Episode 326: Seasonal Syncing: Learning to Work With Where You Are, Not Against It — with Amber Richardson

The Season You’re In Is Not the Problem

There’s a version of this conversation I’ve been waiting to have for a long time. Not because the topic is new – seasons of life for women entrepreneurs get talked about – but because Amber Richardson has actually built a framework around it. And more than that, she lived it, in real time, while writing the book.

 

If you’ve ever been in the middle of a project, a transition, or just life in general – and suddenly everything feels like pushing water uphill – this episode of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast is for you. Amber is a life coach, speaker, and the author of Seasonal Syncing: A Woman’s Guide to Harmony and Wholeness One Season at a Time. She developed this framework not in a quiet office with plenty of free time, but in the middle of everything: a move across multiple states, a seriously ill child, sleepless nights, and the very real weight of wondering if she’d ever get it done. More on that later.

 

Here’s what we cover: what each season of life actually requires from you, why most of us feel stuck because we’re resisting our season rather than leaning into it, how Amber wrote her book while honoring the very framework she was creating, why spring-centric culture is burning women out, and how to check in with yourself so you know when a new season is ready to begin.

Watch the full episode

We Are a Spring-Centric Culture – And It’s Costing Us

Something Amber said early in our conversation that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: we live in a spring-centric culture. We celebrate activation, momentum, visible results, and constant action. Anything that looks like rest, retreat, or stillness – we treat as failure.

 

Amber isn’t anti-spring. She loves spring. But she’s clear-eyed about what happens when we expect flowers to bloom in winter – from ourselves, from our businesses, from our relationships. The results are predictable: burnout, shame spirals, comparison, and the kind of paralysis that makes you feel like everyone else figured something out that you somehow missed.

 

“All seasons are beautiful and have value, but there are some that are more culturally desirable. And so I think it’s being able to honor those seasons that maybe don’t carry as much value in culture or society – and that maybe we were conditioned to not value as much.” – Amber Richardson

The data backs this up. In Amber’s research, 75% of women report feeling stressed and burned out. Beyond that, 80% of autoimmune disease cases are female. And yet the advice most of us receive is to push through, do more, and show up harder. Seasonal syncing offers a different question entirely: what if the problem isn’t you – it’s that you’re fighting your season?

Seasonal Syncing for Women Entrepreneurs: The Four Seasons and What They Need

Amber’s framework is grounded in something that has always been true: nature cycles through seasons, and so do we. Rather than being rigid or prescriptive, it’s an invitation to slow down, get quiet, and ask what your body and spirit are actually calling for right now.

Here’s a quick look at the four seasons and their critical practices.

 

• Fall is the season of transformation. Its critical practices are reflection, release, and gratitude. Big life events – a loss, a move, a career shift, the end of something that mattered – often land us here. Fall isn’t just about endings. It’s about clearing the ground for what comes next.
• Winter is the season of sanctuary. Its critical practices are intimacy, rest, and security. Amber wrote the bulk of her book during what happened to be a true winter – waking before dawn, lighting a candle by the gas fireplace, writing in the quiet dark of the morning. She wasn’t being passive. She was protecting what mattered.
• Spring is the season of hope. Its critical practices are emergence, growth, and bloom. Spring comes from within, not from a calendar date. You’ll know you’re there not because you think you should be, but because you genuinely feel the itch to move. Amber is clear: if you’re pushing into spring out of guilt or fear of falling behind, you haven’t fully cycled through winter yet.
• Summer is the season of joy. Its critical practices are adventure, play, and celebration – full energy, external, generous, and expansive.

Here’s the piece Amber really wants every woman to hold onto: these seasons are yours. They don’t map to the weather outside. You are not required to be in summer because it’s July, or in spring because you just launched something new. At the time we recorded this episode, Amber was in spring – and it was winter outside. That’s the whole point.

 

“It’s not like, ‘Well, if you’re in this big life transition, then you are definitely in this.’ It’s more of an intuitive kind of coming to self and being like – what is my body, what is my spirit telling me that I need right now?” – Amber Richardson

That intuitive check-in is at the heart of this whole framework. And it leads to one of the most liberating realizations Amber shares – that the expectations we place on ourselves are often completely disconnected from where we actually are.

 

“Of course I wouldn’t expect flowers to bloom when it’s snowing outside … so why would I expect that of myself?” – Amber Richardson

How She Actually Wrote the Book

I had to ask Amber about this directly, because the story behind this book is almost the whole point. She wasn’t sitting in a perfectly curated morning routine with uninterrupted hours. Not even close.

 

Amber moved across multiple states while her daughter was sick, navigating doctors’ offices and hospital stays the whole way through. She kept writing anyway. Through a long, slow season of sanctuary, she worked with her circumstances rather than against them. When her body needed to slow down, she lit a candle, sat by the fireplace before the house woke up, and wrote in the dark. Life interrupted her workshops, so she listened. A podcast about self-publishing caught her attention, and she followed it.

“I needed to become the woman, the mother, the business owner, the coach, the author. I needed to become that person in the process to be in this position now, sharing this work.” – Amber Richardson

What strikes me most is that Amber didn’t just write about seasonal syncing — she did it. And the book is richer for it. Eckhart Tolle talks about this in The Power of Now: when you’re truly present, everything you touch carries a different quality of heart. That’s exactly what I hear in Amber’s work.

From Shame Spiral to Season

Before this framework existed, Amber was caught in what she calls a shame spiral. She was in a mastermind, working hard, showing up consistently – and by every measurable metric, she didn’t have much to show for it. No email list. No business growth. Only pro bono clients. Rather than recognizing that she was in a hard season, she did what most of us do: compared herself to everyone around her and concluded something must be wrong with her.

