The Medicine We Don’t Want to Take
What if the discomfort you’re feeling right now—the forced pause, the unexpected ending, the involuntary slowdown—isn’t a problem to solve but medicine you need to take?
In our recent conversation on Capacity Conversations, Sarah Liljegren and I explored one of the most challenging yet essential themes of modern life: the necessity of darkness. Not darkness as evil or negativity, but darkness as the natural, cyclical space where transformation actually happens—beneath the surface, away from productivity metrics, in the quiet depths where seeds crack open and roots grow strong.
This isn’t a conversation about toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing. It’s about the raw, honest reality that **death isn’t the end, darkness isn’t bad, and rest is actually action.
Why We’re Uncomfortable in Winter
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re deep in winter. Literally. And yet, the cultural message couldn’t be more contradictory: it’s January, it’s go-time, it’s New Year’s resolutions, business planning, and fresh starts.
But what if this is completely backward?
As I shared in our conversation, I saw a LinkedIn post a week before Christmas—when we weren’t even technically in winter yet—encouraging people to use the time when “everyone else is resting” to get ahead. The post made my blood boil. We’re not even in winter yet, and society is already telling us to push through, hustle harder, capitalize on others’ rest.
The Capitalist Contradiction
This gets to the heart of something crucial: capitalism doesn’t value what it can’t commodify. If it’s not profitable, it’s not prioritized. This is why:
- Houses aren’t built for people who need them—they’re built for profit
- Natural cycles that don’t produce measurable output are pathologized (hello, Seasonal Affective Disorder)
- Rest is seen as laziness rather than necessity
- Darkness is feared rather than honored
But nature? Nature isn’t capitalistic.
Winter happens whether we’re “ready” or not. The moon cycles through darkness every month. Trees drop their leaves and go dormant. Animals hibernate. Seeds crack open underground, in complete darkness, long before they ever see light.
None of this is productive in the way we’ve been conditioned to value productivity. And yet, **without these dark, dormant, “unproductive” periods, nothing new can be born**.
The Forced Blessing of Involuntary Pauses
Sometimes winter is thrust upon us. A layoff. A breakup. An illness. A contract that ends unexpectedly. A political upheaval that destabilizes everything we thought was secure.
I experienced this firsthand when my contracted position ended in October—months earlier than expected. The contract was supposed to run through February. Instead, I found myself in an involuntary winter.
And here’s what I realized: I would never have given myself this gift voluntarily.
Even with financial security, even with permission, I probably wouldn’t have taken two months completely off. I would have found another project, another hustle, another way to stay “productive.” The blessing of this forced pause was that it removed the choice—and in doing so, it gave me something I desperately needed but would never have claimed for myself.
What Forced Pauses Teach Us
Sarah shared something profound about this: when you’re in the dead of winter, no matter what big goals or resolutions you set, you literally can’t see what the light will bring. The darkness doesn’t show you the outcome. That’s not its job.
Winter’s job is to:
Strip away what’s no longer needed** (like leaves falling from trees)
Strengthen roots beneath the surface** (where no one can see the work)
Create space for something new to form** (in the dark, underground, slowly)
Force us to surrender control** (because we cannot rush spring)
This is why New Year’s resolutions often fail. We’re trying to spring into action during the season literally designed for rest and internal preparation.
Rest Is Not Sleep: Reclaiming Active Rest
One of the most revolutionary insights Sarah shared came from her training in Embodied Yoga Principles. She learned about “rest pose”—and it changed everything.
Rest pose isn’t about sleeping. Your eyes are open. You’re present. You’re aware.
This distinction is crucial because most of us operate on a binary: GO HARD → SLEEP → GO HARD → SLEEP.
But where’s the actual rest?
Where’s the space to:
Sit with ourselves with eyes open
Witness what’s happening internally without immediately acting on it
Be still without being asleep or zoned out
Incubate without producing
Incubation Over Action
This is where the concept of incubation as a form of action becomes revolutionary.
In a culture that glorifies hustle, the idea that “doing nothing” is actually “doing something” feels heretical. But look at what happens underground:
Seeds are swelling with water
Roots are growing deeper
Microorganisms are breaking down what died in fall to nourish what will grow in spring
Chemical processes are happening that will determine the health of future growth
**None of this looks productive from above ground. All of it is essential.**
The same is true for us. When we’re in our dark seasons—whether by choice or by force—incubation is happening. Processing. Integration. Preparation. It’s just not visible yet.
