all busy, super busy, but now is the time. Now is the time to put yourself first. Not tomorrow, not next year, not after that goal is accomplished, right now.

My dear, now is the time to tune in to your body. Now is the time to pause. And now is the time to rest.

Taking the opportunity and taking the time to rest and to reflect, it's the true essence of wintering.

It's about taking an opportunity to understand yourself a little bit more deeply, to sit with your emotions, to sit with what you're doing, and understand what's the meaning attached to it.

So this isn't an exercise about analyzing to the nth degree, or trying to resolve everything all in one day. But what it is about is about creating more space, more space to reflect with self-compassion and grace.

So nurturing during wintering, it looks different for everyone. So you don't have to compare yourself to someone else, but for some it might look like journaling. For some it might mean taking a day off from work or from all the responsibilities.

For others it might look like meditation. So incorporating that into your daily lifestyle. It also might look like taking a long walk and spending some time in nature.

For others it could be doing something art or creative. It could look like listening to music or simply sitting quietly. Or just tuning in to times to just pause, take a nap, or rest.

The key is to find what helps you. What helps you to reconnect with yourself. What brings you moments of peace and deep inside and reflection.

You could consider the time of wintering as a season of internal restoration. And just as seeds, they lie dormant, underground, preparing for spring, you too, you're preparing for your next phase of healing and growth for your next chapter.

So starting today, let's cancel that lie that your worth is determined, by always being productive, by always being on, by always being busy, by always being available to everyone but just letting your worth be redefined by how much that you love

your body, how much that you love yourself, that in the body that you're in now, and how you show for yourself today and tomorrow. your body, how much that you love yourself, that in the body that you're in now, and how you show for yourself today

15:01

Steps for Wintering

and tomorrow. So what do you do if you don't know where to start? Well, I'm glad that you asked my friend. So as we start to wrap up, I'm going to leave you with a few ideas of how to lean into wintering.

So first, I encourage you to recognize and honor your season of wintering. Don't resist it, don't fight it, but lean into it, lean into it for just a little bit. And don't feel ashamed about it.

And you can stop trying to make excuses. We're trying to overly explain yourself to others so that they can understand what you're going through. This is all about you.

This season of wintering, it's a natural part of our human experience. So there's no explanation and there's no apologies that's needed. Just you and your season of rest.

Secondly, I encourage you to create a supportive environment that is conducive for you and everything that you need in this season.

I want you to stop waiting for permission and to tune in to your body, tune in to what you need, tune in to what makes you feel comfortable in every space. You know yourself way better than anybody else. You're worth yourself 24-7.

So this might seem really hard and that's okay. Just acknowledge that piece of it too. So this might mean or look like setting healthy boundaries and notice when you're feeling overstimulated.

And if you feel overstimulated, notice when you need to pull away. Or it might mean taking some time to seek out support from a safe and a trustworthy friend. Or a therapist or a coach.

Third, I encourage you to develop healthy habits. Healthy habits that help you to nurture your mind, your body, and your spirit with more self-love and with more self-care.

This isn't about some big grand gesture that is Instagram worthy with small consistent acts of loving kindness toward yourself.

So, maybe it's a warm bath, maybe it's a warm cup of tea, maybe it's a few minutes of deep breathing, or reading a good book. Lastly, just trust the process. Wintering is nothing that's permanent.

It's just like the many seasons in nature. It's temporary. So, just like the many transitions or difficulties in life, those things, they're temporary.

So, just as winter gives way to spring, your challenging season, your season of transition, your season of rest, it will naturally and gradually transform into a beautiful new season. And you want to have energy for that new season, right?

So, you got to take that time to rest. A new season where you grow in healing, where you grow in resilience, where you grow in wisdom, and so much abundant joy.

18:33

Strength in Stillness

As your wellness and mindset coach, I want to remind you that wintering is not a sign of weakness. It's actually a sign of great strength. It's not about just surviving, but it's about thriving.

It's a time to feel renewed, poured into, restored, and transformed from the inside out. Wintering, it's about learning to flow, flow with the many seasons of life, and learning to take notes from nature.

Leaning in and navigating the many ebbs and flows of life with stillness, with grace, with mindfulness intention, and with loving kindness. Well, thank you so much for taking some time to tune into another episode of The Daring Well Podcast.

If you found value in today's episode, please share it with a friend or someone that you know, who might need a gentle reminder to pause and to rest. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

It helps us to connect with other wellness seekers, just like you, who are looking for wellness resources. Until next week, keep living, keep loving, and keep daring well. Take care, my dear.

God bless. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The Daring Well Podcast. I hope you found inspiration, insights, and practical tips that will support you on your holistic wellness journey.

Remember, true well-being encompasses more than just the physical. It's all about nurturing your mind, body, and spirit in perfect harmony.

I encourage you to take what you've learned today and integrate it into your everyday life one day and one step at a time.

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Together, let's dare to live well in mind, body, and spirit. Until next time, keep daring well and embracing the journey one day at a time. Take care.

God bless.