Living in Harmony with the Seasons

[00:17] Greer: 
Hi, this is Greer, your host for Femammal, the podcast that holds space for women to explore what it means to live well in our bodies and celebrates moving through this world as female mammals. Today's guest is Jessica Mannen Kimmet, who is a former classmate of mine from the Master of Divinity program at the University of Notre Dame. After a decade of work in liturgy and college campus ministry, she left full time work to be at home with her three young sons. But she continues to work as a freelance writer and liturgical musician. She especially loves to write about the intersections of faith, nature, and women's embodied experiences. In this conversation, she shares insights into how connecting with the seasons can cultivate greater mindfulness, connecting us more deeply to our bodies. She describes some of the practices she uses to cultivate attentiveness to the seasons and the ways that those practices nurture her physical and mental health. So one of the pillars of this podcast is exploring how we can live well in our bodies by acknowledging and meeting our needs as female mammals. But I'm actually wondering if we could start with your hobby of birding. What have you learned about the way that birds adjust to each season that informs your own rhythms?

[01:52] Jessica: 
Yeah, so I started birding in 2018 when my oldest was not quite two. So I kind of came to the hobby in a season of life where I don't have the time to commit to it like a lot of enthusiastic younger people do. But I have loved being a beginner at something and being able to watch birds just wherever I am. It was one of these things where I was like once I started opening my eyes and noticing they were everywhere and had been there all along, it turns out, and you're right that they have this seasonality they made me really start to notice not just the main seasons, but kind of all these little mini transitions within the seasons. And they do, like you're saying, they adjust in all sorts of ways. We have birds where I live in Indiana that stay here through the winter. We have birds that migrate south, of course. We even have some birds for whom northern Indiana is their south for the winter. They breed way up in boreal forests and they come down here. We are south for them, which was sort of a surprising delight for me to discover that we don't just see birds go south for the winter from here. We also have birds come south for the winter for here. And yeah, noticing just all these little changes has kind of helped me more deeply settle into the rhythm of the seasons myself. I kind of look forward to all these littler changes that I've started to notice. And yeah, it's just been a really eye opening thing and helped me to kind of get more out of each season.

[03:36] Greer: 
Yes, almost sounds like the birds themselves are signaling to you where you're at in our trip around the sun.

[03:43] Jessica: 
Yes, the birds and then the things that go along with the birds, too. So the different flowers that they eat, which I've gotten a lot more into gardening in the last couple of years with the pandemic, and the garden does the same thing, where it has all these little mini seasons and the birds are tied up in that. I've planted a lot of my flowers and plants for the birds to provide berries, and all the cone flowers that give them seeds in the fall, and all these sorts of things. So it's been neat to see all these different markers where when you start paying attention and learn what to look for, you're right that it marks that trip in all sorts of ways.

[04:28] Greer: 
And I guess a lot of us who live in the northern hemisphere mostly think of the four seasons. And people who live in other places maybe have more of a two season system or a wet season dry season system. But you were the first person I heard of introducing me to the concept of micro seasons and you sort of alluded to that. Can you explain a little bit more about that idea and how we notice it?

[04:55] Jessica: 
Yeah, I think I coined that term. I don't think I got it from somewhere else. And if I did, I apologize to whoever I'm accidentally stealing it from. But it is just this sense that I started noticing it. Because for a long time I've said that late summer is my favorite season. Not summer and not quite fall, but this season, where you still have long days, you can still go to the beach, but you wake up in the morning and it's a little cool. And drinking your tea is really pleasant. And all these there's sort of this transitional season that I have been noticing for a long time. There are certain flowers that bloom in late summer that I just love, including Chickery, which is I've recently learned is just an invasive species that I probably shouldn't love as much as I do. But it is the best color in the world. So I love it. I love seeing it along the roadsides. So that was my first kind of like micro season or mini season. And then when I started birding, I started noticing all these things like Red Wing Blackbirds started singing again in mid February, and I was like, oh, I know enough to know that those are a sign of spring and that good birders know that Red Wing blackbirds mean spring is here and on its way. But it didn't feel like spring yet. It was still dark, it was still cold. But hearing that particular call started to mean spring is maybe not quite here, but almost here. So lots of these transitions and sort of liminal moments that were revealed when I started paying more attention to the natural world.

[06:28] Greer: 
That's lovely, because I'm thinking back to how, especially during the pandemic, a lot of us felt very unmoored from time. So many of the rituals we rely on that are socially constructed were not present for us. But these rituals don't go away, of the red wing blackbird in February or sweet corn in late July, early August.