Finding Your Form of Rest
Here’s something important: rest doesn’t have to look one way.
I’m someone who struggles to sit completely still. For me, rest might look like:
Walking meditation
Tai chi or qigong
Journaling
Singing or prayer
Having deep conversations (like this podcast)
The wellness industry often commodifies rest into a single aesthetic: the perfect meditation cushion, the pristine yoga mat, the Lululemon outfit, the Instagram-worthy setup. But that’s just another form of control and consumerism.
**True rest is whatever allows you to be with yourself without producing anything for external validation.**
Confronting the Taboos: What We’re Not Supposed to Explore
One of the richest parts of our conversation involved confronting societal taboos—the things we’re told not to talk about, not to explore, not to acknowledge.
The Feminine Shadow
As a 33-year-old woman raised in a Christian, Baptist household, I spent most of my life believing that being “good” meant suppressing huge parts of myself:
My sensuality and sexuality
My power and confidence
My innate knowing and intuition
My natural cycles and rhythms
I was taught that virginity is a virtue. That innocence equals goodness. That women who are “in touch with themselves” (literally) are somehow less than. That being on birth control to “normalize” and suppress my natural hormonal cycles was the responsible, modern choice.
It wasn’t until my 30s—after going off birth control—that I realized: **I had been acting like a biological man**. Always “on,” always productive, never honoring the natural ebb and flow of my energy throughout the month.
The Cost of Suppression
Sarah shared her own story of being put on birth control at 18 after rupturing ovarian cysts. The medical solution? “Just shut them down.” This led to:
Multiple birth control switches as her body rejected each one
Non-stop crying and emotional upheaval
GI issues and food allergies that plagued her through college
A cascading chain reaction of health problems
**When we suppress natural cycles—whether through medication, cultural conditioning, or societal pressure—there are consequences.**
The same is true for men who are told:
Don’t cry
Don’t be vulnerable
Be dominant, tough, always strong
Emotions are weakness
We’ve created a society that pathologizes and suppresses the full spectrum of human experience, especially the parts that can’t be easily controlled or commodified.
The Shadow Side of Control
This leads to a larger question: **What are we so afraid of in the darkness?**
Why is it that:
A woman who explores her sexuality is shamed while virginity is glorified?
Death is taboo to discuss even though it’s the one certainty we all share?
Drugs and altered states are criminalized even when they facilitate healing?
Emotions like grief and anger are seen as “negative” rather than natural?
Cycles of rest are pathologized as “seasonal affective disorder”?
The answer, I believe, is **control**.
When we can’t control something—when we can’t measure it, predict it, monetize it, or fit it into a neat box—our society labels it as “bad,” “wrong,” or “disordered.”
But nature doesn’t work that way. **Natural cycles include darkness. Death feeds new life. Rest enables growth. Chaos precedes creation.**
The Illusion of Control and the Practice of Surrender
Sarah shared a powerful metaphor about winter weather: “Winter just does what she’s doing. There’s nothing we can really control about it.”
And yet, how much of our lives do we spend trying to control the uncontrollable?
Trying to know what will happen before it happens
Trying to prevent all possible negative outcomes
Trying to force certainty in inherently uncertain situations
Trying to skip the dark, difficult seasons and fast-forward to the “good parts”
What My Mortality Teaches Me
One of the practices I suggested is this: Think about your mortality. Think about endings.
Not in a morbid way, but as a way of getting real about what we’re trying to preserve at all costs.
What am I afraid of? What am I trying to control? What am I holding onto that’s actually preventing my growth?
These aren’t comfortable questions. But they’re essential for breaking the illusion that we can control our way out of darkness or hustle our way out of winter.
The Gift of Forced Surrender
When my contract ended unexpectedly, I had to make a choice:
**Seek control** (frantically apply for jobs, squeeze everything out of my small business, panic-produce) or **surrender** (take the break, trust the process, be in the winter).
I chose surrender. And it was terrifying and liberating in equal measure.
Sarah described something similar about seeds underground: **They crack open in complete darkness, in full faith that they will find the light**. They don’t need to see the sun to start growing. They trust the process.
