Cheryl Richardson: Waking Up in Winter
She also had very powerful literary friends like Virginia Wolfe. And so, it was a fascinating world to me.
It was my husband Michael who said to me, just sort of offhanded over dinner one night with friends, why don’t you just publish a journal. You love May Sarton. You always write in your journals. Like, why don’t you just do that? But, I knew in my heart it was the right thing.
Victor Fuhrman: You begin your journey in Waking up in Winter with autumn. What does autumn mean to you, both as a season and as a time of life?
Cheryl Richardson: Well, we’re in the middle of autumn right now where I am. And, the first thing autumn means to me is often sadness. I mean, I’ll just be honest that I’m a gardener, and I love the sun, I love the light. I’m passionate about light.
And so, autumn means it gets darker, right, we turn the clocks back, the garden starts to wither. And so, at the beginning of this book when I’m writing about autumn, I’m writing about the sort of sadness that seeps in and feels like, oh, gosh, winter’s just winter is imminent, and this is a time when things start to wither and die.
And by the end of the book, by the end of the journal, I realized that autumn really is a time of life is a time when we harvest the experiences that we’ve had. We go back, and we look at what’s worked in my life, what hasn’t, what have been the meaningful people, experiences, choices that I’ve made and what can I sort of call from those experiences that I can bring forward with me into this next full stage of my life.
It’s so interesting, Victor, because now, now that we’re living so much longer than we used to, to me, in a lot of ways, autumn is the third stage of life, right, the third period before winter where we then prepare for our death.
So, autumn is a rich, if there is richness in sadness. There is beauty in sadness, and then there’s also richness and beauty in taking the time to stop and look back and really capture the wisdom and the insight of our life experiences so that we move forward in our lives in a very conscious and deliberate way.
Victor Fuhrman: Autumn for me personally has always been very bittersweet. Twenty years ago, actually, this autumn, my former partner, Judy had gone into the final stages of cancer and passed away January of 1998. And she and I used to take these trips up the East Coast of the United States in the fall, in autumn, and specifically to see the foliage change and to feel that crisp autumn air and just be in that environment and atmosphere.
Through that relationship, I grew so much through that wonderful relationship. And we had only three years together, and in those three years we had together, we lived a lifetime. As a result of our time together that I’m just grateful for her presence in my life. And autumn is now not as mournful or sad as it was for me. And that’s why I shared that the season could be at any time in our life. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in our 50s or 60s. And any time that there’s a major transition in our life is a time to stop and reflect on that transition and see what’s coming up for us.
Cheryl Richardson: Like the late 20s, the Saturn return for people is often a time where people begin a descent because they’ve got all these expectations of themselves, and I find the spiritual pioneers are often not living by convention at that time, and so they feel like there’s something wrong with them. And that can really inspire this deep reevaluation period, too.
So, yeah, it’s all a very wonderful adventure when you see it through the lens of our own personal and spiritual growth.
Victor Fuhrman: So, you’re a successful self-help author and coach, world-famous New York Times Best Selling Author, helping others to achieve their dreams. What was it like when you reached that point in your life when you were not motivated to write, and you began questioning everything?
Cheryl Richardson: Well, it was real. One of the hardest things to question was my work. I remember, there was a point when I had just started going back and editing the journal, right? I mean, I spent two years debating on whether to publish this. And I remember a couple of things – in the thick of the descent period of the hero’s journey. So, I think of the hero’s journey as a three-stage process generally. There’s the descent where what has worked for us before no longer works, and we know we can’t live the life we’re living, but we have no idea where we’re headed to, and we start to reevaluate everything. And it doesn’t feel great. It’s really, it’s hard.
We go from the descent into the mystery, and this is where we all need to really learn how to be in this place of mystery. Being in the mystery means you kind of are going through a dark night of the soul, a dark period where you don’t know who you are, you don’t know who you’re gonna be when you emerge. You don’t know where you’re headed because you’re so focused on letting go of what no longer serves you.
I’m a self-help author, for crying out loud. I’ve been teaching this stuff, and right now, I’m really sucking at it. I’m not good with my self-care, or I’m scared about change, or I’m lost, I’m in the mystery part of the hero’s journey, and I’m lost, and I don’t know what to do.
There’s a purpose to this meandering, and I’m gonna stay in this mysterious place.
I can promise you, if there’s one message, there are many messages I want to give to the audience, but one message that’s so important is when you are in that mystery when you’re leaving a life that no longer works for you. You don’t know where you’re headed, the longer we can stay in that mystery, the better the life on the other end will be because too many of us want to short-circuit that journey.
We want to just get that new job or enter that new relationship or move or do something because it feels so uncomfortable to be in the mystery.
But, if you can wait, especially later in life and really give yourself time, the life that emerges from that I think is so far more deeply reflective of the soul and you don’t have to go back and correct a bunch of stuff either.
So, learning to be in the mystery is a real art form in and of itself.
Victor Fuhrman: Cheryl, you worked with Hay House in the past, and you wrote You Can Create an Exceptional Life with the late great Louise Hay. She didn’t start Hay House until she was in her 60s. Does that inspire you about the years to come?
Cheryl Richardson: It’s a funny question. I have been using that story to inspire people for a long time, especially since Louise and I wrote the book together. I’m inspired by it, and I’m also intimidated by it. I don’t know what the right word is, but let me just say this: Yes, I think that one of the messages that are so important to be conveyed to people is that, life doesn’t end when you reach 50 or, a lot of us, 50 sorts of feels like mid-life.
And I have a good friend of mine who’s a comedian, and he always talks about how you turn 50, and you think, okay, that’s it, I’m gonna die. Like, that’s your whole focus is just on death and dying. And nowadays, you really do have a chance to have a whole new life. Louise was such an example of that start this and what would become the largest self-help publishing company in the world, starting it at 60 years old.
And I also, for myself, want to really honor a period of downtime where there is a pulling inward, a period of deep reflection. I think that we need to encourage that more and support that more. If there is going to be this next reemergence or awakening of some sort or new focus in life, the chances of it being aligned with the desires of the soul will be greater if we also take a period where we pull back, and we really reflect on the life that we’ve lived. I guess that’s what I really want to encourage.
