Adrift
It seems like every year there is a period of time in my life when I feel completely untethered. My normal routines demand a tremendous amount of effort. Moving about the house consists of long periods on the couch, broken up by equally long stretches gazing out windows. Moving into the outside world is a herculean feat. Maintaining focus, mustering motivation, or feeling energetic seems like a distant memory. With little to anchor me, I just seem to drift aimlessly through my days, submerging and emerging in a lulling rhythm of purposelessness. I call this annual period, “January.”
Although a bit tongue-in-cheek, I am sure some of you can relate. And the January we have just wrapped up? It’s amazing any of us had the buoyancy to come up for air. Among the snowstorms, brutally frigid temperatures, the daily pummeling of horrendous breaking news, and the suffocating rage and crushing sadness of what is happening in this country, this has been truly a month for the ages, and one I am relieved (if only for a moment) to be out of.
It was turning to other women’s blogs and Substacks during the month of January that helped me find community, kindred spirits, and inspiration. Those blogs gave me strength. I knew, of course, it wasn’t just me feeling this way, but seeing it in print from women I respect, women who often write what I can’t put into words, felt like a compassionate hug … like sharing a glass of wine … like finally being able to exhale a “You, too?” I’m sharing a few that pulled me from the clutches of a punishing month and helped me move forward.
“Pep Talk — On writing as the world burns” from Maggie Smith’s For Dear Life
“It’s hard to write, feeling like you’re bringing a pen to a gunfight.”
One of my favorite poets, Smith asks the same question that many writers, poets, and bloggers are asking now: “What does any of this [writing]matter?” …“What can a poem [or essay or a blog post] do?” Each time I sat down to write anything this month, I felt the same way. Why bother? As Smith lamented, [writing] “can’t protect people from being targeted, abducted, or murdered in the street—so what’s the point?”
But as she often does in her For Dear Life blogposts, she convinces me to pick of the pen and keep trying. It’s the humanity of the act, she points out. And isn’t that what we all feel is the root of what has been lost and what is to be gained each time we are compelled to act in some way? Our humanity? As we move through this struggle together, I will find my words.
“Leave the House Twice” from Cakes, Tea and Dreams
“Staying isolated is tempting. But it won’t change a thing: not my mood or my neighborhood, or the state of my health or the world’s.”
I have been following Katie Noah Gibson’s blog for as long as she has been posting. She is an incredibly thoughtful and spiritual (not religious) writer. There is an everyday sacredness to what she posts, whether about her daily life in and around Boston, the snow falling, the flowers blooming, or literature. She “notices” so much of everyday life. So she is often my go to when I need inspiration, a fresh perspective, or to get out of my own way — she throws the lifeline. That happened again through her post about a ritual she began during COVID of leaving the house twice a day, which she knew she needed to revitalize during these hard days and dark times.
“Taking that deliberate action – leaving the house twice – means choosing, on purpose, to do something more than just survive. It also means choosing to engage with more than just my own thoughts, my own self.”
Katie Gibson
Taking her cue, that “deliberate action” has been helping me get through the winter. Yes, no matter how hard I try to optimistically “winter,” as a verb, I have found myself just trying to get through it. It’s not always like this for me…but this year…this winter is especially challenging.
So I have been making the attempt to get outside the house at least twice a day. I do take the dog out several times a day. As she trudges through the paths in the powdery snow she has forged with her tiny dachshund body, jackrabbiting across what must seem to her endless tundra, I look at the sky. I notice the collection of birds, or their absence at the feeder. I listen to sounds of the neighborhood — other dogs barking, cars pulling in and out of driveways, sometimes voices from walkers braving the cold, or a neighborhood parent urging a small child to get in the car (or out of it) a little bit faster. Does taking the dog out count as getting out of the house? It’s something I have to do anyway. I guess the value is in the way I do it. I’m counting it.
Then there is getting out, twice a week, to my exercise class. I get in my yoga pants, workout top, put on my sneakers, throw on a vest and my winter coat, and get in the car to drive to my childhood church. I enter the fellowship hall where I sat with my mom for so many church dinners and Christmas parties. The memories of junior high dances in that fellowship hall still sting with the pain of being a fat teen. But now I’m a “senior” Bone Builder there and sometimes skip a class. And I skip January all together due to the post-Christmas illnesses that these women innocently bring into the space to pass around. So, no, I can’t count that as one of the two.
A winter walk is one of my favorite ways to get out of the house. I love to look at the houses, watch the smoke curl out of chimneys, and remember all the years I’ve passed through familiar neighborhoods. But we’ve had such bitter cold and so much ice and snow. I bundled up, kept my head down, and managed a few of these walks. But they were short and less fulfilling than I needed. It’s hard to feel overly neighborly in below zero windchills.
So it’s been the odd “errand” each day that has served as a ritual to get me out of the house a second time, to be present and seen in the world. These errands take the form of a trip to the post office to mail a letter, pick up stamps, and have a friendly conversation with the postal worker. Sometimes I head to the grocery store for a few things and find I am genuinely happy to run into someone and chat about our lives, commiserate about the weather and the world, and then go our separate ways. Sometimes that second trip out of the house means having coffee with a friend at the local coffee shop to talk about her family, my work at the library, what we have been doing with our time that’s bringing us joy, and what’s weighing heavy on our minds. My personal rule for leaving the house twice is to leave the phone behind—its a chance to get off the doom-scroll treadmill.
Getting out of the house during the winter months can be challenging, but it’s nothing compared to the challenges many of my American neighbors are facing in similar climates. There is a strange communion I feel in choosing to leave the safety of my home and venture out into the broken world; sometimes healing acts are so ordinary, we can’t even recognize them for our own good.
“January Is The Cruelest Month” from The Pits and the Pieces
“Writing a blog post these days seems ludicrous when the world teeters on the edge of insanity. Here’s how I am trying to offset my reactions and emotions after watching the news, and yes, I’ve been doomscrolling on social media because how can you turn away from seeing the evidence? In some peculiar way, I take comfort in knowing there are people out there who are also angry and incensed, not just at the cruelty and injustices but at those who still blindly support the perpetrators, the administration, and their lies and twisted justifications.”
That’s how my writing friend, Pearl (yes, Pearl of Seasoned Voices), began a recent January blog post. That first sentence jolted me. Every word of it felt like a fist pounding on a table. I, too, make sure I bear witness, collect the evidence, take names as they say. But when you feel the need to put on the oxygen mask that drops down in front of you—take it as a sign. You will not backslide into powerlessness while you recharge your life.
Thanks for the inspiration, Pearl. It’s time to find my own “invincible summer” deep inside. It’s time to write again.
So here we are, halfway through February. Winter’s slipstream is not strong enough to keep me swirling in grim thoughts…spring is calling in the distance. No longer feeling adrift, glimpses of shoreline make me want to swim harder, no matter how dark and murky the waters may continue to be. Because even if those waters don’t clear anytime soon, I’m pretty sure many hands await to pull me toward what feels safe (and there may even be cake 😉). And for that, I am truly grateful.
