"Wintering 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 commit ourselves to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true feelings and needs felt keenly as a knife.'' - Katherine May, Wintering
Wintering is a strange concept as someone who has been told to suppress their
emotions as a child. I'm feeling my feelings now, trying to bee more open. Wintering has not been lost on me since I do feel sadness but not for myself. I feel sadness in a way that is empathetic and deep in my heart.
A person in one of my support groups offered volunteer work to support and essentially save a family in a war torn country and I both admire and feel a sense of happiness for this person. The healing from volunteering is great, and I feel sadness of the anxiety that prevented me from doing things over the holidays.
I do plan on traveling over mid January and the person I'm visiting had not been able to be fully vaccinated. I am, but I'm trying to limit my exposure to people to prevent exposure to my partner when I visit him. I do wear a mask in public and in cars too. Over the holidays I skipped outdoor holiday fairs and museums, but I did run my usual errands and masked along the way.
At home I've been baking, spending time with mom and the cat, and writing new stories and poetry. In addition, We do tend to party a little too hard between Christmas and New Year's so I bet I'm in step with everyone else.
I've also been countering this behavior with working out and playing with indoor pink office decor. I have new technical pencils here that I got from Amazon that are smooth and come with a separate eraser set. They also come with a bunch of refills and a holding case. I love them and they come in an array of muted pastel colors that go with my style. Of course I'm using the pink one.
