What Grows in Winter

32: Turning inward

Welcome back to The FLARE! Everyone is sharing their thoughts on the new year and while there’s a swell of optimism, it has in the past, brought me melancholy. I’ve slowly been reframing my idea of New Years’ and winter.

I’ve started seeing this season as a loop. It’s the way your child lights up to see you, their heart bursting with relief when you stroll through the door. In those moments, you feel connected and whole. It’s the blank stare months later, when they almost want to know what you’re doing there. You’re a curiosity and they return to their tiny world with renewed interest. A part of you sinks low, distressed at the fact you might be losing them, but they are developing in those moments and their needs do not involve you. Soon though, they creep back, with shorter and shorter intervals between your arrival and their spirited greetings, until you’re practically tackled on the door’s threshold.  They spout rapid-fire stories of the latest playground drama or simply bury their heads in your breast and want to be held.

The earth does not know it’s a new year. Bare branches still grope gray skies. Life is churning in slow motion below the topsoil and lake ice caps. Faced with a still landscape, I think of the loop. I must think that I am not the center, but the periphery. The earth has lowered his gaze, sitting quietly, heedless of me and my trouble. So, while my child faces away, I have to occupy myself. I do my work. This is the time for introspection, for reading, for bubble baths, and silence. It is a time to wade through with patience and capture what the season shows me.

Ways I've captured winter through the years

Winter is a strange time to renew and yet we march toward the flip of the calendar determined to change even as nothing else really does. Resolutions often fail, so I no longer make them. What I do now is stack the first few months of the year with activities and tasks to help overcome the dark afternoons and persistent feelings of disconnection. I wrote a list of how I intend to care for myself physically, emotionally, psychologically, and financially. They’re achievable goals, just things like choosing myself (which can take many forms), taking walks, and prioritizing sleep. Each time I make a tick mark in favor of better health and there is always permission for a next time. There is no failure, only brief setbacks where I always have a way forward.

We can choose not to have unreasonable expectations of success or feel we’ve failed when the first two weeks shape up to be more of the same. We don’t have to pressure ourselves into creating a version of ourselves that didn’t exist last year. It is worth doing internal work, of asking how best to care ourselves so we can emerge renewed at any time, not just at the ball drop. Approaching this part of the loop means remembering the year is full of possibilities and this is only the start. We have not failed if this month or next does not go according to plan.

I picked up this book mainly because of the title. Another goal for the year is allowing myself to feel grief. I often pack it away and keep going. There’s no time to cry, only time to get things done. Just when I think I’ve reached the threshold on my pressure valve, I create a new set point. Soon I surpass it and create still another chamber for the pressure to build. But grief makes for massive leaks and that emotional wreckage is damaging.

Hopefully the book provides some much needed meditation on the state of the heart, body, and mind. All need each other and are connected. All need release.

How will you care for yourself this year?

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What’s next?

• Delving into the work of Mac Miller

• Reflections on world-building

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