If everything feels hard right now, you’re not alone.
We’re all living in this pandemic with a lot of unknowns.
It can feel like being in a tunnel with barely any light peaking through.
For some of us, it’s a time of our greatest life test-will we have enough perseverance and resilience to see our dreams through?
It’s February and easy to feel like all the hope we had in 2020 is beginning to fade in the reality of what is now our real life. Masks are normal. No vacations are normal. Kids being at home are normal.
Life can feel like being imprisoned to the confines of our front door.
We’re all faced with moments like these. The unique thing is we’re all feeling it together, right now at this moment. No matter what social media displays, no matter what your aunt will tell you about seeing the sunshine in the dark of winter, what you are experiencing is normal.
We’re all struggling in some way.
The hope rides in the tests that challenge like these bring. The hope lies in our human ability to transform. Life was never meant to be easy. We were never meant to walk this earth to be comfortable. This moment is created for you, to help you to become the person you were meant to be.
In Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May names this time as “wintering,” and describes our dysfunctional relationship with it as a society. Instead of embracing winter as another beautiful and necessary season, we fight against it.
“The times we fall out of sync with everyday life remain taboo. We’re not raised to recognise wintering or to acknowledge its inevitability. Instead, we tend to see it as a humiliation, something that should be hidden from view lest we shock the world too greatly. We put on a brave public face and grieve politely; we pretend not to see other people’s pain. We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we’ve made a secret of an entirely ordinary process and thereby given those who endure it a pariah status, forcing them to drop out of everyday life in order to conceal their failure. Yet we do this at a great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.”
-Katherine May
We need to take care of ourselves during this time. To practice a type of nourishing our soul, a warming of our internal light is the self-care ritual that can help protect us from burning out. And May says prevents us from hardening our soul.
This is why cancer survivors and others who have lost children or spouses often transform their stories into points of inspiration. Charities, fundraisers, pursuing a calling to write a book, being kinder. These are all ways they used a heartbreaking experience to change their lives and consequently change others.
Winter does that. Heartbreak. Grief. Compassion. It’s only hardship that grows love and a healing heart. Surviving difficulty gives us the confidence to do hard things and reminds us that the most important thing is to love one another.
Remember this as you walk through the difficult path you are on. Remember there is always a reason for why you are there, that you are never alone, and just because you don’t know the answers right now, doesn’t mean it won’t be clear tomorrow.
Love,
Brandi