The Snow Moon: Why Staying Put Is Sometimes the Work

February has a particular quality to it.

The rush of January has burned itself out, but spring hasn’t arrived. The days are edging longer, yet the land is still holding its breath. Nothing looks dramatic. Nothing is visibly changing. And for many people, that’s the hardest part.

Under the Snow Moon, winter doesn’t offer solutions. It offers restraint.

In a culture that equates movement with progress, February can feel like an endurance test. There’s a low-level pressure to be better by now. To feel clearer. More motivated. Lighter. When that doesn’t happen, people often turn on themselves.

In my work as a psychotherapist, this is a familiar moment. February is when anxiety often shifts shape, not loud panic, but restlessness, flatness, irritability. The adrenaline of “getting through” has worn off, and what’s left is fatigue—honest, unglamorous tiredness.

Winter mental health is rarely about dramatic lows. More often, it’s about heaviness. About wondering why you don’t feel ready to move on, even when everyone else seems to be gearing up.

The body, it turns out, isn’t interested in optics.

Nothing in the natural world blooms in February. Roots deepen. Systems conserve. Energy is gathered rather than spent. What looks like nothing happening is actually a form of intelligence.

But for anxious nervous systems, stillness can feel threatening. If you’ve learned that rest leads to vulnerability, slowing down can feel like giving up. Staying put can be misread as stagnation.

In therapy, this is often the point where people try to override their bodies. They push through tiredness. They pressure themselves into decisions. They treat rest as something to justify rather than something to trust.

The Snow Moon asks for something different.

Staying put doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means you’re listening.

It’s about allowing yourself to be where you are without turning it into a problem to solve. Letting energy pool instead of forcing it into motion. Trusting that clarity doesn’t arrive on demand — it comes when conditions are right.

This kind of restraint can feel counter-cultural. It’s quiet. Unimpressive. Hard to explain. But it’s also deeply regulating. For the nervous system, knowing that it doesn’t have to perform its way out of winter creates a surprising amount of relief.

February isn’t asking you to transform. It’s asking you to conserve.

And that isn’t laziness. It’s wisdom.

If February feels heavy or strangely confronting, try not to rush yourself out of it. This season isn’t broken — and neither are you. Some of the most important work happens when nothing looks like it’s moving at all.

— Sarah x