Wintering Well: A Different Approach to Seasonal Sadness
As we approach the long-awaited day of March 8th - where we collectively sacrifice an hour of sleep in exchange for extended sunlight - I find myself reflective of how we engage with this cold, dark season called Winter. In fact, the original angle from which I anticipated approaching this piece was a “how to” on beating the winter blues. And yet, is that actually the invitation of winter? To white-knuckle our way through it, to biohack or strategize away its continuous prompts to slow, to prune, to notice?
In her book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May writes, “Plants and animals don’t fight the 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... [knowing] winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
Could it be that my very avoidance of winter - my proclivity toward recreating summertime - is the very source of suffering during these months, rather than the months themselves? What if the key to thriving in this season is to align with it, rather than to ask it to be something entirely different?
Replacing the caffeinated coffee with peppermint tea.
My calendar less full and my journal less empty.
Rather than resisting my sadness, what if I cozied up to it with curiosity - asking questions as I would a new friend, or better yet, an old friend with whom I’ve lost touch? Could the way of “beating” the winter blues actually be befriending them? Seeing them as a temporal gift of deeper insight and understanding of self?
In my work as a therapist, I often see how this season amplifies loneliness, grief, and exhaustion. I think so much of our suffering emerges not from sadness itself, but from our resistance to it. If we're honest, we don't normally like sadness. It's uncomfortable. Our tolerance for it is often elementary at best.
May continues, “If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can.”
If this is true, then how might we grow 1% more comfortable in doing so in these remaining weeks of winter?
Here are a few practical ways to do just that, listed from simplest to most complex:
1. Acknowledge / Name It
The avoidance of an emotion can - and often does - intensify the anxiety that surrounds it. By simply naming, “I am feeling sad right now,” we invite our mind and body into the here-and-now reality of our experience, rather than distracting ourselves from it. Even if this is all you practice the rest of winter - naming in honesty your sadness, resisting the urge to bypass it with artificial or inflated joy - that is a 1% shift with tremendous payoff.
2. Sit with It
In DBT, there is a skill called “Ride the Wave.” Evoking the image of surfing, this skill is about riding the emotional wave of an emotion, acknowledging its temporary nature rather than using maladaptive coping strategies to bypass it too quickly or hold onto it too tightly. Like surfers, it will take time to learn how to surf the waves of our emotions. However, this is an incredibly helpful tool for emotions that feel scary or have been exiled: “I don’t enjoy how this feels, but I know it won’t last forever. I will feel it and ride the wave, knowing this too shall pass.”
3. Explore It
Emotions, while given artificial PR by mankind, are ultimately neutral messengers. Said another way, there are no bad emotions - they are informative, inviting us into deeper awareness of ourselves. Two practical ways to get to know their messages more: journaling and sharing with a trusted friend or family member.
4. Move Your Body Gently
Walks, yoga, or gentle stretches are all incredible ways to move out of your head and into your body. We are a whole person, not just our frontal cortex. While intellectualizing our sadness is often more comfortable, it is equally important to notice and feel where sadness shows up in our body. These practices help increase bodily awareness, sharpening our ability to notice where sadness may be showing up embodied.
5. Befriend Tears
Many of us don’t have ready access to tears. That said, practicing the above skills may prompt physical reactions and releases we didn’t know we were capable of. If and when this occurs, allow them to come without judgment. If you remain unable, don’t meet that with criticism, but with compassion. Many of us have been indoctrinated with the belief that crying is weakness and thus have decades of built defenses around our tear ducts. Be kind to yourself - the goal is simply 1% growth in befriending sadness, befriending winter.
Of course, if your sadness feels unrelenting, overwhelming, or isolating, support matters. Wintering is not meant to be done alone.
May goes on to share that “[wintering] is a moment of intuition,” where we have the opportunity to do “those deeply unfashionable things - slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting.”
In these final months, weeks, even days of winter, may we slow our pace to notice where we, like so many, have attempted to replicate summer. And in that noticing, may we open our hands to winter’s invitation. May our sadness be a blessing to us - a friend we come to recognize each year as the sky grows dim - knowing even this is temporary. Even this shall pass. Springtime will come again.