Bringing Mae Flowers

If I were a season I’d be winter.

Not just because I was born in December, and not because physical appearance can only be described as “snowy”. It’s not anything so obvious and concrete. The connection is more of a feeling beyond reason. I don’t know if I can say that winter is my favorite season, but It is the season I understand the best. Maybe it’s because I had to work so hard to appreciate it.

Until recently, I hated winter.

I’ve written posts on this blog about my Seasonal Affective Disorder. I wrote about how the long gray months sap my energy. How the long dark hours fill my head with dark thoughts, and how the cold settles in my bones and make my hands ache until I cry in pain. Since moving to Utah 15 years ago, winter has been a dark time for me both literally and figuratively. I used to give into the darkness, becoming a shadow of myself until Spring, until a couple years ago.

I decided to learn to love winter.

As autumn came to a close in November of 2023, I felt the cold closing in. But instead of giving in and hiding away until the frost thawed, I decided to take a different approach I had picked up a book from my local bookshop called Winterlust: Finding Beauty in the Fiercest Season. Armed with a new book, and a new anti-depressant prescription, I braced myself for the season. I won’t lie and say that single book and some medication changed my life, but it was the start of a journey toward appreciating the season. Another book I read the following winter, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat In Difficult Times. The first book showed me where to find the physical beauty in the season. The second showed me where to find the metaphysical beauty.

I’m a reflective person by nature.

As someone with bipolar disorder, I always felt the fight of light and dark, calm and storm, sadness and madness inside. Near constant self-reflection was my way of of keeping balance in my life even before my diagnosis. And after studying winter to two seasons I came to the realization that winter was the perfect representation of this struggle. Winter is a season of contrast: white snowy days against dark polar nights, evergreen trees thriving while the world around it sleeps, warm homey fires against the cold bitter outdoors. Winter is also a season of reflection: the cold offering a chance to retreat indoors, the quiet offering an opportunity to think, and the darkness encouraging reset for the growth to come when your energy returns.

I feel the same way about winter as I feel about myself.

I no longer hate it, but I am learning to embrace it. I can’t control the weather and I can’t always control my emotions, but I can manage them both with practice and patience. The darkest time of year often reveals the darkest parts of my nature, by revealing those shadows I have an opportunity to heal them with the light and warmth I’ve worked hard to cultivate. There is beauty as well as harshness. There is light as well as darkness, and there is warmth to be found in the cold. It isn’t easy for me to love winter, just as it hasn’t been easy to love myself- but as I grow older I’m learning how to do both.