[06:50] Jessica: 
Those moments, yes, absolutely.

[06:55] Greer: 
So maybe in broad strokes, what would you say are some of the ways that the seasons influence our energy levels, our emotions, and maybe even our social personality?

[07:07] Jessica: 
Yeah, as someone who lives in a four season climate, I am definitely someone who notices that winter is a time when I tend to have lower energy, tend to be a little more introspective. I have my best energy in fall, probably. There's a Thomas Merton quote about October being a fine and dangerous season in America because you just feel like you can do anything. And I really resonate with that. Summer brings a certain energy, but it's also tiring if it's hot where you are. I am tired at the end of the day, and fall just feels like I can do anything. And then spring is another time of kind of renewal, of course, and transitioning back outside from a much more indoor season. I, like a lot of people, tend to be a little happier when there's more sunlight in my life. So that's another piece of it. A lot of people are affected, have their mood affected by the seasons to some extent. But I've tried to not let that be kind of defining of the season and tried to find ways to embrace even the darkest, deepest days of winter with lots of coziness and movie nights, and you have to be inside more. So what makes that fun and joyful for us and trying to invite friends into it, which, of course, has been hard these last couple of years. And I have three young children, so someone always has a sniffle, and then you can't see anyone in our current situation, but just trying to kind of embrace all of the goodness that each of these seasons has because all of them really do have a lot of good stuff to find.

[09:01] Greer: 
Yeah, I love that idea of looking for what's uniquely good in that moment as we make our trip around the sun. Would you say that we have maybe different needs with different seasons or maybe simply that we have to meet those needs differently in different seasons? And what might that look like?

[09:21] Jessica: 
Well, with that question, I do notice kind of a more old fashioned rhythm of kind of harvesting when there's stuff to harvest and then preserving what you can so that you are able to eat through the winter. Obviously, I don't want to dis grocery stores because they are a great gift, but they have kind of disrupted this seasonality of how and where we get our food. So even just those needs, just our food needs you kind of see that there is this kind of natural rhythm of a time of plenty and then a time of scarcity but we can kind of prepare for that scarcity when things are good. So I think that's a long way of saying yes, I think we do have different needs with different seasons. I certainly find I want to be outside the most in the spring and the fall. I like to be outside some in the summer but the heat can get to me depending on the day. And then in the winter I find myself being a little bit more introspective and wanting to read and to write and to have kind of more time alone which my children don't afford me very often. But yeah, I certainly find that I operate best when I am living a little bit differently in these different seasons.

[10:45] Greer: 
So you were just speaking to how you notice some different inclinations in yourself during different seasons and that idea of maybe honoring those inclinations, it confronts the sort of relentless rhythm that we get sucked into sometimes, I think. And I'm wondering when you are able to sort of step back from that relentless rhythm and instead embrace those inclinations that you're experiencing during different seasons, what does that really do for your physical health, for your mental health, for your own sense of well being?

[11:27] Jessica: 
Yeah, it certainly helps those things but sometimes there's a temptation for me because I want to spend all this time tending to the seasons but there are just the demands of daily life and I have as a mom of small children, those demands don't really slow down or stop with the seasons. I have to keep feeding my children many many times a day regardless of what the weather is doing outside. So even when I would love to be just cozy with a book or whatever can't really stop. And some of my own needs I need to be attentive to as well. I'm really horribly bad at feeding myself when I'm caught up in something else and I'm trying to get better at just kind of the basic self care task of putting actual food and nutrients in my body at regular intervals throughout the day. I don't know why it is that I tend to forget that but I do need to tending to also movement for my body and finding ways to move that feel good and kind of help to strengthen and relax. And whatever it is that my muscles need on any given day, trying to tend to those as well. When on winter days I would really rather not. I'd really rather just eat comfort food and curl up and watch a movie or whatever it is. So these seasons do have kind of their dark side too where some of these inclinations could draw us away from these things that we do need to do. But they do, like you're saying, kind of also provide a reprieve to the relentlessness of our fast paced lives because there is always something different coming. And sometimes I feel like I almost make my life busier by trying to tend to all these seasons and trying to get to all the good stuff in every season. But I do find that tending to that, paying attention to it, trying to make it part of my life, does sort of provide just changes and things to look forward to all the time, which absolutely have an impact on my mental health.

[13:37] Greer: 
That's great. What are some of those concrete ways that you tune in with the seasons and it could look different years or different times of the year?

