bewilderbrain

They say January is the longest month…the cruellest month…the darkest month…but this is actually the time that gives us shelter from the storm…

Why do we love to hate January?

Typically, our seasonal bastion of the year is not warmly embraced.

In the chocolate spattered wake of Christmas time, the harsh reality of January can seem too much to bear for many. But this month of deeper, darker quiet offers soul-stoking solace.

The lights and sparkles have ceased, the Christmas leftovers are starting to look more suspect, and the brutal realities of work and school routines are clouting us around the chilly ears.

The month long excuse for comfort eating and general revelry has passed, and often, our spirits and our energy feel as stripped bare as the winter trees.

January has somehow been culturally posited as a time for sensible behaviour, hard work, lots of cleaning, radical life goals, and scarce frugality.

Wrapped up like this – it’s hardly a new years joy package.

And its hardly surprising that some view it with dread…

I think all these notions of January are extremely silly, Moreover, they are completely juxtaposed to the wisdom of nature, of the season, and of our own senses.

January can be a bringer of beauty, softness, magic…with a re-think, it is the month of restoration.

We need to embrace the quiet of January…from the bare stillness…comes rest.

Our calendar opener marks a natural rest point in the year…

As the new year celebrations fade away, a new kind of quiet descends on the world. For a moment, it feels as though the year has paused to take a breath.

For many, Christmas time, for all its wonder, can be a time of not just physical stress, busyness, and demand, but above all mental overload, and expectation.

In January, for a time, whilst our responsibilities and expectations haven’t magically evaporated, they have slowed and simplified.

As we put our tired post Christmas feet forward, we centre ourselves on the more routine expectations, of navigating the laundry, the school books, our journey, or even our lunch.

And in the post-Christmas jaded comedown, each of these things can feel like a small achievement.

So we should allow them to be just that.

The surrounding expectations on you may be lowered compared to December, and if the party month has drained you, allow your expectations for yourself to be lowered this month too.

Instead of raising our games for the new year, January should be a month to gently restore our games…

(see also – New year nurture – re-imagining our resolutions)

Recognising that this time of year can be mentally tough, and therefore giving yourself permission to take it easier, is one of the best new year gifts you can give yourself.

Be pleased, about successfully making your lunch.

Be pleased, about getting the kids into school.

Be pleased, about getting a good nights sleep.

And only start to ask yourself for more when you are ready.

Simple routines offer comfort, and start to bring equilibrium back to frazzled senses, so recognising, focusing on, and celebrating the small but instrumental achievements of your everyday is a soothing, restoring balance to a busy brain.

We need to embrace the darkness of January…from the deep blue of the long nights comes…nurture.

You can’t outrun or escape the seasons darkness, so instead, submit to its warmth and slower rhythm…

We are not long past the winter solstice, the wheel has barely turned beyond the longest night, and shorn of its seasonal trappings, the dark evenings spread before us in a vista that to some feels interminable.

In this month, both leaving, and returning to the home become bigger transitions. They are both suddenly invested with much greater impetus and importance.

The rhythm of January in our homes…

The dark of deep winter holds a special kind of stillness. It offers a deep introspective calm, a desire to turn inward, to nest, to nestle, to reflect.

Arriving at home on a January day feels like a triumph, a Herculean conquest of the return to the ordinary, to routine, of braving the sometimes hostile world outside.

In January, there is no apology to be made for entering pyjama mode as soon as you return from work. (Actually, I don’t think there ever is, if it helps, but in January it is an act of peace and kindness of the highest order, and a necessity for nurtured survival.)

In January, it is okay to say no to some social arrangements, to spend quality time with your family, your sofa, your books, your tv, your bed.

It is okay to put off complicated house sorting or decorating until the lengthening days restore our energy for changes, plans and conquests.

It is okay to just be.

It is in fact what the dark hibernation of the season asks of you.

And instead of feeling guilty about cosy, lazy evenings or weekends, or even just allowing them, seek them, when you can – relish and bathe in them.

The Christmas lights may be down, but the lamps, fairy lights, candles, cosy blankets don’t need to be. If there was a ever a time to festoon your home in quiet low-lit warmth, simplicity, snugness, then its now.

I would add however, that this looks different for everyone, one persons haven may be another persons mess. From cherished clutter to minimalist zen, we are all calmed differently by our homes and environments.

