Hi friend,
There’s a major misconception about relationships. Most of us believe it because it’s what we were taught.
Movies, media, and magazines mostly show us one phase: honeymoon spring. 🌿🌸
It’s the beginning phase—full of newness, budding with fresh energy, passion, mystery (we don’t know each other’s depths yet), and the promise of a beautiful future.
The misconception is that we’re supposed to stay there forever. So when the relationship naturally changes, we assume something is wrong.
But long-term relationships move through seasons and cycles, just like every other living thing.
Our relationships fizzle out and die because we simply aren’t culturally prepared for the phases + seasons that come with long-term relationship.
When fall and winter arrive, we often feel lost:
Where did the love go? Why is the passion gone? Have we fallen out of love?
One of the vital errors couples make is abandoning the relationship when the seasons shift.
The truth is, relationships are meant to change, shed, die, and rebirth. Each season asks us to let go of what no longer fits so something new can emerge.
What we need to normalize is that fall and winter will come, and there’s nothing wrong when they do.
When we expect our relationship to remain in honeymoon spring, we can build resentment when reality inevitably changes. And resentment can kill a relationship faster than almost anything.
The antidote is radical honesty, conscious participation, and a willingness to ride the waves together.
Let your partnership grow. Don’t abandon it the moment the seasons shift.
There is depth, truth, and mystery to uncover when the darkness comes.
Embrace it.
Inside Today’s Newsletter:
🎙️ Podcast Episodes: The Spirit Daughter Podcast + Into the Wild with Renee Warren
📝 My Latest Substack Article: Manifestation and My Letter from Love
✍️ A Practice + Journaling Prompts: To meet the season your relationship is in and let the change move through you.
🔥 What’s New at Rising Woman
GATHER — A Live Day Together Exploring Conscious Relationship
After years of connecting online, I’m so excited to finally gather in person.
Join me for the very first GATHER. A one-day interactive experience in Vancouver on October 17th, created around conscious relationship, meaningful connection, and community.
Together, we’ll explore the four relationships that shape our lives: Self, Other, Spirit + Nature.
We’ll have guided practices, meaningful conversation, reflection, and facilitated opportunities to connect with other women, meet new people, and build community.
If you’ve been craving deeper connection and more opportunities to come together in real life, I’d love to spend the day with you.
One quick note: when we first published the event, there was an error with the ticket price. We’ve corrected it now, and I’m sorry for any confusion!
🎙️ Latest Podcast Interviews:
📝 New Article on Substack: Manifestation and My Letter from Love
Last year Elizabeth Gilbert invited me to contribute to her letters from love. Now I'm sharing the full story with you…
A week after returning home, I stood in the shower looking out at the forest from my bathroom window. After winters in the hot and dusty desert, it’s always a relief to be back in the land of moss and spring water. I thought it first, and then said it out loud.
“I’m going to interview Elizabeth Gilbert.”
What happened next is kind of wild…
It was 8pm and I had just gotten my daughter to sleep. She lay next to me in the dark room with the salt lamp glowing in the window-sill. I checked my Instagram messages.
There it was, top of my inbox — a message from Elizabeth Gilbert.
Pardon me? I know I’m a witch, but this level of rapid manifestation is incredible, I really need to say more things out loud, I think to myself.
Well, I did interview her on the Spirit of Creativity and Big Magic, and she also invited me to attend her event in Vancouver, which I did, and then I was invited to contribute to her long-standing “Letters from Love” project on Substack. What came through when I sat down to write that letter surprised me. Continue reading…
✨ Practice for the Week: Meeting the Season You're In
When a relationship starts to change, it's easy to panic. We reach back toward the version of love we recognize and try to keep the season from turning. This practice helps you notice where you're gripping and what it's like to let the change move through instead.
Most of us were taught to fear the fall and winter of a relationship, so when it arrives, we read it as a sign that something has gone wrong. Slowing down long enough to meet that fear is how we begin to approach the change with curiosity. This is a way to sit with the season you're actually in.
Set aside about ten minutes and find a space where you won't be interrupted.
Step 1: Settle. Find a comfortable seat or lie down. Take a few slow breaths, letting each exhale be a little longer than the inhale.
Step 2: Arrive. Let your body settle. Feel the surface underneath you holding your weight. Let your shoulders drop and your jaw release.
Step 3: Picture. Bring to mind a relationship that's moving through a shift right now. It might be a partnership, a friendship, or your relationship with yourself. Let it come into view without reaching for the story of it.
Step 4: Name. Ask yourself what season it's in. Spring, summer, fall, or the dark of winter. Don't overthink it. Notice which one your body answers with first.
Step 5: Feel. Bring your attention to your chest, your belly, your throat. Notice what happens as you hold this season in mind. You might sense a pull backward, a bracing, a wish for things to be how they were. Let that be here for a few breaths.
Step 6: Allow. Picture the season as weather moving through you rather than something happening to you. On each exhale, see if you can let your grip ease by a fraction. You're not forcing anything to change. You're letting it move.
Step 7: Ask. With a little more space in your body, let one question rise: what wants to grow in this relationship if I stop trying to hold the old season in place? See what image or word arrives. Let it be small if it wants to be small.
Step 8: Return. Take a few breaths back into your own center. Notice how you feel now compared to when you began. Any more ease, any more room, any sense of what's waiting underneath the change.
However this landed today, know that you're not doing it wrong. Learning to move with the seasons is the work of a lifetime, and every time you practice, you build a little more capacity for it.
Journal Prompts
Which season is your relationship in right now? Describe it the way you'd describe weather, in your chest, in the space between you and your partner.
Think back to a relationship where the honeymoon phase ended. What did you make it mean at the time? What story did you tell yourself about why the spark faded?
What have you been unwilling to let die in your relationship, even though some part of you knows it's already gone? What might have room to grow if you released it?
Recall a time a relationship moved through a hard season and came out changed on the other side. What did you learn about yourself in the fall and winter of it?
What would radical honesty ask of you this week? Write the thing you've been avoiding saying, first to yourself.
If you fully accepted that love moves through seasons, how would you meet your partner differently today?
Love doesn't stay in one season, and it was never meant to. The couples who last are the ones who learn to move with the change instead of bracing against it.
So when your winter comes, and it will, meet it with curiosity and see what's waiting to be uncovered.
Love,
Shay 💕