Hi, and greetings from cold, snowy Chicago. As I write this, I’m buried under two large knitted blankets, with my dog – a decidedly not lap dog – acting as a weighted blanket as well. 🙂
This blog has taken many forms over time, some of which have stuck, while others have fallen away. Today, I feel compelled to offer something a little different: a space to share how I’ve been feeling lately, in hopes it resonates with you and provides something comforting to take in.
At the moment of writing this, it’s 14°F in Chicago, with a “real feel” of 4°F. AccuWeather aptly calls it “bitterly cold.” It has snowed three times this week, most recently for an hour this morning, leaving a light, fluffy top layer on the preexisting snowpack. Despite the frigid temperatures, the sun is out in full force, and in my opinion, there’s no light quite like January sun. I find myself pausing throughout the day, tilting my face toward the rays that stream in through the windows and pool on the floor. Suddenly, the reverence of sun-worshipping cultures feels entirely understandable.
Lately, I find myself wanting to do very little other than be here in these moments. This weather and season offer an invitation to slow everything down and gently turn inward– to rest, reflect, and find a different pace. Yet so much of modern life demands the opposite: a constant push to maintain productivity and strive for “efficiency” and “optimization.” I wonder if part of my historical angst with winter stems from this friction– the tension between the demands of cultural forces, at odds with this cueing from the natural world to turn inward, to burrow, to rest.
In my clinical practice, I notice an uptick in my clients referring to themselves as “lazy,” “unproductive,” and “unmotivated” during these cold, and often dark, winter months. It’s hard not to internalize these labels in a culture that glorifies busyness and sees rest as something that is conditionally earned. But I’ve come to believe that doing less can lead to experiencing more—more connection to ourselves, more clarity in challenging situations, and a deeper sense of belonging to the world and to one another.
This afternoon, my dog Izzy and I put on our warmest clothes and walked over to the lakefront path. As long as I have lived in Chicago, I have felt reliably pulled to the lake multiple times a week. When I stand by that huge body of water, watching it flow, pulse, and move, I can always breathe more deeply. I’m reminded of the significance of my own insignificance, and feel connected to the wisdom of the natural world. For years, I would stop going to the lake once the cold temperatures hit, and would often grieve the loss of access to this resource during winter.
A few years ago, I decided to try and shift my relationship to winter. I no longer wanted winter to feel like a time of year to trudge through in order to get to the good stuff. I want to appreciate the unique gifts, opportunities, and lessons this season has to offer. Winter occupies over a third of the year in the midwest, and I no longer feel willing to be disengaged from that much of my life.
Part of this process was figuring out what I could change to adapt better to winter. The biggest realization I had was that I hate being cold, and I’m pretty sure for most of my life I have been at least a little bit cold all of the time in winter months. It’s amazing how being chronically busy, and living in a culture that works so hard to disconnect us from what our body feels, can make it so tough to notice what we are needing. Since then, I’ve mastered the art of long underwear, layers, and investing in some sturdier gloves and boots. I’ve also accepted that part of being outside on days like today involves feeling cold. At this time in my life, this is a worthy trade off for what I will get in return.
I feel so lucky to have made this adaptation, because finding a way to be more comfortable in winter has opened up so much of the world to me. On our walk, Izzy and I went over two miles before we passed another person– a man on snowshoes. As we walked south, the lake to our left and the city skyline rising up in front of us, I felt unbound by time. For those of you who are also city-dwellers, you can appreciate how rare it is to feel alone in the city, and how this can feel like a portal into what Richard Rohr calls deep time.
One gift that more outside stillness can offer is the ability to shift away from external stimuli towards what is happening inside. As I started my walk along the lake, near a harbor inlet, the water was totally frozen over. I could imagine the life teeming under the surface of the water: the trout, panfish, zebra mussels, frogs, cattails, rushes, and algae swimming and swaying under the crust of snow and ice. Likewise, as I find myself sitting in stillness more often and for longer stretches of time, I find room to notice my own deeper emotions, desires, and curiosities in a more spacious way. With less to try and orient to outside of me, I can flesh out my inner world with greater detail.
As I write this, I notice a fear inside of me that I will be misunderstood in some way– that this could be interpreted as naval gazing or being self-absorbed. My clients often share worries that it is “silly,” “futile,” or “selfish” to be with their inner-worlds when there is so much urgent suffering happening around us. I understand and relate to these worries. Beyond the experiences of pain and difficulty happening in our own lives and communities, witnessing larger scale disaster and trauma, which is happening to real people, is ever but one push notification away.
Humans weren’t meant to take in this much suffering, yet it can feel hard to disengage from passively watching it, feeling scared and frozen. I don’t have a wise or complete answer to the question of how to navigate living in this moment in time, although I am deeply invested in the asking of this question(s). However, I have found in my experience that tending to my inner-world actually allows me to show up more present, courageous, and caring for other people and the world at large.
In my clinical practice, I find that eating disorders are insidious in their ability to cut off true connection from one’s self. Many of my clients fear the idea of being more present with their inner-worlds or bodies, because the only experiences they have had of being present with themselves involve being taken over by shame, physical pain, or agitation. They may not know their body beyond an object to be evaluated or subjugated by others’ standards and approval or rejection. One of the most rewarding aspects of providing eating disorder therapy is the opportunity to support individuals in shifting to a different way of being with themselves.
Many of my clients initially engage in therapy to find relief from a painful and polarizing relationship to food and their bodies. We may first focus on goals related to increasing their ability to eat a greater variety of foods, reduce physical or medical symptoms, and decrease experiential avoidance of social situations and relationships due to body image or food distress. This work is hard, meaningful, and life-changing. It can pave the path to going deeper into themselves and understanding what has been living under the frozen surface of their own inner-lake. There are so many incredible gifts and resources to be found inside.
As I continued on my lakeside walk, moving closer to the wide open part of the lake, the frozen water met flowing water. The soft current ebbed and flowed gently and quietly against the boundary edge of the frozen part. At this intersection, I felt a resonance inside of me in all the spaces where I hold polarities: to be soft and hard, to go fast and slow, to be with others and alone. I wonder if this visual feels as evocative for you as it did for me?
This January, and all winter long, I will be holding hope that you get to experience some of this slow, still, expansive feeling, and that a consequence of that is getting to have a different experience of winter, yourself, and the world.
Wishing you all good things,
Tori
If you’re a potential client interested in learning more about how to cultivate these experiences in your own life, a potential supervisee interested in learning how to bring more of this felt sense to your work with clients, or a colleague just wanting to say hi, reach out.