Music. This is Belonging, a podcast that explores being alive in the age of loneliness. I'm your host, Becca Piastrelli, a writer, mother, and community tender currently living on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day Marin County, California. In this show, we explore topics like rites of passage, cultivating meaningful community, seasonal and cyclical living, and what it means to be a good ancestor in these times.
I have thought-provoking conversations with friends, teachers, elders, and ancestral medicine keepers to help support you in bringing more meaning and connection to your life. I also pop in here and there to share updates and learnings from my own story, because we We were meant to do this together, cosmically holding hands as we walk the spiral of life. You can expect to be challenged by new or old ideas. Face your beliefs and what systems informed them.
Get curious and brave to tell the truth about the deeper, harder things and feel comforted in the knowing that you don't have to navigate it all alone. Music. Hello, beautiful beings. Welcome back to Belonging the Podcast. I am on my winter hibernation break. So I am recording this ahead of time because I wanted to share with you a re-release of my most downloaded episode ever, all about winter rituals and practices. And this is something that I know a lot of us crave, a deeper understanding of.
The winter season because for a lot of us, it's a struggle. I think maybe we crave the permission to rest. And then also we live in a culture and society that really doesn't know how to do that. Actually, like really rest. And then there's the whole thing with the Gregorian year ending, and then beginning again in the depths of winter. This is of course centering the Northern hemisphere.
The Gregorian year ends in the depths of summer for the Southern Hemisphere, which brings its own interesting energy because winter and summer are on opposite ends of the Wheel of the Year. And they both have that sort of like pause energy that a lot of us feel in summer. For me, it feels like a pause and savor. And for winter, it feels like a pause and hibernate and dream and rest and just be in that way. So you can listen to this episode whenever and I'm I am re-releasing it right now.
After all the winter holidays are through and we're in that funny in between time and maybe feeling that temptation to start strong, start hard. And I offer this episode as reflections on ways to look at winter in your body, in your micro climate this year with climate change always shifting the way the season looks. In fact, I just listened to this episode and. I'm recording this intro at the same time I recorded the episode last year in 2021.
And I'm reflecting on how the plants are doing where I live and it is different this year. The lilacs are not budding yet. The tomatoes definitely are down at this point and it feels, just like whatever happened last year, hasn't happened yet now. And so that is a practice. It may feel mundane, but often the most magical and sacred can be perceived as mundane and simple. But it's so important to notice the land, look up, look out, look away from your technology and see what's happening.
So I offer this episode to you and I'll be hibernating and I'll see you on the other side, which I've learned to not promise when that is. I just know spring always comes. So I'll see you when I see you, or I'll speak to you in your ears when I speak to you. So I'm going to be talking about winter and rituals around winter from my perspective in this moment in time and space.
And I'm recording this at the end of autumn and early onset of winter here in the northern hemisphere from where I sit on Coast Miwok land, Northern California at the end of Gregorian calendar year 2021. You may be listening at a different time. So winter is such a personal experience. And it's so related to where you live, your bio region. Winter in Texas is different from
winter in Maine, is different from winter in Northern Canada, is different from winter in in Costa Rica, but winter is a lasting always thing. And I think with particularly with. The pervasion of like Christian privilege and Christmasification of the world during. The December time and now before the December time, I think, you know, we've really been impressed upon that winter needs to look like a certain way, like the snowy village.
Literally right before I came here, I went to this local nursery in the town where I live that in in order to like... Cover cashflow in the winter, they create a Christmas village in the area where they usually stock their pots and pottery. It's just ornaments and holiday villages and old fashioned Santas and trains. It's very cute and sweet. I did not bring a little toddler there for fear of crushing all the ornaments.
I was looking at the Christmas village vignettes and thinking like, wow, it's all kind of looking like one part of the world, right? It's looking like a certain experience of winter and this whole idea of a white Christmas. And I'm not going to go too far down that path of things I've talked in the past around how I've shifted around particularly the
holidays in the winter. I've shared that in past episodes, but I am very aware that winter is a personal thing and looks different based on where you live and isn't always like a Bavarian ski hut or like a cabin in an evergreen wood. And where I live, it never snows rarely. And when the rains come, which they did in late October. The growing season begins as far as like the native
grasses and plants and all of that. So the green has come back to the earth here and all the plants are starting to bud. My lilac is budding and my elder is budding. And interesting, I said my, the lilac and elder that I planted are budding. And yeah, there are certain plants in my garden that are unable to grow yet, like the tomatoes are all worn and I had to cut back the hydrangea. But the greens are growing strong.
