Wintering & Melancholic Joy
The winter months are hard for us all. As the grounds thaws and nature withdraws there is an undulating abundance of dark, wet cloudy days and windy long nights. These storms ravage our minds, thoughts turn foggy, grey, and gloomy; memories and fears are uprooted, and nights are long, lonely, and dark. As other animals hibernate, plants decompose and leaves fall, winter is a time for us too, to rest, slow down, descend, go within. Winter is a time of darkness, of stillness, composting and letting go. As the coldness outside descends upon us, it offers an opportunity to turn in, to find the warmth of our inner spirit, our inner light, our heart; to tend to and warm ourselves on the fire within. Winter is a time of death. A turning point. A threshold. Time to recalibrate. Where have we been and where are we going? What can we offer to the fire to feed the flames for the year ahead? Winter gatherings can offer a sense of reprieve for some but for many these ‘celebrations’ create further distress due to eco anxiety, family estrangements, bereavements, financial difficulties, fraught relationships, expectations, and trauma.
“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. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”
― Katherine May
Despite all this, I enjoy winter. I can find the brightness of summer a bit too exposing and demanding. I find that winter gives my melancholy permission to be, which can feel like a relief sometimes. There is a collective tendency to distract or drag us away from melancholic living. A quick google search on melancholy is abundant with articles and blog posts about how to live a happier life, how to get your melancholic friend or partner to think positive thoughts and even…how to treat melancholy with pharmaceuticals and electronic-compulsive therapy. However, in my greatest moments of happiness there is a deep sense of melancholy. Melancholy reminds me of the temporary nature of everything, not only is everything and everyone as I know them right now going to die but this moment will too, and this and this. All we ever experience are moments in time, and this is an intensely painful and ecstatic realisation. Melancholy reminds us to take notice, to pause time, to stay in these moments just a little longer. Melancholy is my medicine, my medicine for a full life, for truth, love, wonder, awe, and pain. Melancholy is my loyal companion. Not here to darken my days but to direct me to the light.