Welcoming Winter

This morning my 5:30am walk with Ted was greeted by the first snowfall of the season. Last week Ted and I took our final bike ride of the year. The 10 day forecast does not have a single day over 40 degrees. The onset of Daylight Savings Time has me ready for bed by 6pm. After an abnormally warm fall, winter has finally arrived.

If you’re anything like me, this is by far the most challenging time of year for my mental health. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a real thing. My melancholy peaks in the darkness. For most of my adult life, drinking and eating disordered behaviors have been used to numb out these seasonal feelings of sadness. Earlier sunsets gave me an excuse to uncork a bottle of wine earlier in the day.

In order to bring a little extra light to this dark time of year, I started re-reading a book called Wintering written by Katherine May. May writes, “Plants and animals don’t fight winter: they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.”

I like the idea of welcoming this season instead of fighting it. Creating new routines helps me adapt. I have prepared by stocking my pantry with cocoa, herbal tea, and soup fixings. Instead of daily bike rides, I get to slow down, cocoon, and hibernate. Stringing twinkle lights all over the house brings a soft glow that saves me from total darkness.

This book talks about the importance of winter and the importance of our cyclical nature. Winter is an opportunity to gaze inward. It’s a time to cozy up with our emotions and deepest desires. It’s a season to indulge in extra rest and extra care. Sure, feeling blue will happen, but that doesn’t mean I need to run from it. Just because I feel sad doesn’t mean I am a sad story.

Choosing sobriety creates space to move through this difficult season with extreme gentleness. Winter offers us liminal space to inhabit. There’s no need to refuse it. There’s no need to pour liquid poison down my throat in order to survive. In my experience, drinking only made my sadness and darkness worse. It only made it harder to see the light.

“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again,” says May. This time of year is a reminder that nothing in life is permanent. Change is the only constant. Moving through this season in softness and grace is the only way forward. Eventually spring will arrive and the work of blooming will begin. But for now, I will welcome my doom and gloom with cozy candlelight and excessive self-comfort.

Progress.

Two of my other favorite books to read during winter are:

Bittersweet by Susan Cain

Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey