Winter therapy

It’s been snowing non-stop for over twelve hours, everything is covered in a thick, soft white mantel, temperatures dropped almost 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) overnight. 

It’s beautiful. 

It’s also a little concerning for me from the practical viewpoint since tomorrow I have to drive to the airport to pick up my “host mom”, but that worry is only very small and at the back of my mind, so I’ll leave it there for now. 

This real winter here is one of the things I’m enjoying the most. It goes so well with my current need for solitude, for retreat, for focused writing, and for healing. Yes, “winter therapy”. 

When making my decision for this semester and planning my move here, I often tried to imagine what it would really be like, what my days here would look like, and I also just let my emotions surface, tried to capture my “gut feeling” about this move. And what often arose, spontaneously, was the image of, and longing for, walks in the snowy woods on my own. 

Now that I’m here, I’m also just enjoying the snow from the window or on a short walk alone around my neighborhood. What I needed is a real winter, something I haven’t had since moving to California six year ago and that I actually even fled from (about a decade ago). 

I spent all of my childhood, teenage & young-adult years in cities where there were all four seasons, all very clear, each with their beauties and each with their function or purpose for our bodies. Then, about a decade ago, I spent three years in a country where winters were beautiful but far too long, summers too short, and spring & autumn were absolutely gorgeous but also too short. So basically I got too much winter. But that wasn’t the only — or the real — problem. The real problem was the partner with whom I was together back then; and now my own personal relationship with wintertime, with cold snowy winters like I had in the first 25 years of my life, needs to be healed.

That’s one of the profound things I’m doing here now: I’m healing. I’m healing those broken winters that wouldn’t have been so cold if I had been with a compatible partner or on my own. I’m healing wintertime memories from my childhood and teenage years with my family of origin back in Europe. I’m making connection again with parts of me that disappeared, or fell asleep or were put on hold, while I was enjoying the balmy, temperate climate of coastal California (which had its own profound healing purposes for me, as well — at least for a while). 

And I’m also healing just by enjoying all the aspects of real winter: the shorter days; the cold outside; the self-care that maybe comes more spontaneously from having to put up with more rigid conditions; the slower pace of life. 

Ideally, to be really well, I need all four seasons, well marked with distinct rhythms: I need a real winter to slow down, almost to hibernate, to be cozy, to reflect, to rest; spring awakes me again, literally, in all senses; then, I need a hot summer to feel passionately alive, to sweat it out, to feel the heat of the sun beating down on me, while maybe even relaxing and basking in the sun sometimes; and autumn to slowly unwind, to focus back in on work and goals again, to enjoy some mild temperatures, more balanced emotions, and beautiful colors. 

I realize these sound like “first world problems” and I feel a bit spoilt while writing this; but the way I mean that I need these different seasons with everything each seasons brings is that my body actually needs them in a very physical way — it’s the animal in me that needs these distinct seasonal rhythms, not just the rational part of me. 

And now, at this time of year, now is time for my body to soak in real winter! And in this particular juncture of my life, this snowy winter here also has an additional, profound meaning or purpose for me: emotional healing.