And that has to do with, you know, the microclimate here and the water level and all of that. So what is wintering in the land that you live? That you are calling home where you dwell. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What do you notice? Let me like pop our heads away from screens and outside of doors and temperature controlled areas. Like what is the winter experience on the land? That is my first question to us all.
And then my second question to us all is what is your experience of winter energetically in your body. And I find there's like two camps. There are folks who really need to hibernate. I am one of these people really need to hibernate, slow down, do less, sleep more, move slow in the winter. There's a real stagnation of energy and it goes down to the roots just like the trees, like the sap moves downwards. It's root season at the end of autumn. And then there's like a
stillness, right? There's a stillness that I crave. And I'm very attuned to perhaps what winter looked like for my ancestral people, the ones who lived by the ways of the land, not in the land I live on. So this is where I am sort of drawn to the Bavarian ski huts and the wintry cabins and pine forests.
And particularly to the ways my ancestors who lived agrarian ways or hunter-gatherer ways would have on the lands of old Europe would have really needed the break that winter gave, that winter gives. Where the harvest is pulled and there's that mad dash at the end of autumn to, you know, to cut wood, enough wood for fire, to pull in the harvest before the frost comes, to preserve the harvest,
for the months to come, because there was a real desperation to make it through the long winter until spring comes again to literally survive. That resonates for me. And then there's the other camp of people who in winter, their creativity really comes alive. There's something about the permission of the slowerness of winter or maybe the temperature or often the light, the lack of light. The sunlight
is less available. The more north you get, the less available it is during the day to a way that really focuses people in. Can focus ones in, not me, but can focus people in of like, oh, that's when I get most of my writing done or when I'm reading or my organizing projects, I feel a real permission to be creative in the turning inwards. I guess there are ways in which I do feel that. I've been very excited about organizing projects in my house lately. And.
Maybe that's the permission to not be so outward. But you know, you know how your energy feels in the winter and you know what it looks like, the land around you. I like to watch my cats. My cats like to sleep. They go from sleeping outdoors to sleeping indoors, and they sleep longer. I'm like, yeah, that's attunement right there to the wintering ways. So something that resonates for me.
With wintering is that it's the dream time. This is very much based in my ancestral research of my people who are from these lands of old Europe, modern day British Isles, Scotland,
Wales, Ireland, France, Germany, the Nordic lands of really this is an indigenous way and it goes beyond just old Europe. I just want to make sure I'm being very clear about the ancestral traditions I'm speaking from, that in this time of less light and resting and being indoors, because it's presumably cold and harsh outside, it's a time to sleep and it's a time to dream. It's a time to storytell both waking and sleeping.
So this dream time is very resonant for me because the way I was taught is it reframes the idea that life begins at birth and that spring is the beginning time. I really love how the Celtic which way is that the new year, the year completes at the end at the first frost or end of October or Samhain, Halloween. And that's like the death time. And that goes. Into a period of the void, the fertile void, before the seeds can be planted. And that the dream.
Comes before the seed is embodied until it's physically real in your hand before it goes into the earth. And that resonates with me on so many levels, particularly around the whole January, needing to make goals and like hit the gym and just like get, get it going and how that's just so hard for so many of us and so many of us get sick and or just like from a dreamy space make
all these lofty goals and then you know come April we're like wait what no and so to really take space in the winter however long winter feels for you even if it's not like the calendar says it's now this season like however long winter feels for you to be in the dream so I am asked about my rituals for winter and I have to say that.
I'm starting with the dreaming because I am in a place in my life right now where I'm rebuilding my rituals from scratch. As I try to figure out like how much time I have for myself and what works with the flow of my new life with a child and less capacity and all those things, it really feels like life anew. And so as I enter into winter, the winter season, my first step is
reminding myself that I did the season of rest and dream time. So in that way, the first ritual is doing less. First ritual is allowing for wandering daydreams. The first practice is, is, yeah, writing down my dreams. Do you have a dream journal? I highly recommend it. My dream teachers include Liz Millie-Reilly. And grandmother Sarah McLean Bicknell, both of whom really encourage having a journal next to your, on your bedside table. And when you wake up from a dream, immediately recording it.
Like, it can be messy, but just write everything down. Or if you're like me, you can grab your phone and turn on the voice memo app and just record it. But beware, if you'll listen to it later, I'd be like, whoa, what am I saying? And you can write it down later. I've done both. But yeah, dreams are the original sources of divination and so many ancestral cultures, including our own. The dreams of the winter time were omens for the rest of the year. So that's the first ritual.