Despite all the “hygge” perfect rooms proposed to us by the media, achieving astonishing feats of being completely stripped back and cosy at the same time – most people don’t have a catalogue living room. What counts is whatever makes you feel warm, secure and restful.

We can bring a formative intent and enjoyment to our hunkered down, nesting January, if we wish – lighting candles ceremonially donning pyjamas and the pouring of giant mugs of hot chocolate or herbal tea.

Or we can just plop ourselves under a blanket and have a bloody good nap.

The inspirational January re-boot manuals, even the ones that encourage a soft and nurturing approach, are often still encouraging us to nourish ourselves in winter with a casually cooked up 15 vegetable stew and a yin yoga class.

It comes from a good place – but sometimes we don’t have the energy for all this super conscious nurture – we are tired out again by the time we have prepared it all.

Even with the maxim of looking after ourselves, we are often expecting too much, pushing ourselves too far.

I’m not advocating here for an entire January of eating chips and ice-cream, but in this month, more than any other…

… is it the end of the world if we let standards slip for some ease, convenience and comfort, just here and there?

Sometimes, the biggest nourishment can be found of an evening by accepting that a very simple meal is good enough if it frees up half an hour of extra rest.

Strength, resilience, energy, will brew with rest and quiet. So don’t overthink the rest and quiet, just do what you need to do.

What the deep stillness of January does is fully call us to nest – time has slowed down in the world – and it’s okay to allow life in our worlds and our homes too, to slow down.

The dark invites us to fold inwards, to give ourselves time and grace for recovery and reflection, hunkered sleepily in a warm moment before the axis turns again.

Time spent resting now is an investment.

To allow our lives to slow and our homes to be sheltered cocoons is to embrace the quiet gifts of the season.

The rhythm of nature’s dark call…

The bareness of nature in January, combined with its unhurried pace, also creates open spaces in our lives. All is stark, and new – and the plateau of the new year spreads before us like clean white snow.

Our slowing down in the dark month creates much needed mental space.

This is a time to cease trying to fiercely direct intentions and rather to let them unfold, to let our minds drift around in the timeless magic of the month, and see where the wandering takes us.

Mental wandering can lead to new views, perspective shifts, and raw inspiration, which can often be fertilised by physical wandering, and the outdoors.

Just as we can be nurtured by allowing ourselves to rest and nest, we can also be nurtured by letting the dark in…or more accurately perhaps..

letting ourselves out…

In the same way that returning to the home in the depths of winter can feel momentous, so too can venturing outside.

Braving the weather feels bold, a short bundled up trip outside, the winter sun on frost, on your face, for just ten minutes, feels all the more powerful, more significant, than a spring or summer excursion.

And the same is true of braving the least clement of the winter weathers, to walk briefly, to be outside, in freezing rain or gusty wind or drifting snow is exhilarating. Provides a high, a heightened experience that is unique to the season.

Night walks too, the experience of the early evening dark, or even standing in the garden to watch the moon and stars for a few moments, connect us to the season, connect us to the darkness, to the nature around us, and provide a thrill of excitement which directly contrasts with our visions of a bleak and dreary month.

Because as well as the reflective stillness, January also holds within it a mystical sense – a brooding thrall from a more secretive world. And it calls to us to connect to nature, to the darkly magical season outside.

In the deep black of the long nights, a thread is still pulling us to nature in her stark winter glory.

Instead of shying away from the night, we need to feel and experience its darkness, its connection to our own seasonal cycles at the nadir of the light.

If we allow our senses to connect to the dark outside, heighten our awareness, it morphs from a bleak and barren land to a deep thrum of raw nature, mystically alive.

Snow dusted or rain-shining streets in glowing dusk, the forbidding depths of the dark woodland, skirted with roosting winter birds, the life surviving, sheltering, thriving, within the harsher depths of the winter forests. The magic of moonlight on frosty tree roots, the call of the owl in the echoing cold, the mesmeric whoosh of wind through bare branches.

There is nurture here in our deep connection to the earth, to nature, in all its guises. If we venture out boldly, rather than shutting her out, we can absorb the quiet, growing, healing energy of winter, and we can unfurl with her as the first green shoots arise.

So this January, cosy up with impunity, nestle into the dark, allow the world to slow and your mind to drift. But accept nature’s invite to deep adventure too, venture out, feel the season deep in your bones, breathe the inspiration on the frosty air, and let winter warm your soul.