The first time someone told me what I was going through was “just a season,” I got quite annoyed! How could what I was feeling be just a season?

The more I sat with my cancer diagnosis (and some of the other struggles I’ve faced), I came to realise that they were right – that particular season had been “just a season or a series of seasons.”

What if we approached life from a perspective of understanding that each season would teach us lessons on strength, endurance, growth, faith, and trust? Would we conduct ourselves differently?

No matter what adversity life serves you, I’m here to tell you that it is just a season. The question is, how do we navigate those seasons?

First we need a road map. We need to understand what is happening during each of our internal emotional seasons: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. Thankfully, we have nature’s beautiful examples to help us see our internal seasons.

Once we have clarity of these seasons, we are then better equipped to handle whatever life throws our way.

Even when you’re in the thick of adversity, if you can pull yourself from the minutiae of what you’re going through and see it from a helicopter view, it might look something like this…

Warning: This model moves away from relying on external factors for answers, comfort and joy and encourages to connect with the sanctuary that lies within us, always.

If we could just imagine for a minute that every change process has a particular cycle that gets repeated over and over.

I like to think of them as seasons. Not ‘weather’ seasons but, our internal ‘emotional’ seasons. Catch my drift?

I have introduced these emotional seasons throughout my book, the Healing Journal starting with Autumn. So let’s start there.

Thankfully, we have nature to offer her beautiful example of each season. Autumn is a time of harvest and reaping what you’ve sown. It’s a time to shed our metaphorical leaves, gather our energy and prepare for the winter ahead. It is a time to go inward within ourselves.

It was in this season that I was blindsided with a cancer diagnosis. This diagnosis was met with shock, fear, anxiety, denial and overwhelm (and many more emotions!)

This season is about bringing more calm when your world has been shattered and blown apart. It’s about addressing the shock and fear and encouraging an overrun nervous system to return to balance. It is a time to soften to the necessary grief that so often accompanies this phase (even if it hurts). It is a time of letting go of the outer world and cultivating our inner reserves.

What’s the antidote I hear you ask?

Meditation practice

Forest bathing

Beach walks

Connecting with loved ones

Or better yet… try my brand new Calm Bliss Blend. Both the tea and essential oil have been formulated in collaboration with experts, have been lovingly blended and are the products I wished I’d had while healing from cancer. You can find these at evolvingwomen.co