Photographer of the woman is unknown but the digital collage is my own original work. If you know who the photographer is, let me know and I’ll credit them.
As summer simmered down into a cool autumn, I knew I was screwed. Somehow the impending winter felt as ominous as it did in Game of Thrones.
Winter is coming, my mind would replay that phrase over and over, running across the thought like I could somehow stop it from arriving.
This isn’t healthy, I realized. I’m not from the Midwest, but I’ve lived here almost all my life. There’s an attachment to the calm familiarity and also a visceral disdain. I’ve thought about moving so many times, but I always come back to how much I love it here. Yes, 5 months of winter is always going to be hard for me, but it’s almost like a part of me appreciates how hard it is to live here. It’s like the famed “Dark night of the soul” or a “decent into the underworld,” before reemergence.
As darkness envelopes me earlier and earlier each day, I can’t help but feel the sun rays get further and further. I decent deeper into darkness, myself and the unknown. Sometimes it’s easier to focus on the lack of vitality from Mr. Sun….
But I knew that this winter had to be different. As much of the Midwest recedes into hibernation, I think it’s an opportunity to slow down. It’s funny because that’s the message of the season, but it’s also the message for all of 2023. We’re all being asked to slow down.
Slow down our consumerism even in the midst of one of the most capitalistic holiday of the year. To be fair the economy is also necessitating it, but you’d be foolish not to listen. We often don’t get to chose when we slow down. The season ushers us into that next phase.
My solution to all of this impending frigidity was to turn inwards. What could I do to find the warmth I needed inside of myself, especially as world events got even bleaker. It would be so much easier to give into the dissolution of my soul, to get lost in the lack of meaning, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t indulge in that process a little bit.
The dark night of the soul refers to the spiritual and psychological process of wrestling with meaning. Of course if you’re wrestling with meaning, your old paradigms are shifting, and what felt comforting before no longer works to console you.
Scary right?
That puts you in direct contact with the unknown. You’re formless and restlessness, and apt to turn away from everything you knew in a desperate bid to restructure. This is a process as old as time and in a way, I think everyone goes through it in the winter months. New years resolutions usually embody our well meaning selves as we try to recommit to our inner yearnings and goals.
Restructuring is hard.
It’s also wild that we Mid-westerners try to do it in the middle of winter. I don’t have a lot of luck with resolutions so that wasn’t my easy fix. Instead I went on another break from alcohol and weed (I had been using weed daily for a year and a half at that point). I cleared my schedule of distraction and focused on my chosen family. I only prioritized people who would breath new life into me.
I hosted a self care party, I gathered all the vitamins I could, and I scheduled plenty of time for introspection. For me this journey within, this dark night of the soul, felt less scary when I intentionally directed the process.
Control is a fickle thing because we very seldom have it firmly in grasp, but intention is a pathway to self control, the only form of control we ever really have. I also found that accomplishments are like a warm blanket of sorts, and the achievement of putting new self care practices into place and executing them has been comforting.
My thought process was this: if I can do hard things, I can get through this winter. The Midwesterner in me is up for the challenge.
This winter I’ve also been indulging in rendezvous with my clients. Skin to skin contact, meaningful glances and invigorating energy exchanges, defiantly stand up to the bone chilling windchill like a champ (lots of alliteration I know).
I want to thank each and every one of the souls who have kept me warm during my dark night of the soul.