That’s what surrender looks like. **Not giving up, but giving over**. Not controlling outcomes, but trusting that growth is happening even when you can’t see it yet.
Redefining Success, Value, and Effort
If we’re going to truly embrace winter—both literal and metaphorical—we need to redefine what success actually means.
The Audit of Endings
Here’s a practice I recommend: **Perform an endings audit**.
Ask yourself:
What habits are no longer serving me?
What commitments feel draining rather than enlivening?
What identities am I clinging to that are actually constraining me?
What needs to die so something new can be born?
This isn’t about self-criticism or perfectionism. It’s about honest assessment: What in my life is ready to be composted?
In nature, death becomes fertilizer. The leaves that fall and decompose feed the soil. The animal that dies becomes food for others and nutrients for the earth.
**Nothing is wasted in nature’s cycles. Everything that dies nourishes what comes next.**
But in our consumer culture, we’ve lost this understanding. We throw things “away” (into landfills where they don’t decompose). We end relationships bitterly instead of honorably. We leave jobs burned out instead of complete.
What if we approached endings differently? What if we asked: What can this ending teach me? What can it nourish in me or in what comes next?
Beyond Productivity as Identity
For those of us who don’t identify with traditional measures of success—climbing corporate ladders, accumulating wealth, achieving status—winter offers a gift: the space to define value on our own terms.
Maybe value isn’t:
How much money you make
How many hours you work
How busy your calendar is
How many people know your name
Maybe value is:
How deeply you understand yourself
How well you honor your natural rhythms
How much integrity you live with
How present you are in each moment
How honestly you can sit with discomfort
This reframing is radical. And it’s necessary if we’re going to build lives that actually sustain us rather than deplete us.
The Darkness Beneath America’s Surface
Sarah and I went deep into some challenging territory about what America—and Western culture more broadly—is projecting right now.
The Myth of Moral Innocence
Sarah shared a conversation she’d had with AI about America’s shadow, and the response was striking: America isn’t being prudent about its darkness right now. America is projecting it.
This is the myth of moral innocence: **the belief that we’re always the good guys, always on the right side, always justified in our actions**.
But when we believe this myth, we can’t hold accountability. We can’t acknowledge that:
- Progress and harm can happen simultaneously
- Good intentions can have devastating consequences
- Being powerful doesn’t make us right
- Our privilege comes at someone else’s expense
Immigration, Identity, and Inherited Trauma
As someone born in the U.S. but raised by Salvadoran immigrant parents, I live in a constant state of complexity around these issues.
My family wouldn’t be here if the U.S. hadn’t destabilized El Salvador in the 1980s. I wouldn’t exist as I am. And yet, the country that created the conditions forcing my family to flee is the same country that now vilifies immigrants like them.
This is the darkness beneath the surface: the U.S. creates destabilization abroad, then criminalizes the people who flee that destabilization.
It’s a vicious cycle. And it’s not unique to immigration—it plays out in:
- Economic policy (create poverty, then criminalize the poor)
- Healthcare (make people sick, then profit from treatment)
- Education (underfund schools, then blame “bad students”)
- Incarceration (criminalize survival, then profit from prisons)
The Work of Mature Citizens
As Sarah said so powerfully: ”The work of mature citizens is to face what we keep externalizing.”
This means:
- Acknowledging our collective shadow
- Sitting with uncomfortable truths
- Holding complexity without needing simple answers
- Taking responsibility without drowning in guilt
- Working toward repair without expecting immediate resolution
It means being willing to say: ”I don’t know. This is messy. Both things are true. I’m learning.”
Holding Paradox: The Gift of Non-Duality
One of the threads woven throughout our entire conversation was this: the ability to hold paradox.
Both/And Instead of Either/Or
We live in a culture obsessed with binaries:
- Good vs. Evil
- Light vs. Dark
- Productive vs. Lazy
- Success vs. Failure
- Us vs. Them
But reality is almost never binary. Reality is:
- Good *and* evil coexist
- Light *and* dark are both necessary
- Rest *and* productivity both have value
- Success *and* failure teach different lessons
- We *and* they are interconnected
Sarah talked about how AI framed this: the next evolution isn’t just recognizing our separate selves, but **recognizing that we’re continuous with each other**. Not opposed, but reflecting each other. Not separate, but interconnected.
