Let’s Talk Winter
When you find yourself in a long, dark winter, can you embrace what the season is trying to teach you? I can be stubborn so a ruptured appendix wasn’t enough to get my attention.
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I’m usually a go go-go type of person. I set goals for myself, and I take steps to reach those goals. I love it when Scott and I are busy and are on planes every few days, jetting off to locations to explore in between shoot days. But I found myself in a dark winter this year due to an unforeseen appendix problem and I’ve had to embrace the slowing down that comes with a winter season. Winter is a time of hibernation because the days are short and the air is cold. Our natural tendency is to curl up under cozy blankets to brace ourselves from the chill. I’ve accumulated a wardrobe of winter layers so venturing out in the cold isn’t as awful as it sounds. I love how the crisp air bites at my cheeks as I take my walks or runs in the Park. I know how important grounding is so even in frigid temps I have been known to pull off my shoes and socks and sit with my bare feet on the grass for a 5 minute meditation with my favorite Peloton instructors. I don’t know how to rest. I can be lazy on occasion but even those times include workouts and a constant chatter of the things I “should” be doing. I’m not good at slowing down and actually caring for my mind, body, and soul.
That’s usually about the time God says, if you don’t take the time to slow down I will get your attention another way. And because I am a stubborn, hello Capricorn, only child, I don’t usually listen the first time. So not only did I have the Waldorf and its subsequent surgery to contend with, but I’ve been dealing with a frozen shoulder and as if that weren’t enough, my baby tooth finally gave up after 53 years of valiant service. All of those factors combined have made me want to crawl into my bed, pull the covers up over my head, and not come out until the first buds of spring herald a change in seasons. I haven’t because that is not how I’m wired but I am taking the time to truly care for my body and help it heal from the physical as well as the mental trauma of the last few months.
I have to daily remind myself that I am healing. I have to actively slow down and remind myself that not only did I have holes in my abdomen but I also had a hole in my mouth. I had to walk slower, I had to chew slower, I had to move slower, I had to live slower. I am not sure what I was always in such a rush for anyway. I was born in winter, you would think I would relish this season. It’s never too late to learn something new and I’m learning to embrace winter and the role it plays in the seasons of life. I found that slowing down made me do everything with more intention. I had to carefully put food in my mouth and chew mindfully, so as not to disturb the stitches and bone graft and it made me savor the meals a little more. The rich, red wine gravy with melt in your mouth so you don’t have to chew much, chunks of seared beef, tender carrots, and pearl onions. The only recipe that Scott follows to a T because it’s Julia. I had to slow the pace of my morning walks so as not to disturb the stitches in my abdomen and it made me savor the visual feast the Park offers every morning. A myriad of dogs dressed in their winter best with sweaters and booties and quilted jackets, emblazoned with double C’s frolicking in the freshly laid snow, wishing they had the joint rotation of their biped friends to be able to make snow angels.
I picked up a book aptly titled Wintering by Katherine May,* hoping it would give me tools to navigate this season of healing that required my rest and retreat as the cover promised. While it was a beautifully written book and opened with her husband’s appendix rupturing, which I found incredibly ironic, it was more memoir and less guidebook than I was hoping for. So I’m learning to move through this season of my dormancy on my own accord. “Wintering” is a concept, May defines as “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 to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.” While I don’t often think of winter as a sad season, with all the festivities and joy the holidays and my birthday usually bring, this year was different. While I didn’t necessarily embrace the sadness, I had more time to let it move through me and not ignore it as I might usually do. I allowed tears to flow that I would normally wall up and gather my reserves of strength to keep at bay. I just didn’t have the energy or the inclination to mask my feelings. I cried for fear of the unknown on a stretcher in the ER when the sweet young surgeon confirmed I had appendicitis and would probably need surgery. I cried from exhaustion and a disdain for needles at 3 in the morning on a stretcher in the hallway of the surgical floor when the sweet tech drew my blood for the umpteenth time in four days. I cried when I reached for the light switch next to the couch and my very angry shoulder caught me and almost made me throw up the searing pain down my arm was so sharp, so tired of everything hurting. I cried for loss when Dr. Debbie and I agreed that the best course of action would be to remove my failing baby tooth before it broke off and created more problems in my jaw. I cried even harder when I went to the restroom for a breath before she numbed me up and took it out. The tears are fresh even now, just revisiting the events of the last few months.
In this Winter that I find myself in, I’m learning to let go of some things. I’m learning to embrace all of my feelings and not to try to be so “ok” all of the time. I’m learning that it’s ok to let tears fall whenever they want to. Would it be so bad to let all the things I feel just be? No judgment, no censoring, no trying to make others comfortable, no shame in being a fully emotional human being who isn’t numb to the sadness in life. Yeah, I think that is the lesson this health winter has been trying to teach me. So if you see me crying on the subway…mind your business, I’m going to be alright, I just need a good cry.
