Seeking comfort in a heavy world: How do we grapple with the atrocities of the world, and not go dark?

Today is the first snow in my part of Canada. We woke up to a light dusting on cars and roofs and lawns, and I rushed outside to take photos and suck in deep lungfuls of air. The smell of fresh snow—especially the first fresh snow of the year—is impossibly good and equally impossible to describe. Something of ozone and water and smoke and earth, and refreshingly bright, and cold into your lungs. 

I expected it to melt quickly, because that’s usually what happens with the first snow of the year, but hours later I’m cozied up inside with a tea writing this, and it’s still snowing. I’ve used it as an excuse to pull out all the stops: I changed the bedsheets to our flannel set, I’m wearing a big pink wool sweater my late aunt knit more than three decades ago, and I’ve got candles burning. Halloween is tomorrow, and we are firmly, undeniably, entering the long dark of winter in northern climates.

This is my favourite time of year. It feels like a time of renewal—in pagan belief, Samhain marks the end and beginning of a new yearly cycle. As a gardener, this makes sense to me. The growing season is over, and we’re entering the rest season, a necessary step for next year’s harvest. It makes sense emotionally, too, as the short days and cold weather bring us inwards. It feels like the time to surround yourself in comfort, to build a safe space for quiet and rest.

And while I have always tried to embrace this season of slowness, this year it feels important to be intentional with it. To actively, on purpose, seek out those cozy, warm moments. Because the reality is that the world is anything but comfortable right now. 

I’m not going to dive into an analysis of everything facing us—I’m not the person to do it justice. But my heart’s heavy. If you have a heart, it’s heavy. And it seems so trite and stupid to try and write my little newsletter and post my little photos when the news is full of so much misery. It seems grotesque to talk about anything other than the suffering. I feel buried by it. 

But going dark won’t alleviate that suffering. It won’t help the children of Gaza access food and water, it won’t quell antisemitism, it won’t ban assault rifles in the US once and for all, it won’t stop men from killing their wives. Staring those realities in the face is devastating and draining and terrible, but we can’t look away. We need to cling to hope for a better world despite them. We have to keep going.

We scream, and we try, and we retreat, and we rest, and we come back tomorrow to try again.

And I think that’s why I’m compelled to keep writing. To keep turning on a tiny light for myself, and write these escapist little snippets in the vast wilds of the internet. To post pretty pictures of inconsequential things. To hold on, with my teeth if necessary, desperately refusing to go dark. To build a small ramshackle hidden corner, here, with a fire in the hearth and a warm sweater and a cup of tea, where we can hide out for a moment.

Intentional comfort, in the face of horrors. Self care, I guess. A way to continue.

It is impossibly privileged, of course, to have the option to rest, to have a second to grab a deep breath before going back into the world. I don’t really have to worry that I’ll get shot at the bowling alley or murdered by my spouse or hit by a missile at the fucking hospital.

It’s not right that such basic safety, that the option for rest, is so incredibly rare. There’s nothing I can say to make it better. We need to keep pushing, and demanding change, and standing for the most vulnerable among us. We have to keep going.

I picked a bouquet this past weekend, snipping dead things from my garden: coneflower and goldenrod and boughs of buckthorn, berries still clinging on. I put that bouquet on my dining room table and surrounded it with mini pumpkins from the store. Friends came over, and we drank wine in the candlelight and ate fish and laughed until our ribs hurt. We went to sleep in beds piled high with blankets, and my town was quiet, and stars sparkled overhead.

The horrors persist. So do we.

Until next time.