Winterizing

3 days ago

6 min read

This morning I walked outside to do chores in shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt and immediately questioned every decision that led me to not putting on my wash pants. It was chilly. Not cold cold. Not frozen-water-bucket, why-do-I-own-horses cold. Just enough of a chill to make you suck your shoulders up toward your ears and think, Ope. Fall is coming.

And listen, I am 100% ready. Less sweating. LESS MOSQUITOES. Hoodies. Vests. Blankets. Crisp mornings. Windows cracked open. Horses feeling a little friskier. Coffee actually tasting appropriate again instead of drinking something 190 degrees while it’s 97 degrees outside because apparently some of us refuse to give up hot coffee even when we’re actively melting.

Bring. It. On.

But autumn is a sneaky little thing, because while we’re all celebrating pumpkins and bonfires and finally being able to walk outside without getting carried away by mosquitoes, something else is happening. The sun starts clocking out early. Every evening it seems to leave about two minutes sooner, and pretty soon you’re standing outside at 6:47 p.m. thinking, How in the hell is it already dark?

Then your brain sees darkness and starts whispering ridiculous things like, You know what sounds reasonable? Pajamas.

Sir. It is 7:03. We still have responsibilities.

And this is the part of fall that I think we don’t talk about nearly as much as we talk about pumpkin spice and pretty leaves. Shorter days can be hard. Earlier this spring, I wrote about how badly I needed sunlight and how much better I feel when I can get outside, move around, work with horses, feel warmth on my skin, and see daylight after work. Now here we are, circling right back around.

Apparently, we can’t have everything.

We can have fewer mosquitoes, but the sun would like payment.

For a lot of people, that loss of daylight isn’t just inconvenient. It messes with us. Our energy shifts. Our motivation changes. Sometimes our moods get heavier. Seasonal depression can creep in. Cabin fever shows up. We get tired earlier. We withdraw a little easier.

Then stack regular life on top of it. School. Sports. Activities. Work. Holidays. Family obligations. Financial pressure. Christmas shopping. Thanksgiving. End-of-year deadlines. Dark when you leave for work. Dark when you come home. Somewhere around January, you’re standing in your kitchen eating shredded cheese out of the bag wondering when you last saw the sun.

So I’ve been thinking about something.

What if, instead of pretending those months don’t affect us, we planned for them? What if we stopped acting surprised every year when winter gets wintery?

We winterize our barns. We winterize our campers. We check heaters. We stack firewood. We buy salt for the driveway. We drag blankets out of storage.

But do we ever winterize ourselves?

Maybe that’s the question.

Maybe instead of simply trying to survive the darker months, we need to figure out how to work with them. Maybe you keep yourself busy. Maybe you start an indoor hobby. Maybe you binge-watch something aggressively long like Outlander and basically develop an entirely separate Scottish life until March.

Maybe you find a podcast that absolutely electrifies your brain and gives you something to think about while you’re folding laundry or driving to work. Maybe you paint, read, lift weights, learn something ridiculous just because you’ve always wanted to, or finally start writing.

Maybe you bake bread. Start a microbakery. Or, like half the population, create another sourdough starter because surely THIS ONE will survive.

How many sourdough starters have we collectively murdered at this point? Be honest. Somebody reading this has one sitting on the counter right now that hasn’t been fed in four days and you’re avoiding eye contact with the jar because you both know the relationship is over.

But maybe the answer isn’t always keeping ourselves so busy that we don’t have time to feel anything either.

Maybe part of preparing for the darker months is making space to actually deal with what’s happening inside our own heads.

I have a therapist I absolutely adore. I sit down with her at least once a month and we talk. Sometimes about big things. Sometimes about something that happened three weeks ago that I thought I was completely fine with until she asks one annoyingly intelligent question and I’m suddenly sitting there thinking, Well, shit.

We talk about how I processed something, why I reacted the way I did, what thought pattern I fell into, what I assumed, what actually happened, and what I allowed to affect me. We talk about what deserves my energy and what absolutely does not. If I need her between appointments, we figure it out.

There is something incredibly freeing about having a third-party person in your life who isn’t emotionally tangled in the situation. Someone who can listen without immediately taking a side. Someone who isn’t waiting for their turn to talk. Someone smart enough to challenge you, funny enough to make you laugh when you’re being ridiculous, sarcastic enough to call you on your shit, and safe enough that you can say the ugly thing out loud.

Because sometimes saying it out loud takes away half its power.

I think we underestimate how much energy it takes to constantly hold ourselves together. We hold in frustration, fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, disappointment, overwhelm. Then we smile, go to work, make dinner, answer emails, show up to practices, feed animals, handle everybody else’s needs, and say, “I’m fine.”

And technically, maybe we are.

Until we’re not.

The darker months have a funny way of making cracks feel a little wider, so maybe this fall, instead of waiting until we’re drowning, we give ourselves some grace ahead of time. Maybe we check in with ourselves before things get heavy. Maybe we talk to someone. Maybe we tell a friend, “Hey, I’ve been kind of off lately.”

Maybe we go outside during our lunch break just to stand in the sun for ten minutes. Maybe we schedule things to look forward to. Maybe we protect one night a week from obligations. Maybe we move our bodies. Maybe we rest without convincing ourselves we’re lazy.

Maybe we turn on every damn light in the arena and ride horses at 7 p.m. purely out of spite toward the Earth’s axial tilt.

Whatever works.

Because I don’t think the goal is to stay happy all the time. That’s not realistic. And frankly, people who are cheerful every waking second make me slightly suspicious.

The goal is learning how to recognize when we’re slipping. Learning what fills our tank.

Knowing who we can call. Knowing when we need rest and when we need movement. Knowing when we need solitude and when we’ve had entirely too much of it. Knowing ourselves well enough that when the darkness starts creeping in earlier, we don’t automatically let it creep into everything else too.

We talk a lot about resilience like it’s some heroic personality trait, like resilient people just grit their teeth harder than everyone else.

I don’t think that’s what resilience actually looks like.

Sometimes resilience is getting up and doing the hard thing. Sometimes it’s pushing through. But sometimes resilience is admitting you’re tired. Sometimes it’s cancelling something. Sometimes it’s asking for help. Sometimes it’s therapy. Sometimes it’s medication. Sometimes it’s sunshine. Sometimes it’s horses. Sometimes it’s a three-hour phone call with someone who makes you laugh until your stomach hurts.

And sometimes it’s going to bed early.

Even if it is only 7:03.

Maybe the real strength is learning the difference between the moments when you need to push yourself and the moments when you need to stop kicking your own ass.

Fall is coming. The mornings are getting cooler. The hoodies are coming back out. The bugs are finally beginning their descent into hell where they belong. And yes, the evenings are getting shorter.

We can’t stop that.

But maybe we don’t have to dread it either.

Maybe we prepare. Maybe we create little pockets of light. Maybe we check on our people and let our people check on us. Maybe we find something new to learn, something ridiculous to enjoy, and something meaningful to work toward.

And maybe we remind ourselves that seasons do exactly what seasons are supposed to do.