The second ritual is to be with fire or flame. And this comes so naturally to us in these times that are darker in the wintertime. Through wanting to have a fire, wanting to light candles. I think it has to do with our obsession with lights up on trees and on houses. And there's so much medicine in light in the dark.
And that is really truly what I remind myself when I get a little frustrated with the madness of winter holidays is to remember the origin here is being the light in the dark. The winter solstice, the darkest time of the year for that hemisphere of reminding ourselves that light returns because the day after the darkest year the light starts growing. And so I don't know
if you're like me, but I love me, a wood burning fire outside or inside. And I know not all of us can have that anymore in these times. I'm in fire country, so I understand. But. Even the light of a candle can unspell this myth of loneliness, that we are alone and that it can be a close companion.
I recall several years back in another embodiment, an iteration of myself, another lifetime where I had to practice every morning of lighting a candle to begin my day instead of scrolling my phone because I realized the scroll not only was an addiction but it was a way to feel connection. So how could I be with the light of a candle, the movement of a flame to feel connection in a time?
I mean, I don't know about you, but when it's darker, I feel like I can see less and feel less. I get the fear, right? The fear that darkness brings and the company of a flame. Thinking about the hearth always being lit in our ancestral homes and how supportive that is. And then there is the ritual of evergreen magic. This is the origin of bringing a whole ass tree into your home. Is seeing in the dead of winter in a place where perhaps it snowed or froze.
That the evergreen trees like pine or fir or redwood still lived green evergreen a sign of life everlasting a real winter depression ally that even if it feels bleak and like is life going to return is spring going to come is the frost going to melt that the evergreens are evergreen and ever alive. In my research I came across some old lore, some evergreen lore. There's lots of evergreen lore for the winter. I highly recommend you go down that rabbit hole based in Scotland,
which is one of my ancestral homelands. They would wipe a child's face with a pine bow to wipe away worries and nightmares. And I thought, that's pretty cool to brush a pine bow upon your face, your body, even like wiping down your body to wipe away worries and nightmares. And then there's the fertility symbol of a pine cone, the seed of new life, when one pine cone can become an ancient old tree. And then I know that I have worked with pine essence to ease loneliness and bring deep,
peace. I worked with that with my former teacher, Liz Millierelli, also called Sister Spinster. And. And if you haven't tried making essence of a plant. Or any sort of living being, I highly recommend it. I'm not going to give you the how-to here, but I suggest doing your research of how to make an essence. It's a lot of energy medicine that you can do. that's a part of you.
To work with the pine, particularly if you find yourself feeling seasonal affective disorder, tending towards depression in the winter times, resonate with everything I say around loneliness and looking for a deeper sense of peace, maybe create a pine essence. And then there's all the kitchen magic that comes with this time of year. I mean, what are most of us wanting to do, right? Like cook, bake. I know I get really into baking and I get really into making soups and stews.
And I remind myself that in the colder times when we didn't have temperature controlled homes and easily draw ourselves baths, hot showers. It was the warmth of a broth and the fattiness of the meat in it that kept us alive, us as humans. And so there's just so many rituals you can do through cooking and making and baking and rolling of the bread dough and sprinkling of the spices and the drinking of the vinegars. Vinegar is a really interesting kitchen magic, herbal remedy.
I don't know if you're familiar with fire cider. This idea of working with a vinegar, like an apple cider vinegar. Apple, the last sweet fruit in many of my ancestral lands can be made into so many things and really helpful with digestion. But. Firesider is putting pungent aromatic and antimicrobial foods, plants like. Ginger and garlic and pepper and rosemary. There's so many, there's so many recipes for making firesider, but really what you have on hand, letting it.
Infuse into the vinegar and drinking that vinegar throughout the winter in order to keep colds away, keep sickness away. There's a lot of. Ancestral folk medicine and practices around staying healthy, staying well in the winter time that I think really resonates with us to this day because we still are working to stay healthy and
well, particularly in these times, but definitely when it gets colder outside and darker. And then there is sauna magic or bathing magic or steam magic working with water in the winter. Another. Rabbit hole you can go down is Finnish sauna culture and just the beautiful ancestral history of. Being in a sauna and the healing magic and the devotion to building these saunas that last to this day in many Nordic lands including Finland. I remember Mila Prince, otherwise known as the
woman who married the bear or a fireweed and nettle or North Sea apothecary, all amazing places to find her. I took a class with her at the in-person version of Spirit Weavers where she just shared. How important the sauna is to her people, especially when winter is long and cold. And it was often the cleanest place in the house. It was like where people would gather to eat or sleep or get and even like give birth. And I thought that, oh,
that really makes sense. It's the place where the fire is always lit and then creating steam from pouring rock over the stones above it. And I think how can we incorporate this? If you can't get to a sauna, if you can, that's great. But how can you incorporate this is just to bring more reverence and understanding about a hot bath or a hot shower or a steam shower, maybe bringing in cut eucalyptus or essential oil or something, a plant that has those.
