By the time July approaches (in the southern hemisphere), I notice many women become frustrated with themselves. They tell me they're lacking motivation, they haven't exercised as much as they wanted to or their energy isn't where they'd like it to be. They feel slower, heavier somehow, less enthusiastic about things that seemed effortless a few months ago. 

They speak as though they've fallen short. 

But I often wonder if what they're really experiencing is something far more ordinary and also magnificent. 

They're experiencing winter. 

Not simply the season outside their window, but the subtle biological shift that comes when the days become shorter, the light softens, and the body begins asking for something different. 

For many of my younger years, I responded to this in the same way many women do. I just kept going. It’s easy to interpret every signal to slow down as evidence that you need to become more disciplined. 

For a while now, I’ve seen it differently. 

What I stop doing every winter is expecting myself to be the same person I am in summer. 

Not because I've given up on my health or my goals. Quite the opposite. It's because I trust that there is wisdom in responding to the season you're actually in rather than one that’s passed or yet to come.  

Winter, at least in my experience, is not a season for relentless expansion. It is a season for replenishment. 

The word itself feels important. Not productivity, not optimisation, not improvement. Replenishment. The gradual restoration of what daily life can quietly take.  

It’s worth noting that sometimes we go through winter seasons outside of winter. Life has a way of presenting us with periods that call for the same qualities winter does: rest, reflection, patience and replenishment. A significant loss or enduring grief, a health challenge, a demanding chapter of work or caregiving, or simply a time when we feel stretched beyond our usual capacity can all create a need to slow down and restore. In those moments, the calendar becomes far less relevant than what your body, mind and heart are asking of you. Learning to recognise these personal winters, and responding to them with compassion rather than criticism, can be one of the most powerful ways to support your wellbeing. 

At this is the time of year I become less interested in intensity and more interested in foundations. I also pay attention to things no blood test can measure. Have I spent time with people with whom I’m comfy being my dorky self and who relax with me? Have I made space to think? To write with pen and paper? Am I consuming information all day long without giving myself a moment to absorb any of it? Have I become so busy managing life that I've stopped inhabiting it? 

The older I get, the even more convinced I become that wellbeing is created in the conversation between these worlds – the nutritional and the emotional. The biochemical and the deeply human. And perhaps these are all reasons why I find myself loving winter. Not because it is always easy, but because it offers a gentle invitation that many of us spend the rest of the year avoiding. 

To stop, to listen and to notice what needs restoring. As we move into July, I wonder what might change if you stopped asking yourself how to get more out of your body and started asking what your body might need more of from you. 

It's a different question entirely. And sometimes the answer is where healing and genuine restoration begin.