It Is January. It Is Time for Soup, Not Resolutions.
We set our resolutions in the dead of winter.
Let that land for a moment.
The natural world is in its deepest hibernation—its fallow season. Seeds are underground. Trees are conserving. Animals are sleeping, dreaming, repairing tissue, restoring nervous systems. Nothing is launching. Nothing is hustling. Nothing is reinventing itself with a color-coded plan.
And yet here we are, every January, collectively deciding that now is the moment to tackle the goals we’ve been avoiding for months… years… our whole lives.
New body. New habits. New career. New personality.
All while it’s dark at 4:30pm and our bones are asking for rest.
It’s no wonder so many resolutions fail. We have set ourselves up for it.
We’ve been taught to shun the natural rhythms that govern every living system—the rhythms of generation, organization, destruction, and rest. The rhythms that soil, forests, oceans, and nervous systems all obey without question. Instead of listening to the larger intelligence we are part of, we attempt to muscle our way through life, against the tide, powered by caffeine and shame.
Then we wonder why we’re frazzled.
Why we’re fried.
Why there’s so much low-grade hatred, confusion, and exhaustion humming beneath the surface of modern life.
This isn’t a personal failure. It’s a seasonal mismatch.
January Is Not a Beginning—It’s a Threshold
In many Indigenous traditions across Turtle Island, winter is not a time of outward action. It is a time of inward listening. Storytelling. Dreaming. Sitting close to the fire. Observing. Remembering.
Knowledge isn’t forced in winter—it’s received.
January, in particular, sits at a threshold. The Roman calendar named it after Janus, the two-faced god who looks both backward and forward. One face toward what has been, one toward what is yet to come. Not action—orientation. Not execution—reflection.
This is not the month for declarations.
It’s the month for honest inventory.
What survived the year?
What didn’t?
What is composting quietly beneath the surface?
Nature does not ask the trees in January what fruit they plan to bear.
She asks them to hold still.
Rest Is Not Laziness. It Is Strategy.
A fallow field is not unproductive—it is preparing.
Winter is when the nervous system recalibrates. When insight percolates below language. When the body metabolizes the experiences of the year. When grief, joy, anger, and desire all rearrange themselves into something usable.
When we skip this phase—when we override rest in favor of relentless forward motion—we don’t actually become more successful. We become brittle. Disconnected. Less creative. Less kind. Less capable of sensing what is actually true for us.
Somatically speaking, forcing growth in winter creates contraction, not expansion. The body tightens. Breath gets shallow. Intuition goes quiet. We default to habits we think we should want instead of listening for what is genuinely emerging.
Listen Before You Leap
The questions we need for our lives don’t arrive through spreadsheets and goal trackers.
They arrive through quieter channels.
Through the way your body exhales when you stop trying.
Through the dreams that only come when you sleep enough.
Through the sudden clarity that appears on a slow walk.
Through the subtle shift in your chest when you imagine one future versus another.
Take your questions from the natural world.
From the birds before they return.
From the trees before they bud.
From the soil before it breaks open.
If you listen closely, January will tell you everything you need to know about the year ahead—but only if you don’t rush her.
This Is a Time for Soup
January is for nourishment, not reinvention.
For tending the inner fire.
For letting yourself be held by the season instead of fighting it.
There will be a time to plant.
There will be a time to build.
There will be a time to act.
But this isn’t it.
For now, honor the pause.
Honor the dark.
Honor the intelligence of rest.
It is January.
It is time for soup, not resolutions.