Protective uplifting aromatic qualities to bring into your experience of being a modern person but drawing upon ancient ways. I mean saunas have been around for thousands of years. The other thing I find myself doing in the winter is obsessively tracking the sun. And I used to think that was like. An interesting way of me not being fully present and joyful with like the darkness and just being like the light is growing, the light is growing. And I find all year I'm tracking the sun,
which is a very ancestral way of being. It's really monitoring. I live on a north facing hill. And so. In the second like darker half of the year, I like really don't get a lot of sun and it really impacts me. And I have to like walk down the hill to get to the patch of sun. And. And there's a small sliver that like my cats and I are fighting to get on our faces at eight in the morning until summer comes and then it's glorious.
And I think tracking the sunrise and the sunset and tracking where the light hits and making sure you get that light on your face, that is a beautiful ritual and practice we can do. Even just noticing how the way the sun hits in the morning that moves over time.
And I'm recording this before solstice. So it's important for me because I can get into a place of like fear and contraction around, oh, it's getting darker. And I remember I used to have really horrible seasonal affect disorder in college. And I think a lot of that was because I was fighting it. And so how can I, I mean, it is true that the, you know, the wheel always turns and the winter always comes, but what comes after that is spring once more.
And so if I can be with the sun and watching, just as I'm with the phases of the moon at all times, to be with where the sun hits and how it's going. To even be witness to its death and rebirth over the 24 hours of the solstice. It brings a deeper reverence and understanding that our ancestors had around the tender fragile time that winter is. And to remember that our bodies are a reflection of that too, as the earth is too.
It feels important and I'm done thinking I'm crazy for doing it. And I think the final ritual that's coming to mind that seems natural for so many of us is reflection and intention setting. I know we're all like trying to get the best planner right now, right? We're trying to reflect on our goals for the year, maybe not all of us, but you know, what went well, what didn't go well, or maybe we're like, oh, just forget it and try again. And then just the real desire,
urge to begin again, the permission that the beginning gives us. I think that's important and I also highly discourage folks from getting so into planning in the winter because I believe energetically like things just shift once winter like eases. But I think intention setting from the dreams, right? Being in the dream space, being able to receive information from dreams or walks or.
Or reading books or journaling or staring out the window as the sun rises or sets are all beautiful things and to set intentions for feelings, experiences. Yeah, reflecting an intention setting, that feels like a very natural practice that so many of us have kept and are in in this time of year of winter and how can we make it easeful?
How can we make it beautiful and exciting and not, I don't know, the way I perceive it is like kind of neurotic and aggressive, which isn't really the medicine of winter. Medicine of winter is really receptive and slower energy. So with that, I am completing this little season of. You know what, it wasn't that little to me. It took a lot of devotion and was not little. Took my time and my labor and my energy and my, all of it.
So I'm gonna rephrase and say, with that we are closing, completing this season of the Belonging Podcast as I head into my winter den. And complete a lot of big things from this harvest this time of year, mostly for me, my book, Root and Ritual. And so really giving my space, because I know from so many turns of the wheel what it is that I need.
And it is time to hibernate, be a part of winter magic with my daughter, who's really starting to come alive with that and establish new traditions and new rituals for our family. And take time to reflect, time to celebrate myself, time to rest my body as much as I can, brush myself with a pine bow, record my dreams when I can, sit and look at a flame, eat lots of stews, Maybe wassail, singing to the trees, drinking my own wassail and watching the sun.
So that's what I'll be doing. And I'll be back. I don't know when. I know better than to say when, but I'll be back when I feel moved, when I feel ready. and we'll have the next season of belonging in the next iteration, the next way that comes through. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for listening, thank you for witnessing. It's wild that I can't see you, that I don't even know all your names, but I certainly feel you and appreciate you.
And I wish you a good restful winter or if you're in the Southern hemisphere, a really invigorating sweet summer. Music. Thank you so much for joining me. In a time when our attention is being pulled in so many different directions, it means a lot that you took time out of your day to spend it with me and in these important conversations. For show notes and links and more information about my guests,
you can head to belongingpodcast.com. And if you'd like to hear more from me and get access to my free newsletter called Slow and Seasonal. You can head to becappiastrelli.com slash subscribe.