One Year Later: Wintering, Reimagined

Last year at this time, I had just landed in Florida, disoriented and exhausted, still carrying the weight of packing up a life, selling a home, and walking away from a chapter that no longer fit. I called it “wintering,” even though I’d traded New Hampshire snow for Florida sun. It was a quiet, unsettling season. It was one of hibernation, healing, and holding my breath while the outside world (and my inside world) rearranged itself around me.

A year later, the landscape looks nothing like it did then. And neither do I.

What a difference a year makes.
Last November, I was sleeping in my dad’s guest room, still shaking off the reality of the move, tending to my 88-year-old father, and trying to make sense of an election season that left me gutted. I was reading books about rest because rest was the only thing I was capable of. I was writing because it was the only place my truth had somewhere to land. I was unsure, untethered, and strangely hopeful. I felt the quiet kind of hope you only feel when everything familiar has been stripped away but maintain faith  that it will all work out.

But this year? This year has been about rebuilding. Re-entering. Re-imagining. Reclaiming.

The year I learned what “wintering” really means.
I thought wintering was retreating. Pausing. Cocooning. It turns out wintering has been:

• learning how to navigate my father’s decline, hospitalizations, rehab, and eventual move to assisted living,
• stepping into the full-time caregiving role with both tenderness and boundaries,
• letting go of relationships that once felt like forever, including deep, soul-level connections I needed to step back from while taking the lessons I learned with me,
• starting and stopping projects until the right ones rose to the surface,
• grieving the parts of myself and my life I left behind,
• rediscovering the parts I thought were gone,
• celebrating the new parts of myself I never noticed,
• investing a significant amount of money in my personal and professional growth,
• ticking a couple of things off my bucket list, 
• and saying “no more” to the places, people, and programs that misaligned with my integrity.

Wintering wasn’t just rest. It was reckoning. And somehow, through all of it, clarity arrived. In the past twelve months, I:

• published a new mini book for parents and am working on another one for caregivers,
• published my Formula for Life Experience that connects my old work with my upcoming program,
• published my What Would Your Life Be Like If … ? Reflection Journal,
• submitted a major book proposal to someone who can help me take it all the way,
• built the foundation for a new business focus working with 50+ women leaning into their legacy,
• wrote deeply personal blog posts that helped me reclaim my life and my voice,
• mapped out my new From Career to Calling program that will launch in 2026,
• got behind the wheel of an RV for the first time and felt freedom in my bones,
• rebuilt my office, my systems, my workflows,
• and slowly, steadily found my way back to myself.

Not bad for a year I once thought I was “doing nothing.”

The biggest shift? I’m no longer wintering. I’m emerging.
The woman who arrived in Florida last year was tired in her soul. The woman writing this now is standing on the edge of a new kind of freedom; one she earned, step by step, boundary by boundary, truth by truth.

There is a lightness in me today that I didn’t have a year ago.
There’s clarity where there was fog.
There’s momentum where there was stillness.
There’s confidence where there was collapse.
And there’s hope; bold, grounded, unapologetic hope.

Winter didn’t break me. It remade me.
​A year later, I can see the quiet magic that was forming beneath the surface. I can see how the stillness was preparing me. I can see how the letting go created space for everything I’m building now.

Winter isn’t a season of death. It’s a season of deep, unseen growth. And this year, I get to experience the part that comes next: the thaw, the return, the expansion. And the part I often forget ... THE CELEBRATION!

How about you? If you are willing, please share where you are emerging this year. I'd love to hear from you either in the comments or at [email protected]

Reflection Questions: One Year Later

• Where were you one year ago, emotionally or spiritually? Who are you now?
• What did your own season of “wintering” teach you about rest, boundaries, and becoming?
• What parts of your life quietly transformed while you weren’t even looking?
• And as you look ahead, what is the new version of hope rising within you?
• How are you celebrating YOU?!

Here’s to the next chapter. The one after winter where the light starts returning and you realize just how far you’ve come.

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