“Nothing is ever lost as time passes, it merely metamorphoses into something as wonderful or, in some cases, into something even better than before.” Carole Carlton
I love this quote; it perfectly describes the transformative nature of life and the seasons of change, both in ourselves and in the natural world.
As you may recall from my recent article, I embarked on the A Seasonal Year course by The Wild Academy in October last year, a course which helps small business owners work in alignment with the seasons. Folk and Field founders Eleanor Cheetham and Maddy Lawson are passionate about helping people get back to nature and showing them how to rewild, realign and reconnect. They do this through a programme of courses and before lockdown, a series of gatherings that connect like-minded folk, which will hopefully return in the future.
One of the guiding principles of the course is the Celtic Wheel of the Year, an ancient calendar guided by the transition of the sun throughout the seasons. It is an approach that teaches us how to live and work more slowly and seasonally.
As the natural world hibernated throughout the Winter, I went inwards, and immersed myself in reflecting on my business and the work of the past year. When Midwinter arrived from January to February, I started to move into the phase of ‘renewal’, being guided every step of the way by exercises and questions in each of the modules of the course. We focused on dreaming and creativity, considering the rituals and rhythms around our work and began to bring the ideas we had started to formulate, to life.
Daily walks are one of the rituals that I have incorporated into my working day and strolling along familiar paths in mid-February and into March, I noticed nature re-awakening. Buds were appearing on the branches of trees and snowdrops were in bloom, and it was at this point in the course that our attention turned to the topic of ‘emerging’.
Imbolc, the Wheel of the Year festival that marks the beginning of Spring, is celebrated on 1st February, and is a signal that we are in a period of transformation and flux. It is the festival associated with lambing season and is linked to fertility and conception. It’s the time when seeds begin to move from beneath the surface to above the ground – they are growing and becoming more visible. When we translate this into our businesses, it’s when the long period of Winter reflection shifts to embrace new life and growth. Having worked on the seeds of ideas for how I’d like to take my business forward, I then prepared to make these visible, and share with the world. Read more Emergence & Growth.