[13:47] Jessica: 
Yeah, it definitely does look different, different years partly because as females we have these other seasons in our lives. And I'm in a season of kind of growing my family, which brings within it its micro seasons of pregnancy and postpartum and breastfeeding and those all bring their own challenges as well. So those are often reasons that I'm not living fully in tune with the seasons of the Earth and the year. But we're living all these different sorts of seasons all the time and kind of balancing all of the needs of all of them. But that being said, I'm trying to make traditions out of picking certain produce. So my kids and I were recording this in August regardless of when it airs, and my kids and I just went blueberry picking a couple of weeks ago and made jam. We will go apple picking in another month and we will make our applesauce for the year and the things that we eat. We planted 100 strawberry plants last year and this year we had an amazing strawberry season where every morning we went out and picked a good half quart of strawberries and we made all sorts of treats and smoothies and just really made strawberries were a big part of our diet for the whole month of June. So the things that we eat kind of change throughout the year. There's also my professional background is in Catholic liturgy and the liturgical year gives us another set of seasons to honor. So seasons like Advent and Lent and Christmas and Easter and then the feast days. So celebrating all of the feast days for the saints that our kids are named after and kind of creating new traditions around that, trying to also honor the seasons of the year and how we celebrate that. So choosing menus and choosing ways to celebrate that kind of make sense with what's going on in the natural world and kind of trying to put all these things in sync has been a really fun kind of ongoing project.

[15:55] Greer: 
I love that point that you made about the seasons and microseasons simply of a woman's lifetime. Yes, I read some great book about sort of mapping that same seasonality across just the month of a menstrual cycle. And that really helped me understand that sense of ebbing and flowing energy that I get just across the four weeks of a month.

[16:23] Jessica: 
Yeah, absolutely. It sort of echoes those seasons of a year where there's seasons of barrenness and seasons of fruitfulness and it's kind of this beautiful thing. And I do wonder if maybe I don't like to make broad, sweeping generalizations about women because we are all individual people, but maybe there's something to that where we are a little more inclined to kind of pay attention to the seasons of the year because of the way we live seasons in our bodies.

[16:57] Greer: 
Yeah, that resonates for me, for sure. Is there any specific season that you really struggle with and how have you made better peace with that season over time?

[17:09] Jessica: 
I don't know that I have one anymore that's really a struggle. Like a lot of people, late winter kind of that late January, early February where it's still cold and the days are still pretty short and all the Christmas lights are down, so that kind of first exciting thrill of early winter is a little bit gone. But that's exactly the season when I start seeing red Wing Blackbirds and there is this little thrill of hope even if it doesn't feel like spring in some of the classic ways yet. The temperature isn't quite there and the snow is still present, but you start to see and hear. They have this really particular little call, which I will not subject you to my rendition of it because it is not pleasant, but it grabs your attention. And when you know what it is and you know what it means in terms of the seasons, it sort of stirs this little bit of hope. So one of the ways I've tried to make peace with that late winter is getting outside even when I don't totally want to and paying attention to what's going on because there are these little signs of hope all the time. It's a lot of work to get small children outside. There's seven pieces of snow gear per person so for me and three kids you can do the math and I never know where all the little mittens are. So a lot of times it's easier to just not do it. But I find that when I do, I am never sorry.

[18:40] Greer: 
Yeah, I read such a great insight sometime this past winter about how winter feels like the barren season but actually all the work is sort of going on during winter because then when you see the flowering trees bud out suddenly over the course of just a few days well, that didn't happen in a few days. It was actually happening slowly throughout the winter.

[19:06] Jessica: 
That's a great point. I have planted quite a few perennials in my yard and my gardens in the last couple of years and perennials kind of take three years to get established. And so a lot of mine are in year two right now, and that difference between year one and year two is huge. And I hear that year three is supposed to be even better. But you're right that all that work happened over the winter and the roots sort of stored that energy and kept growing. And then they were able to put forth this bigger, more beautiful plant with beautiful flowers in a lot of cases that are just really shining now. So you're right that there's a lot of hidden life where there doesn't seem to be.

[19:47] Greer: 
And I love that insight where the seasons aren't just a circle that's repeating itself, but it's more like maybe a spiral where it gains momentum. And it's making me think of the kind of momentum of our own personal journeys throughout time, where we're not just completing that same circle again, we're taking it to a new level every time. And I'm wondering how kind of that practice of attentiveness to seasons helps you develop your own sense of personal narrative and paying attention to change and personal growth over time.

