Staying Slow as Spring Rises

A mindset shift as the world comes alive

Current work in progress, a colorful array of tomatoes

Hello dear readers. Thank you for being here. And thank you for your patience as I have let more time seep in between these newsletters. I’ve been busy, busy, busy, as the sun and birds rise up earlier, the mountains turn bright green from bursts of rain showers, and all of the buds and blossoms are coming out as the season changes. Living in the allegheny mountains this winter, I experienced a REAL winter. So much snow, darkness, cold temps, and deep rest. It was rejuvenating and deeply peaceful, and I feel so grateful for the experience. I’ve also been hungry for this returning to the senses that only spring can provide. Colors, sounds, smells…it all feels so healthy and inspiring. It’s also easy to feel that pulse of springtime begging you to start moving more, bounce into action, do, do, do. I am naturally a doer kind of person. I love cleaning or walking as a form of relaxation, and tend to fill up my days with many little things that bring me a lot of pleasure and purpose. But being out here in these mountains and closer to the rhythms of the season, I can sense the slowness and steady progress behind all of the movement. I can feel the waters below the surface, gently moving nutrients up and out. The sap in the trees rising steady, steady. The buds on the branches forming and then all of a sudden, one day, the flowers bloom! But that constant energy that causes the buds to flower, you can be sure that it is fluid and steady in its pursuit. And so while I have indeed been busy and active with the new energy of the season, I have also held an undercurrent of conscious, slow surrender through it all.

So I continue to lean into the slowness that my body asks for when she is in relation to the land. I continue to take on less activity than I normally would in a city. I notice a lot more. I notice the tiny wild violets all over the driveway. I notice the buds on the hawthorn trees down near the creek. I notice the green on the autumn olive trees just about to burst. I notice the skunk cabbages getting taller and more frilly, opening up slowly into a pretty rose shape.

Perhaps all of the seasons are slow. Perhaps we are the ones that decide that the new energy in the air must be strangled into fast/efficient/do it all at once!

There is a difference between creative energy and the capitalistic fast energy our culture adheres to. Creative spurts ask for your attention, but they do not rush you. They beckon you to stay with them, flowing in rhythm, in trance. Spring asks us to stay with it, in the way that our senses thaw out and remember the bird song, the smell of daffodils in the sunlight, the peepers echoing up the hills at dusk from their soft watery beds.

While life picks up again and the call to do more is in the air, I will hold the slow surrender that the land reminds me to ground myself into. In the book Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown, the core principles also share the essential idea of slowness-

“There is always enough time for the right work:

Recognizing that the right work will emerge when the time is right, and avoiding rushing or forcing outcomes.”

Along with the other principles that are also excellent and truth-resounding…

• Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)

• Change is constant. (Be like water.)

• There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.

• Never a failure, always a lesson.

• Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)

• Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass — build the resilience by building the relationships.

• Less prep, more presence.

• What you pay attention to grows.

(You can learn more and buy Adrienne’s book here.)

I personally am taking lessons from these principles and invite you to do the same if you are called to the remembering of the seasons, resisting the toxicity that our current culture is embedded in.

How are you staying slow these days? What signs of spring are exciting you? What creative currents are moving through you into action?

Please feel free to respond in the comments below!

Thank you so much for being here! I’m off to teach a few watercolor workshops later this month, and we still have a few spots left in the Warm Springs Rise Up Workshop happening on April 19th with

Brennan Johnson

. Details can be found here.

A reminder that if you are a paid subscriber you have a never expiring 15% off discount code. Please contact me if you need the code again! Currently I have some original paintings for sale, so it is DOUBLE the discount when the code is used.

You can see my sale items here.

Original Cake Watercolor, now on sale

With love, gratitude and peace to you all.