Dark Days + White Flags
I haven’t been in this much (emotional) pain in a very, very long time.
Probably, as I told a friend while sobbing over my scramble at breakfast, ten years — since my divorce from my first husband, Drew.*
For the past six months, I’ve tried my very best to keep my side of the street clean and to choose + act with extreme deliberation. But things have gotten harder and worse everywhere I look.
Personally and professionally, I’ve been knocked on my ass more than a few times this year.
Someone I love like a father has sliced me neatly in half.
A friend who called me her sister drew a bright line around herself and it’s clear that I’m on the outside.
Although I’m deeply grateful for Little Dipper’s new studio inside LaFontsee Galleries, it’s been quite a project getting a space in an older building furnished + functional. Settling in and rooting down in our new space has been challenging for me as I’ve navigated various hurdles and felt consumed by the outstanding minutia that I haven’t had the energy or resources to address.
The 2024 election wrecked me and, I suspect, many others. Hours organizing and persuading and praying and hoping and offering assistance + information. And then the result, like a cinderblock to the solar plexus. Something like a mixture of surprise and confusion followed quickly by despair.
When talking with my friend over breakfast this morning, I initially referred to what I’m planning as a “hibernation.” But that’s not accurate.
Hibernation conjures up thoughts of steaming mugs of cocoa, candles burning in every corner, thick quilts smelling of lavender + cedar wood, bread baking in the oven, and a total cessation of labor and obligation. That is not this.
This is something plainer and grimmer, more emergent and less tidy. Dark in a way that feels cavernous and echoey.
Lately, I feel like a wedge of citrus squeezed dry. A rope worn beyond repair or usefulness. A barren fruit tree, scorched by too much sun and not enough rain, untended and unnoticed.
In my worse moments, I feel pinched and small. Deeply aware of my own fragility — life takes on an edgy staccato quality and my entire self becomes a single raw nerve, throbbing and inflamed.
So I’ve decided to convalesce with a season of “retreat” this winter.
A three-month escape to Costa Rica is, for better or worse, not the plan.
Beginning on the winter solstice — December 21 — I plan to engage in a structured withdrawal and simplification.
I know that there are things that I need to leave behind in this season…
News consumption
Social media
Relational outflows that aren’t being offset by relational inflows
I know that there are things that need to shrink in scope + presence for this season…
Alcohol consumption (no judgment, but I’ve been averaging two bottles of wine a week and that isn’t ideal for me)
Phone use for entertainment and disassociation
Saying yes to requests that would put me over capacity
And I know that there are things that need to increase and show up during this season…
Consistency with self-nourishment, both in terms of food + meals and in terms of sleep + rest
Structure in my lap swim practice
Practical devotion to curiosity and the great mystery via reading
Self-liberation and meaning-making via writing
Creativity and “making” of various kinds
I’m also turning, along with many others, to Katherine May’s book “Wintering” for wisdom and solace.
“Wintering,” according to Katherine, “is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, side-lined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.”
Yes, my heart groans. I am falling, headlong and thrashing, into my own wintering.
Blessedly, Katherine offers the following reassurance for those of us whose brains have been well and truly pickled by capitalism and patriarchy:
“We must stop believing that these times in our lives are somehow silly, a failure of nerve, a lack of willpower. We must stop trying to ignore them or dispose of them. They are real, and they are asking something of us. We must learn to invite the winter in.”
I’m finding that I can no longer ignore and push past the pain, exhaustion, and brittleness.
So I’ve decided to try to surrender to this season. To embrace the withdrawal, the subsistence, the paring down, the narrowed focus, the quiet and the solitude, the absence and the liminality.
If any of this sounds familiar or if you’re also trying to somehow survive a personal and societal shitstorm simultaneously, swing back by the journal in a week or two. I plan to drop a bit more details on the “what” and the “how” of my retreat in my next journal entry.
XOXO,
Kate
* name has been changed.