A Toolkit for Winter + Ways to Find the Light

For my fellow experiencers of SAD

It’s time for my yearly Advent gift to you. 50% off a year of Sayable (that’s about $20 for the entire year!). Applies only to annual subscriptions.

---

If you live in the northern hemisphere and are located in the more northernly parts of the hemisphere, you’re waking up to darkness and running errands in darkness and probably, like me, trying to find the light.

We live in an 1800s north-facing row home with a covered front porch and covered back patio, which means several things.

1. We share walls with our neighbors on both sides of the house, limiting the ability for windows along the east and west walls of the house, and even with three windows facing west, they face our neighboring rowhome by a separation of about six feet, allowing little to no sunlight into them.

2. If even there was the slight chance of any light through the front northern windows, it would be dampened by the porch roof.

3. Our kitchen has only two south facing windows, both of which, I’m not exaggerating, are less than the size of my and my husband’s forearm lengths each. There is a covered back patio as well, limiting the amount of light that even could get through those pinhole windows to less than an hour a day.

4. The only rooms that have southern exposure are our guest room—which because of the way our house is designed, is separated from the rest of our house by its own staircase and exterior door—and my office, the third floor attic space of our house, complete with sloped ceilings on all four sides, exposed brick walls, a gorgeous arched window, and bookshelves tucked up under the eaves.

   

   My magical little attic

Listen, there is real homelessness in our country and world. Just down the street, a woman spends her days sitting on a street corner bench and her nights sleeping on a roll of cardboard under a road sign. In one of the hottest tourist attractions in our city, there is a near-constant accumulation of unhoused people trying to make it one more day. Me complaining about the lack of natural light in our heated, cooled, and safe home is a proper first world problem if I ever saw one.

However, I limped out of last February and into March by my last wits. As soon as it warmed up even slightly, I wrapped myself in a wool blanket and sunk myself into the swings in our back yard, facing the light for the one hour it was also coming through the kitchen windows. I am not exaggerating when I say I take 8,000 IU of Vitamin D3 a day. Someone tells me that is very expensive pee and I tell them to mind their own business. I feel markedly better when I take that vs the recommend 4000, plus my bloodwork shows me still on the low-end of levels. My doctor told me most of the population has low to negative levels of vitamin D3 and I’m just doing my part to raise it a little.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with Seasonal Affective Disorder. But it wasn’t limited to my years in the north, I struggled with it in my years of living in Texas as well. Months on end of temperatures in the 100s created the same sense of time warp, a struggle to see the even minute changes of light and temperature day by day. After nearly ten years of it, I knew if I was going to have SAD either way, I would take the northern kind where at least one experienced four full seasons and had that to look forward to.

We are headed into the darkest days of the year and if you’re anything like me, where the light is hard to find both physically and metaphorically, maybe you need some help. A few things I do that actually help:

To Watch

I watch YouTube videos of people who live in the far north. I don’t know why, but this genuinely helps me. I watch them make soups and light wood stoves, do paper crafts and cold plunges. I watch them make snow art. It helps remind me that I may miss the light but I can still try to make my own in a myriad of ways. I may not have a place to cold plunge or a sauna to sweat it out in, but I can make soup, I can cut and fold paper, I can string tiny lights and play a card game by candlelight. I don’t have to be in the sunlight in order to find brightness.

To Do

I put prisms, mirrorballs, and window decals everywhere that does catch the light. Learning to bounce the light we do get, to spread it around, I don’t know why, but it helps. It really does help. One of the beautiful things in our rowhome is on our three west facing windows, they have stained glass transoms, which every so often will catch just a glimmer of sunlight and throw a rainbow onto our floors and furniture for a few minutes. I try to sit and just enjoy it as long as it’s there. My office is FULL of these light catchers and from the day’s first light until it begins to set, I watch the light move around the room. It honestly, I mean this truly honestly, is the thing that gets me up in my office most days instead of languishing downstairs in the dark. I tell the dogs, “Let’s go to work,” and they trot up the two flights of stairs after me. Rilke, in particular, can always be found wherever the sunlight falls on the floor.