[20:22] Jessica: 
Yeah, that's a great point that we are circling through these seasons, but hopefully we're spiraling through them and kind of spiraling upward. My hope, of course, is that every year I'm taking on new things and learning new things and growing in wisdom. And it is fascinating to compare one year to the next. What's different about this year? What have I planted in my garden that's new compared to last year? As my children grow, they're in a season of rapid growth and my family looks pretty different from year to year. So kind of noticing like, oh, this child wasn't really understanding what was going on last year. And this year they are talking about, I'm thinking specifically of raising butterflies, which is something I'm doing on my kitchen counter right now and something that we've kind of taken on as a little tradition in late summer. So noticing my three year old who last year wasn't really into it, but this year he's going and checking on them every day and seeing what they're up to and he knows what's coming next and is really looking forward to the chrysalis. Yeah, all these things just kind of you add on these layers as you go through the seasons over and over again and you take things on and you also shed some things that maybe seemed important and you realize they aren't so much anymore. So just hopefully becoming a fuller and better version of ourselves as we traverse this same path year after year.

[21:54] Greer: 
And I know something in your background is that you currently live in the Midwest but you grew up in the Northwest and those are very different in terms of climate and seasons. And I'm wondering how you've experienced those differences in seasonality between those regional differences and what kind of adjustment that was for you.

[22:17] Jessica: 
Yeah. So I moved to the Midwest when I started college, which was when I was 18. I'm now 35. So quickly approaching half my life in the Midwest. And I think it's actually because I grew up somewhere else that I sort of notice and appreciate these seasons so deeply, because in the Northwest, we don't have as strong of a four season system. Things are kind of wet for most of the fall and winter and spring, and then they're warm and dry in the summer. We only would get snow in the Northwest maybe once or twice a year. School would get called off because we didn't have as many snow plows, but you didn't get the same deep snow that you can kind of build with and play in. And there are lots of other little seasonal experiences that you see in children's books and on shows, and they're sort of like these standard childhood experiences, and it turns out those are pretty based on the Midwest. So things like fireflies I didn't have growing up, and now I love looking for the fireflies in June, and it's still a pretty magical thing for me since I didn't grow up with them. So I think that because there's sort of this stronger four season system here, and because I didn't grow up with it, I think I'm maybe able to appreciate it a little bit more than if it had just been kind of a given for my whole life. And, yeah, I love experiencing all these things. Maple syrup tapping is another thing we don't have in the Northwest, but we do in the Midwest. And that's something one of our county parks near where I live does a big maple syrup event every March, and we have loved going to that and kind of getting local maple syrup and making that kind of part of our traditions as well. So lots of these things that because I've made that transition between regions, I notice it differently. It did take me time to kind of come to appreciate the beauty of the Midwest because it's not the same striking mountains and FIR trees, but the seasons are a big part of what I really appreciate about this part of the country and where I live now. I also noticed that the northwest is packed with evergreens, so winter is still pretty green. It gets gray. There's a lot of rain, but it's not as gray as when there are no leaves on the trees. So my first winter here in the Midwest, I remember thinking to myself, gosh, this is why people get sad in the winter. Like, how is it so much more gray here? When I came from a place where it's raining all through this season, and I finally realized it was because there weren't those evergreens to kind of stabilize the environment a little bit, and that was a little bit of a loss. And I mourned that a little bit, but I have also come to appreciate those bigger differences in seasons make for a really meaningful year for me.

[25:18] Greer: 
That's really interesting. I also moved regions, so I grew up where you live now, and now I live in the south. And so I growing up, thought that winter made me sad because it was so brutally cold and so much snow and very hard to get out. And then I moved to Kentucky and it's like, well, there's not very much snow and it's almost never brutally cold, but now I'm really tuned into, oh, winter is about, there's very little light.

[25:51] Jessica: 
Yes.

[25:51] Greer: 
And that's hard.

[25:52] Jessica: 
Yes. My oldest, I'm now mostly a stay at home mom and do a little bit of freelance work on the side. But when my oldest was born, I was still working full time. And he was just telling me about how at his first school, which was the daycare he went to for his first two and a half years, how I used to pick him up when it was nighttime, and I was like, you're right. And I was so surprised that he had a memory of that. But in the winter, when I would leave work at five, it would be dark outside and it felt like night to his little eyes, and he's about to start kindergarten. So he was like, mom, am I going to school all day? And I said, Well, I pick you up at three, so you still have a few hours before dinner and bed and all that. And he said, oh, good, because I thought it was going to be like my first school where you didn't pick me up till it was dark. And I just thought that was so funny that he had this little memory of kind of being away from his family all the way into nighttime, and that was, of course, a winter memory when it was dark at 05:00. But yeah, that really does have an effect on us starting very young, turns out. Yeah.

