Lately, November

and 46 things learnt about surviving winter

This week, Forty Sixth of the year, marks The Descent into actual darkness for me and a season I have to navigate like a weary adventurer. We have roughly one to two weeks in the UK of the last few autumnal leaves to lift our spirits. Then, the trees will bare all of themselves for months. This is a newsletter dedicated to an old companion of mine, Seasonal Affective Disorder but first, news;

I am gently, as I always do, winding down things in the studio in December and finish all sessions on December 14th - please do book, if time with me in 2023 is on your list of things to make happen.

We have two sessions of my restorative yoga sessions, ‘The Settling’ (missed this and want to come to the last two? Please message and I will sort this for you). I will also be actually OUT OUT in London next Thursday November 23rd 6.30 pm for the Fertility Meet with Meet Parla at Holland & Barratt. I’d so love to see you - you can get your tickets here for £12

Right, about that wintertime sadness..

How do we fall in love with a season we want to turn away from?

For a lot of the year, we live in shades of grey in the UK; drizzle, mist, overcast. Tepid rather than cold, underwhelming for most of the summer. When it is cold, it’s a raw biting damp cold that hits harder than any minus temperature can.

For some this is COSY. For me, it’s dreary. I like great big technicoloured heatwaves, crisp blue skies and knee deep powder snow. Every year is an enquiry into how to make it better (and, in one particular year best forgotten, how to prise depression from my bones).

This year feels different. We’ve had no summer to speak of here and yet, I am doing really well in terms of mood. Maybe, just maybe, 46 winters have taught me some essential things that I’m going to place here in a depository of 46 anti-SADness things, from the obvious to the obscure (with the odd link to things I like)

vitamin D

daylight lamps: more than one if possible and use them to wake to and to solarise yourself

buy all the other lights: candles, sparklers just because, fairy lights, cosy lamps, salt lamps, festive lights, lantern festivals, headlights to run with and last week I was gifted a light up pen that has bought surprising child like joy

exercise: in a year that has been personally brutal getting my heart pumping has been endorphically life saving

heat in the form of hot water bottles, wheatsacks and all the blankets

slippers that make you smile

stargazing, loving on Orion, watching satellites, planet gazing, feeling little and also connected to something vast

showers by candlelight (I love this one and you really don’t have to take cold showers in the winter unless you enjoy that)

plant bulbs tulips, allium, indoor paperwhites, daffodils (jetstar for the win)

walks of any kind, anywhere, finding tiny things of urban or natural beauty

baths there’s no need to get fancy but the ones that Do It for me involve this

read books about places far colder and darker than the winter you’re currently in (currently this for me)

rolling out the yoga mat getting on it and seeing what happens. It all counts.

firepits and smores and people that you love who make you laugh sitting with you by it

kippers eaten in bread and butter outside on the back step (niche)

fancy porridge you can find my curated Pinterest board of options here

cashmere base layers these, always

playlists from the summers of being very in love/free/contented

sun tan cream that smells of summer and other scents you captured in the summer to take you back to then, possibly a bit late as a suggestion but works a treat

saunas lifegiving - so as long as strangers don’t try to strike up conversation

pretending that social media doesn’t exist for twenty four hours

hunting for signs of spring in preparation (somewhat premature in November, but it brings me JOY in January)

pyjamas on earlier than is socially normative

mulled things

Scandinavian cookbooks mostly perusing, sometimes making - this is a favourite

celebrating the solstice because here, the light is all her way back to us. So slowly at first and then, seemingly all at once

blood oranges a slice of hope in January bleakness

avocados are always at their best here in January and February for reasons I feel I should understand and don’t. The perfect buttery avocado is a rare and sacred thing.

choosing a word for the year this year was home and it’s played out in ways I couldn’t have expected

hanging mistletoe because you never know..

watching The Traitors new December tradition born from a Covid induced inability to reach the remote

New Year ignoring and getting up early to walk and welcome in newness, also when I take down the tree

Port in my grandads port glass

manicures and pedicures that are always regrettably too festive

warm smoothies gamechanger

oils frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, cinnamon, clementine

excellent waterproof clothes

slow cooker meals bubbling away on white skied cold hand days in the garden and also…

pies

murmurations

turmeric lattes

Love Actually, cheesy perhaps, watched alone and somehow 20 years old (insert appropriate emoji)

December birthday embracing, a mixed bag this one and recently prone to perils of colds/covid/lockdowns but there is always the hope that this one will be blue skied AND in good health

sleep, always

Yoga Nidra under a weighted blanket

lavishly celebrating the day the clocks go forward

I did it! If you read this far, I salute you. I also hope that if you too are a SAD warrior that this winter treats you kindly and I would love love love to hear how you fend off the blues?