We added that bed up here recently, so guests can experience the magic of this room too.

To Drink

I stock our teabox with good quality teas. My every morning drink of choice is Yorkshire Gold and I’m never without it, but for all my afternoon and evening cups, I need uncaffeinated. I’m talking triple mint and turmeric chai and high quality rooibos. In the grand scheme of things, tea is cheap. Treat yourself.

To Listen

I made this playlist in 2020 for our first winter in The Little River Cottage and it still stands as my favorite winter playlist. I am of the cheery sort that eschews Christmas music until the twelve days of Christmas, but you will find me loving some O Come, O Come Emmanual and In the Bleak Midwinter all the days before. This playlist also includes great wintering songs from Patty Griffin, James Taylor, Buddy Greene, Over the Rhine, and a couple from Enya thrown in there too. There’s classical, seasonal, folk, and of course Sara Bareilles’ Winter Song. Over 1500 have downloaded the playlist and every year I get messages from a couple of people saying it’s their favorite winter playlist too, so maybe it will help you find the light.

To Eat

I have tried and tried and tried making sourdough before but either my starter wasn’t strong enough or my recipe wasn’t moist enough or my patience wasn’t long enough, but a few months ago a friend shared something with me that has made this year’s attempt a real sticking one. She said, “You’re looking for signs, not times.” She’s a real sourdough queen and maybe she’s said this before and I missed it, but the spiritual implications of it couldn’t be missed. If you read my last post, you know I’m in one of those seasons where I would just like to be through it, but making sourdough each week, when the temperature of our house is fluctuating, when I’m testing different ratios of water or different types of flour, it’s forcing me to consider the signs of readiness vs the times the recipe calls for. That’s a lesson for me in every season, but particularly in winter seasons. I move the dough bowl around with me throughout the day, interrupting work and flow by folds and flips. I test the warmth of various spots and spaces, trying to find ideal conditions for rising and fermenting. It’s three day process for me right now. Three days, for one loaf. But it’s reminding me of the slowness of good things and to hunt for signs of life, growth, and rise.

Wherever there is a beam of light, Rilke will be found. He is our sun loving pup.

To Read

I have a best books of the year coming soon, but these are books I find myself returning to again and again when I’m hunting for the light.

Of course Wintering by Katherine May. It was the pandemic book we all needed, when the light felt so far away. I love this book and return to it again and again.

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. These hardy little shrubs are the sort that hold onto their berries throughout fall and winter, teaching us about reciprocity, beauty, and resilience. I love this little book.

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason. I read this after I read (and loved!) his novel North Woods. The Winter Soldier is a beautiful wartime novel, one of my favorites from 2023.

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy. This was my first of her books and remains my favorite. It has one of the most memorable snowy scenes and it’s a book that gives me hope for the future of our planet.

Watch for the Light with pieces from Annie Dillard, Brennan Manning, Soren Kierkegaard, Dorothy Day, and so many more great spiritual thinkers. This has been a hardy friend for me in the first part of December for many, many years.

For the little ones, Winter’s Gifts by Kaitlin Curtice is a beautiful and thoughtful story of what it means to wait for and watch the world as it changes.

The Understory by me. At the risk of being too !Buy My Book! and all, I wrote most of this in the deepest days of winter in one of the deepest seasons of grief in my life, and the gradient of color on the cover and along the spine was a very, very intentional choice for me. I needed color and life and to experience the full spectrum of the human experience. Even though it begins in the fall and finishes in the early summer, it is very much a winter book.

Fin

Okay, that was a lot, but I hope it helps you as you eke toward the shortest day and the long winter ahead. Which, if you think about it, is another source of light. That the days begin to lengthen just as we enter the winter season is a beautiful kind of poetry too. Winter hasn’t even officially begun yet!

It’s time for my yearly Advent gift to you. 50% off a year of Sayable (that’s about $20 for the entire year!). Applies only to annual subscriptions.

---

If you’re reading this in email (which 98% of you do!), consider pressing the heart (♡) at the bottom or top of this email. It helps my work get more eyeballs on it, which is nice for me and kind of you!