The Complexity of Being Human
This is where maturity lives: in the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into simple narratives.
Can we hold that:
- America has given opportunities *and* caused immense harm?
- Immigrants enrich communities *and* resources are finite?
- We want safety *and* fear creates cruelty?
- We need structure *and* we need freedom?
- We’re doing our best *and* that’s not always enough?
This isn’t moral relativism. It’s moral maturity.
It’s the difference between:
- “I’m right and you’re wrong” (dualism)
- “We’re both trying to navigate complexity with incomplete information” (non-duality)
Practical Wisdom for Your Own Dark Season
If you’re in a dark season right now—whether it’s a career transition, a relationship ending, a health crisis, a creative drought, or just the general malaise of modern life—here’s what we learned:
1. **Honor the Season You’re In**
Don’t try to spring when you’re in winter. Don’t force productivity when your body and soul need rest. **Trust that incubation is happening even when you can’t see results.**
2. **Find Your Form of Rest**
Rest doesn’t have to look like meditation or yoga. Find what allows you to be present with yourself without producing. For me, it’s walking, journaling, deep conversation. For you, it might be something else entirely.
3. **Audit Your Endings**
What needs to die? What habits, relationships, identities, or commitments are ready to be composted? **Let them go with gratitude for what they taught you, and trust that their decomposition will nourish what comes next.**
4. **Explore Your Taboos**
What are you not “supposed” to think, feel, want, or explore? **That’s exactly where your growth edge might be.** Not everything taboo is healthy, but many things are taboo simply because they can’t be controlled or commodified.
5. **Practice Surrender**
You can’t control outcomes. You can’t know the future. You can’t force certainty. **What you can do is show up with integrity, do your best, and trust the process**—even when the process includes darkness, confusion, and not knowing.
6. **Hold Complexity**
Resist the urge to make everything simple. **Life is messy, contradictory, and paradoxical.** The goal isn’t to resolve all tension—it’s to develop the capacity to hold tension without breaking.
7. **Remember: Death Feeds Life**
This is nature’s most fundamental truth. **Nothing is ever truly wasted. Every ending nourishes a new beginning.** Even this dark season you’re in—especially this dark season—is preparing soil for what wants to grow through you next.
The Seed’s Journey: A Final Meditation
Sarah shared the most beautiful metaphor about seeds, and I want to leave you with it:
When a seed cracks open underground, it’s nowhere near the light. It’s in complete darkness. And yet, it takes on water and begins to grow—both up toward the light and down into the earth—in full faith that it will find what it needs.
The seed doesn’t need to see the sun to start growing.
It doesn’t need certainty about the outcome.
It doesn’t need to know exactly how far it has to travel.
It just needs to crack open and trust.
That’s what winter asks of us. That’s what darkness offers us. Not answers, not certainty, not visible progress—but the invitation to crack open in the dark and trust that growth is happening beneath the surface.
Closing Thoughts: We’re All Seeds in the Dark
If you’re feeling lost, stuck, or in the dark right now, please hear this: **you’re not broken. You’re in winter.
And winter is essential.
Winter is medicine.
Winter is where transformation actually happens.
The culture will tell you to push through, hustle harder, produce more. But your body, your soul, your deeper wisdom knows: **this is the time to go underground. To rest. To incubate. To let the old you decompose so the new you can emerge.**
Spring will come. It always does.
But spring can only bring what winter has prepared.
So be gentle with yourself. Honor the darkness. Trust the process.
And remember: you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the hardest work of all—you’re becoming.
This conversation is part of Capacity Conversations, a podcast where we explore self-trust, transformation, and the reality most modern millennials are facing today. Find us on Substack and wherever you listen to podcasts.
If this resonated with you, we’d love to hear what dark season you’re navigating right now. Share in the comments or reach out—remember, you’re not alone in the darkness.
About the Hosts:
Raquel Sands is a clarity and work strategist supporting deep feelers and purpose-driven individuals to create and sustain their peace, purpose, and prosperity on their own terms. Find her work at [your website].
Sarah Liljegren is a real estate professional whose passion and purpose is to rewild space and bring it into more connection with nature and our natural cycles. She works at the intersection of housing, community, and ecological restoration.