The shift came when she asked herself one simple question: if my life right now is a season, which one am I in?

That reframe started with Amber turning the framework on herself and asking what season she was actually in. The answer changed everything.

I told myself: “You’re in the season to absorb. You’re in the season to take in, to dream. So that way, when you care for yourself and move through that season – when you’re in a spring season – you’re ready to activate, and you’re ready to go.” – Amber Richardson

That reframe didn’t erase the difficulty. But it completely changed what the difficulty meant. Instead of evidence of failure, it became information. And information, as any good coach will tell you, is something you can actually work with.

How to Know When Your Season Is Shifting

One of the most practical moments in this episode is when I asked Amber: how do you actually know when it’s time to move into a new season?

Two things tend to happen, she says. First, you might notice a feeling of resistance – something that was working starts to feel like it no longer fits, like a quiet nudge toward something different. Second, sometimes it’s more organic: you just find yourself there. A natural readiness that doesn’t come from fear or “I should have done this by now” – it comes from a genuine, internal sense of being ready to move.

“What I think is often happening is we’re in a space, but because of cultural conditioning and those things, we’re resisting our reality.” – Amber Richardson

That distinction matters more than it might seem. Pushing yourself into spring because you feel behind, because you’re measuring yourself against someone else’s timeline, or because stillness makes you uncomfortable – none of that is spring energy. It’s fear wearing spring’s clothes.

“If you’re kind of carrying that weight or that guilt or those pressures — a fear-based motivation — I would check that. Because to me, that means we did not do the work. We didn’t lean into the things we needed to in winter to get us ready to truly come from a place of: I’m ready. Let’s go.” — Amber Richardson

What Seasonal Syncing Can Do for Your Business

Naturally, this came up in our conversation. I asked Amber whether the seasonal framework applies only to us as individuals or also to our projects, relationships, and businesses.

Her belief: it does. This piece of the framework is still developing, and she’s refreshingly honest about that. Even so, she points to the economy, the stock market, the natural ebb and flow of any living system – and the pattern holds. Things build, peak, release, and rest. The businesses we build are entities of their own, and learning to notice that rhythm – recognizing when your business is in a building season versus a consolidating one – is a real skill worth developing.

For those of us navigating genuine economic uncertainty right now, when small business confidence has been shaky and the pressure to “do more now” feels louder than ever, this reframe is genuinely useful. Not every slow period is a problem. Some of it is winter – necessary, productive, full of unseen root growth that nobody else can see yet but you.

Amber’s Free Gift for Our Girlfriends

Amber is giving away a free PDF copy of her book, Seasonal Syncing: A Woman’s Guide to Harmony and Wholeness One Season at a Time, exclusively for listeners of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast. Click here, enter your email, and a copy will be sent straight to your inbox.

The paperback and ebook are also available on Amazon.

About Amber Richardson

Amber Richardson is a grateful wife, mother, author, life coach, and speaker. A public servant by trade, she spent the majority of her career as the assistant principal of a public charter high school. However, a series of significant life events prompted her transition to the professions of her dreams – full-time mother and entrepreneur. She recently self-published her first book, Seasonal Syncing: A Woman’s Guide to Harmony and Wholeness One Season at a Time. She has a deep passion for and commitment to this work. Additionally, she loves being out in nature, getting her sweat on at Burn Boot Camp, writing, reading, connecting with friends and family, and spending quality time with her husband and their three children.

Connect with Amber

• Website here
• Instagram: @lifewithcoachamber

Related Episodes You’ll Love

Episode 253: Ready to Reinvent Yourself? A Conversation With Anita Rombough Anita’s conversation about reinvention, learning to listen to your inner voice, and finding the courage to go after a life that looks different from the one you’re in now – is a natural companion to everything Amber shares about seasons of transition. Listen here

Episode 231: Finding Your Purpose After Hitting Rock Bottom with Jacki Semerau Tait Jacki’s story of losing her home and income – and finding her way to a life she actually wanted – speaks directly to what Amber describes as a fall season: the big life events that shake everything loose and ask us to become someone new. Listen here

Episode 300: 300 Episodes – What I’ve Learned About Consistency, Confidence & Refusing to Quit This milestone episode is a reflection on what it actually takes to keep going through every season – the hard ones, the quiet ones, and the ones that looked like nothing from the outside but were building something real underneath. Listen here

Let’s Keep This Conversation Going

If you’re in a season of your business that feels harder than it “should” – or if you’re not quite sure what you need right now – let’s talk. I offer free 15-minute consultation calls. We’ll look at where you are and see if working together makes sense. Schedule your free 15-minute call here

Connect with Sarah

• Instagram: @thesarahwalton
• LinkedIn: Sarah Walton
• Free resources for you
• Join the Game On Girlfriend® community – subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube

Love This Episode?

If this conversation made you exhale a little – or helped you see where you are right now with a little more compassion – pass it along to a woman in your life who needs to hear it. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do for each other is say: you’re not behind. You’re just in a different season.

About Sarah Walton

Sarah Walton is a business coach and the host of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast. Her mission is simple: to put more money in the hands of more women. She helps women entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout – working through both the mindset and the strategy sides of growth. Because when women have more financial power, they don’t just keep it – they use it to take care of their families, support their communities, and build something bigger than themselves. Through her programs – including the Abundance Academy and The Art of Receiving – along with her online courses and one-on-one coaching, Sarah works with women who are ready to build profitable businesses and use that financial power to make a real difference in the world around them.

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