Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Sometimes we will have to name our personal winters, and the words will feel barbed in our throats: grief, rejection, depression, illness. Shame, failure, despair.

cyclical.

The Gaelic festival of Imbolc is held on the first day of February, and is associated with dusting away the cobwebs that have grown in the corners during the darkest months.

Sometimes the best response to our howls of anguish is the honest one. We need friends who wince along with our pain, who tolerate our gloom, and who allow us to be weak for a while when we’re finding our feet again. We need people who acknowledge that we can’t always hang on. That sometimes everything breaks.

A great deal of life will always suck. There will be moments when we’re riding high and moments when we can’t bear to get out of bed. Both are normal. Both in fact require a little perspective.

We’re urged to stop sweating the small stuff, yet we’re chronically anxious. I often wonder if these are just normal feelings that become monstrous when they’re denied.

If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.

I’m beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. I would never dream of suggesting that we should wallow in misery or shrink from doing everything we can to alleviate it, but I do think it’s instructive.

While we may no longer see depression as a failure, we expect you to spin it into something meaningful pretty quick.