It's a new year and I'm squelching through the mud in the field: it feels like a far too obvious metaphor that the events of last year are still clinging to my boot soles.
It's been a few years since I made the conscious decision to stop putting pressure on myself during this time of year. It's a conversation that's happening across social media platforms just now: that we all feel that pressure to become our best selves by hitting the gym, or saving for that holiday, or doing that massive project that's been waiting on some dedicated time. It can be healthy to have goals to anchor us and keep us moving, but it’s equally healthy for us to stop, ease-up and be kind to ourselves in this time of natural hibernation. To send out gratitude, even when it’s hard.
I’ve been coming to see what’s been an essential anchor for me in past years—the narrative we prescribe to ourselves through the seasons and the wheel of the year—as smaller weaves in the larger fabric of life, rather than defining chapters within themselves. It's all part of one endless, infinite loop. A pulsing figure of eight tipped on it’s side, a ceaseless exchange and transfer and continuation of energy.
It's helped me to accept that events in my life can’t be tied off in neat little compartments; that they bleed back and forward, into past, present and future. Painful things can be behind me, but it doesn’t mean they don’t still hurt, or impact me. In the past I would have been tempted to try leave it there, which can be very useful, in terms of helping us to move on and redefine ourselves, what we want and need. At this moment however it’s healthier for me to feel that the awful event of losing my dad last year is still not too far behind me.
I will face the anniversary of his death in March, a year that’s been both impossibly fast and slow all at once. A year of firsts. We just about managed to make something of Christmas, difficult and odd as it was. But it’s too soon to bundle it all up and not look back. It also feels like an insult to him, to the love we all shared, after all, love doesn’t stop just because life does. More than that, grief is taking up so much space that I want to allow myself to feel it, to process it.
I haven’t been out on my walks as much as I wanted these last few weeks, with the weather being vile—uncharacteristically for Edinburgh which usually delivers a nice cold, clear winter, for the most part. At least until the storms arrive on this side of the season. I’ve also been wading through treacle with grief, depression, unusually high anxiety and caring roles, both for my mother and my own self. Nature being my go-to antidote, it sucks when it’s unavailable to me (and no, I’m not hardy enough to bundle on the Gore-Tex and go out, for me it’s about space and feeding all my senses: torrential rain and sleet hammering on plastic over my ears just don’t deliver).
There have been pockets of stillness and magic amongst the hustle and bustle of festivities; a few stolen, frost-bitten days that hit the reset button, if only for a day or so. Hours spent with kindred souls, sharing our light and shadows by the glow of the tree and fairy-lights, wandering around the Christmas Market, nose-pinked and wine-warmed. My husband and I took my sister and mother down to London in early December which took a lot of planning, time and energy, but was worth it for the space it gave us all, to soak up the Christmas spirit and have some fun. The Christmas lights there are second to none, and when we turned onto Carnaby Street on our evening stroll, it felt something like stardust for this space-loving-kid who finds her dad in the stars. (Incidentally, I did actually see stardust, literal, real stardust, at the Natural History Museum. A faint whisp of greyish powder in the bottom of a tiny vial, made from microscopic diamonds that formed around dying stars, long before our solar system was born. The most ancient thing I’ll ever see. I’m pretty sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere).
The natural thing for me is to hibernate in winter. I just cannot keep myself awake. I think a lot of people relate to that. It's a feeling of total stupor and sluggishness that's pretty much impossible to get on top of. I have a powerful SAD lamp which has really helped me these last couple of years, but I’ve not been at my desk so much since October, and it hasn’t occurred to me to bring it to wherever I am to give myself a blast. I’ve been making the effort to get out again now the weather’s improved. I’ve just been letting myself need the quiet and the still. I, along with most disabled or neurodivergent people, tend to hold myself against a pretty impossible standard. A lifetime of conditioning to believe that we are less, worth less, as humans, because of our impacted productivity and output has done a number on us, and when our bodies and minds are screaming for us to just stop, we tend to keep pushing. At least that’s my default. So in line with this understanding, I am consciously taking daily action towards rest. Whether it’s reading for an hour, watching a video on YouTube, snuggling my cat, or just now, recording this transcript with my feet five-inches deep in congealed mud, determined to find a way through, before retreating home again.
It’s not always easy, and I’m working hard on learning to draw boundaries, see where I can let go of control. It feels alien, unnerving, but an utterly essential part of being.
How do you rest? What does this look like for you today? Does any of this chime with you? X