It's OK to go slow

We all need rest and restoration

Apr 16, 2025

Hi lovely reader 👋

First of all, if you're new here, my name is Sophie. I’m on a journey to slow down, reconnect with nature, and live more intentionally. After moving off-grid, I’m sharing lessons on rewilding, simplicity, and finding balance in a busy world, without any of the fluff.

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Sunday morning, 6 am. The house is quiet. The forest is still. I focus on building the fire, carefully arranging collected bits of cardboard, a crumpled paper bag from the supermarket and smaller pieces of kindling. It’s not complicated, but it matters how you arrange the pieces, it matters that you do it right. It’s important to take the time. The fireplace does its job, quickly heating the room from a chilly 12°C to a much more comfortable 23°C and then quickly surpassing to a toasty 27°C. It’s difficult to get the temperature just right. I look out the window. Holding my cup of peppermint tea, I watch the sky dissolve, from black to grey to beautiful bright blue. The high pine trees sway in the wind. The wind through the trees sounds like a highway, like cars zooming past. But there’s no highway nearby, it’s just the wind.

The magpies are the first to wake up. Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle. I can never not think of Denis Glover’s poem1 when I hear the magpies sing. Oodle doodle. They moved in a couple of weeks ago. There are six of them. They are territorial. They are boisterous. They are aggressive. I’m not sure how I feel about them. Since they have moved in, the kererū have moved out. Since they have moved in, we can’t hear the ruru anymore at night. The song of the Tūī sounds a bit further away. A few weeks ago the tūī was the first to wake up. Magpies are clever birds. I saw them try and get into our rubbish yesterday. I know one day they will succeed.

a black and white bird sitting on top of a wooden post — Photo by Joe Pee on Unsplash

When I need to go to the bathroom, I step outside. Our outhouse is outside, so there’s no choice but to brave the cold. I note it’s not actually that cold, the sun is doing a great job warming up the sleepy forest. All of a sudden, a little fantail greets me. She’s curious. She’s young, I can tell, she’s still a bit fluffy with tiny feathers sticking out. She flits about, trying to make sense of this strange human. She flies in circles around me, inches from my face, and for a second I look into her tiny black eye. “It’s ok, little fluff,” I tell her, “I’m not going to hurt you.” She waits on a branch nearby while I go to the bathroom. I hear her quiet but hurried chirp chirp chirp. I get the feeling something is wrong, as if she’s trying to tell me something. I wonder how I can help, how I can solve this little creature's problems. “Is it the magpies?” I ask, “Are they bothering you?” More chirp chirp, more hurried. I don’t speak fantail. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something, maybe I’m the danger she sees. I’m reminded I’m a visitor in this forest, even though I call it home. She calls it home, too.

a small bird on a branch — Photo by Tony Stoddard on Unsplash

A little later, my own bird wakes up. Croky, our green Eclectus parrot. He likes to sleep in, he loves his bed even more than his humans do. He breaks the silence, the magic of the morning. He demands his breakfast. Blueberries, kiwifruit, chilli pepper, carrots and sprouted seeds for this little boy. I don’t get a ‘good morning’ this time. Eat first, talk later. Later, I get cuddles, later, attention is demanded.

It’s a quiet Sunday morning. I’m thinking of all the things I should be doing. I should be cleaning, I should do the laundry, I should exercise, I should go to the supermarket. The sun is shining, so I should make the most of it, go for a walk maybe. But what I want to do, is just sit here and soak it all in. I want to drink multiple cups of peppermint tea before I even hit the shower. As my mind battles with itself and goes into an extended internal dialogue, weighing up pros and cons of doing the laundry versus staying in my pyjamas for most of the morning, I realise something. It doesn’t matter. The seasons are changing, the days are getting shorter, my body is slowing down. Nature is slowing down, too. That yearning to sit and be slow, is perfectly normal. There’s no use fighting it. I used to call it seasonal depression, now I call it ‘following the natural rhythm’. I'm not depressed, I'm adjusting.

Society likes to keep us at the same pace every day, throughout the entire year. But if we look all around us: nature doesn’t play that game. And neither should we. Society likes to pathologize a perfectly normal human reaction. They invented a name for it: seasonal depression. Not seasonal adaptation, like every living creature does. Has anyone ever told the bears they are depressed when they are hibernating? I’m done letting society tell me that I should be doing more, that I need to increase my energy levels and that I need to perform at my highest in every season. No, it’s ok to slow down. Rest is our bodies way to restore. This season is for restoration. This season is for long mornings in pyjamas and multiple cups of tea.

Something that inspired me this week:

This is one of the most beautiful videos on New Zealand that I've ever seen. It highlights just why looking after our native bird species is so important. Give it a watch, you won't regret it.

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