Surviving Winter: Hygge, Uitwaaien, and Other Tools
Dear friends,
How are you in these cold and blustery winter weeks?
As I write this, we’re all packed into our house for a snow day. I can hear sleet drumming against the windows and ground outside as I sit in bed alone; it’s 10:00 A.M., and I’ve only been up to heat my coffee.
In the days leading up to this forced hibernation, I felt an unpleasant mix of anxiety and boredom. Work is always slow in the holiday season, then omicron hit, and then a snowstorm. Many events have been cancelled or rescheduled for later.
During the day, I spend a lot of time at home, alone, guarding against the cold. I have my hygge-based strategies for coping. My heated blankets, warm socks, burning candles, and leisurely homecooked meals. Sometimes it’s enough.
Other times, the season hooks something inside me: a stark, existential loneliness; a reminder of loss; a vague hopelessness. At these times, I need more.
In Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, he talks about the winter seasons of our lives. He says that the starkness of winter, “clears the landscape, however brutally” and that this clearing can allow us to see truth—if we’re willing to get out in it.
In my own life recently, it is stepping out into the cold—however unwelcoming—that helps me find balance. This is another Dutch practice, uitwaaien, which can be translated to a “walk in the wind” that helps us reset and find rejuvenation.
On days when I feel an anxious listlessness creep over me, I pack on my warmest clothes and walk into the prickling cold. Outside, the vastness helps me to breathe easily again. I need this reconnection to the natural world.
The last few years, our relationship to nature as a family has become essential, too. Craving that connection, we spent our first winter weekend at our cabin last month. I was afraid of the cold. My impulse was to bundle up and stay next to the bonfire outside while we waited four hours for the woodburning stove to move the temperature from below 30 to just over 65 degrees.
The next day, however, I gave in to my 11-year-olds pleas to sled down our steep, pine-dotted hills. Eventually, I had to take off my coat because I was so warm. It was invigorating. In the end, I thanked him for the adventure.
I’m reading the book Wintering by Katherine May, and in it she talks about the strengths and limitations of our tools and preparation for these cold, dark seasons.
We can freeze soups and salt walkways. We can gather our gear before we step out into the cold. But no matter the preparation, our winters will challenge us. They will bring us to the bare ground of ourselves.
So here I am in my own winter; it’s a season of discernment. I don’t know the balance between warmth and comfort, cold and rejuvenation, and this third element— allowing the challenge to have me and seeing where I go. However, I share all of this because I know that we are facing this season of cold together, and there’s comfort in sharing our stories.
(Virtual) Hugs,
Brandi
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