Welcoming November: Thinking about the long dark

I am writing this on November first. Outside, there is a light dusting of snow and grey, grey skies, and infrequent snowflakes are falling. The last of leaves came off the trees this past week, and it’s the kind of chilly that you feel in the bones of your hand when you’re putting away Halloween decorations and forgot to grab gloves. Since I refuse to put the heat on too high, I’m writing this wearing two layers of wool and a flannel.

I’m sure it will warm up again before we are thrown headlong into winter—such is the nature of fall in Ontario—but right now, it feels like the true deep freeze is just at our threshold, poised to bluster in.

It is, undeniably now, the season of rest.

If I am an advocate for anything, I am an advocate for rest. I suspect that’s the root of why I adore fall and winter so much. In nature, these are the quiet times, the time for introversion, the time for contemplation. Things turn inwards, storing up energy for the next season of wild, raucous growth. So should we, I think. 

We have a bad habit, at least here in this part of Canada, of spending the winter (a full half of the year!) complaining about how shitty the weather is. As I’ve grown older, this has grated on me more and more—all we’re doing is fighting nature. That’s futile, and bound to end in misery. Instead, I think there’s deep wisdom in living seasonally, taking our cue from nature itself. Stop trying to live as if it’s summer, and give in to the old rhythms of the year. Adopt, as much as possible for us and our unique circumstances, an attitude of hibernation.

I’m well aware that we can’t exit our lives completely in the winter. I have a demanding full-time job and obligations like the rest of us, and even if my secret belief is that capitalism has ruined us and we should all give it up to go live in the woods, I know how desperately unrealistic that is. I also recognise how lucky I am to even consider a period of slowness: I don’t have children, for one thing, and my basic needs are secure. 

But I think that there are still lessons to be learned and tactics to adopt to better build rest into our winter lives. Because there’s powerful healing to be had in rest.

I was diagnosed with cancer in August of 2021, and spent the rest of the year in radiation and chemotherapy, literally finishing treatment on December 31st. I spent the deepest part of that winter cocooned at home, healing. The immediate fog of my last chemo dose took a month to dissipate. It took seven weeks for the first tiniest hint of baby fuzz to return to my bald head. I didn’t feel confident leaving the house alone until March. 

Mostly, I spent that winter sleeping, as my body embarked on the heroic feat of rebuilding itself. And the thing that amazes me even now is all that capacity to heal was already in my body, even after something as intense as cancer. After chemo ended, I didn’t even take drugs to help my healing along.* All I had to do was rest.

*Please, I beg you, do not interpret this as a slight against pharmaceuticals. They saved my life, and continue to lower my risk of my cancer coming back, and I am so enormously grateful to live in a time and place where they are readily available to me. I would quite literally not be alive without them. Modern medical science is not without its faults, but it is also a miracle.

All of which brings me back to winter.

In fighting winter, I think we deny ourselves that opportunity for rest and healing, that time to prepare for the next period of busyness that will inevitably arise. 

So this is what I think about, when I think of November: settling in, accepting the dark, and embracing this time of quietude. I’ve been in the lucky position of starting November on holiday from work, and it’s been interesting to see the things that arise in this silence: more writing here, certainly; cooking more time-consuming dinners; making orange garlands to ring in the season; taking on a big crochet project. All grounding, all tangible, all—in their own way—healing.

When I started this newsletter, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to be. While I still don’t know what it will become, I have a better idea of what I think of as its purpose now. I wrote last week about using this space as a place for rest and retreat in an otherwise chaotic world, and I’ve been mulling that over ever since. Maybe that’s the role I can play right now, what I can offer to you: a place to spend your winter. 

Until next time.