Winter is approaching. And, without a doubt, B.C. winters are hard for a lot of people. Something about the clouds rolling in and the encroachment of a clingy, damp cold ushers forth the shadowy parts of ourselves. They loom like icicles overhead.
There’s a little spookiness in the winter, like something thick and heavy and hurting inhabiting the emptiness. It creeps in. We take the winter in us and try to be warm. Winter demands. We falter: the shutdown, the isolation, the distance, a blizzard, caught up in our own heads, unable to say what is wrong and unable to think that anybody actually wants to listen.
It’s a lonely season, people say. Winter is cold. Winter is known for the death of things. In winter, old pain peels back. New pain unheals.
A client said to me yesterday, “I can’t explain it, but I feel like everyone sees it on me. Something shifting. Something so subtle. One day I come home and I am sporting my winter colours. I spend the autumn spreading out my leaves, trying to mix the best parts of myself into everything so that when winter comes, I am ready.” There aren’t enough books on how to love someone with seasonal affective disorder (*major depressive disorder with seasonal pattern). It can be difficult to know how to help people to find their way in out of the cold.
Because so many of the people that I know are powerfully impacted by the changes in seasons, I have found that, as temperatures begin to drop, it is imperative to build hearths wherever and however we can, to stoke warmth, to spread jokes and stories and love notes and books, to foster presence and closeness, to share—a poem or a cake. To light candles, buy a sunlamp. Cuddle more, understanding that, for some, sex drive will decrease and lethargy will increase. Drink wine, kiss, relax. Take vitamin D, remind everyone else to take vitamin D. See a psychiatrist. Tell people that you are in love with how they look in boots and mittens. Breathe deeply. Learn to take winter’s silence for a moment before remembering the rebirth of spring, when we start thawing.
For in the winter, love glows.
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