Squeeze Me Like a Nut-Milk Bag

This is a difficult time of year for me. I know I am not alone in this. So many of us in the Northern Hemisphere are sensitive to seasonal changes and reduced light. So many of us are carrying burdens heavier than we’d like.

Days get shorter, weather colder, skies grayer, leaves sparser, landscape browner, ground muckier, I mean, what’s to love?

In the mothering department; the kids don’t play outside for long. The noise and mess inside increases. Closer proximity creates sibling rivalry. Dirt and leaves are tracked through the house. Shoes are exchanged for Wellie boots. Suddenly I’m keeping track of gloves, foot wear, and splash-pants that were non-existent just a few weeks before.

The central heating is on. Germs get circulated. My hubbie’s asthma triggers and he can’t breathe properly for a few months. Vitamin D stores wain, germs run rampant. Aye, aye, aye!

Oh and the snow-fall. You know the ones when the little people insist on playing outside for a full 90 seconds. The 7 minutes of outer wear application, mitten location, and boot shoving gives way to a full 90 seconds (sometimes 5 minutes) of outdoor play before someone has to come in and use the toilet. Melting snow is everywhere. And the outdoor play is over.

Often in this season I feel everything coming together, laying down on top of me and squeezing me like a nut-milk bag. It’s a really hard time of year. It was in this season that I quit my job and sold my company. And this is the season I am most vulnerable to spiral into depression. Everything I don’t like about me and my life seems to be magnified during October, November and December. Things that seemed promising in early September can now turn on their head and seem pointless.

And when I pull my head out for long enough, I see others dealing with exactly the same.

In the summer-time, everything is shiny. It’s easy to gloss over imperfections and put off changes for another more uncomfortable time. Summer makes it easier to look out than in. But when Autumn arrives I am forced to retreat inside of my house, and my spirit. It pushes me to either explode or grow. The weight of the season puts the magnifying glass on it all. I see more clearly what I want to pluck out, and what I want to add in. It begins to hurt more to stay the same than it does to make changes. This is the time of year when plans are hatched. I usually yield and look forward. I vision for spring and plot for a fruitful next year. And I also surrender, a little bit, to whatever seems pointless.

The spirit of the season is calling us to trudge onward. I have a few seeds of inspiration in my back pocket. And my guess is that so do you. I invite you to sew them along with me. And while we wait for seedlings, I’ll do my best to surrender to the darkness for now, knowing deeply that the pointless will become promising again. I’ll embrace my family and my endless blessings as we dive into the vortex of the Holiday season.