[27:00] Greer: 
And I think that just demonstrates even from our earliest years, the seasons and their rhythms are really potent, and they're potent in how we form memories and how we have a sense of time. And that's just fascinating.

[27:17] Jessica: 
Yeah, absolutely.

[27:19] Greer: 
Well, I was just thinking, too, like, the little bouts of seasonal affective disorder that I get some winters and how I've come to just sort of name it very directly when people will kind of ask like, oh, why aren't you coming to this or that event more regularly? And I'll say, Well, I just have a really hard time leaving my house once it's dark. So if it's dark at six, you're probably not going to see me at an event that doesn't start until 7:30.

[27:44] Jessica: 
Right. Yes. It is very hard to get back out when those things are going on.

[27:52] Greer: 
So it can be easy to feel like the seasons are something that are external to us and something that we just have to deal with. And I think even your son's memory kind of demonstrate that it can be something that feels external, but actually, we internalize the seasons very deeply. So I'm wondering how can that sort of more active internalization of the natural rhythm of the seasons help us to process our experiences and maybe even recharge over the long haul?

[28:28] Jessica: 
Yeah, I think your question is about the natural world more broadly, where we do have this tendency to see it as something separate from us and that includes the seasons, but is not limited to them. But we're taking part in this world, and we're part of the ecosystem in all sorts of different ways. And I think that just trying to sort of understand ourselves as not opposed to nature and not this separate thing from it. That's something that's handed down to us by a long history of our ancestors who've really had to struggle against nature just to survive. So I know where it comes from. There's this deep human instinct to kind of protect ourselves and insulate ourselves from the natural world because for most of human history, it was a big and scary and cruel kind of place, but kind of trying to return to a sense of being part of all that's going on around us. And these seasons aren't just something that we have to endure, but they're something that for me, really, my life makes so much more sense when I'm trying to pay attention to all of these rhythms and make them part of my life in ways that make sense for me and that's going to be different for everyone. The specific things that I do to sort of live with the seasons are not going to be the same in every household, and they're not going to be the same at every stage of life. And some of these things, like raising butterflies on my counter, I'll probably only do when my kids are small. And again, there are those bigger seasons within our lives that we're living through as well. And I don't really see myself as a 60 year old raising butterflies. It's mostly an educational exercise, but it is something that goes along with these seasons. So, yeah, it just for me, has been a really meaningful and powerful thing to pay attention. That's the heart of it all, is paying attention to what's going on outside of our window. Whether we have a national park in our backyard or whether we're just working with an apartment window or whatever it is, just paying attention to what's going on out there has really been a powerful thing for me in terms of making this life kind of a more meaningful thing.

[30:51] Greer: 
That's beautiful. Do you have any last advice on how we can be better at listening to our bodies throughout the seasons?

[31:00] Jessica: 
I do think that's part of what I just said is: paying attention kind of outside our bodies as well. So noticing what's going on, and we might not always feel in sync with it. And that's okay, too, because we're not little robots marching through the seasons. We are human persons with all sorts of complex emotional and mental things going on, of course, but just kind of just paying attention to. And I've noticed that as I've gotten better at paying attention to what's outside my window, I also get better at paying attention to what's going on inside myself. And with practice and experience, I'm getting better at tending to my own needs on any given day. My needs changed drastically when I had children, and I was kind of caught off guard by some of the ways my needs were suddenly going unfulfilled. And some of that was because the externals of my life had changed, and some of that was because the internals and what I actually needed had changed in ways I wasn't totally ready for. So I am learning with experience and time to do better, and I've also learned to just be more gentle with myself as I continue to learn all of this. And maybe that's my last piece of advice is to just go gently with yourself, because none of this is like a moral mandate. It is something that I find meaningful and something that enriches my life and that of my family, but it's not something that has to happen all at once, and it's not something that is an all or nothing proposition. You can do this in whatever little way makes sense to you in your life, and it can still be a really beautiful thing.

[32:47] Greer: 
Thank you. You make me want to raise butterflies on my countertop and listen to Red Wing Blackbirds, and I don't know what they sound like, so I'm going to have to look that up.

[32:55] Jessica: 
Yeah. Well, thank you.

[33:02] Greer: 
If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at femammalpodcast@gmail.com that's femammalpodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow this podcast on Facebook. Just search for Femammal Podcast and you will find a community of people who are interested in living well in our bodies. And of course, I'd love for you to rate this podcast and leave a review wherever you download your podcasts. Until next time, be well.