Every fall of my adult life I’ve experienced symptoms of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder); in other words, every year as the seasons shift to autumn, I get depressed. For many years I didn’t have a name for it, a word. Many, many years it caught me by surprise; it took me a long time to recognize the pattern. Many years I thought it would never end.
This fall has been no different, but my approach to it has. Slowly, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to both anticipate and listen to the shift in my emotional responses, my outlook, and my behavior at this time of year. And this year, I’m doing that even more, and even more consciously. This year, I just came to the decision that I wasn’t going to fight the shift, that I was going to respect it, surrender to it. This fall, I am taking daily naps. I am going to bed early and going back to bed in the morning when I wake up still exhausted.
I am lowering my expectations of how much writing I will get done; I’m writing more and more in my journal and less on my computer. I’m putting my novel on notecards, shuffling ideas around, writing in flashes and snippets. I’m organizing, sifting. Some days/weeks I’m not writing at all.
I am doing the work I have to, the work I pay the bills with. I am letting other things rest, sit, compost.
I’m focusing more on what I can release and let go of, and less on what I can add to my plate. I am refusing to rush (even when I run late), refusing to take on other’s busy-ness at this time of year (even if it means turning down some things I’d like to do). I am focusing on quality and not quantity.
I am letting my hormones and biochemicals quiet, relax. I’m brewing and drinking licorice root, eleuthero, astragalus tea, two to three times a day. I am drinking less coffee, and luxuriating in the smell and taste and heat when I do drink it.
I am taking slow languorous walks. Stretching more. I am spending more time cooking and eating (and going out to eat or ordering in without guilt when I don’t feel like cooking). I am doing more relaxing things with my son, and less busy activities. We’re reading and watching movies, watching sports and baking. I’m sitting outside in pockets of sun; I’m sitting inside wrapped in blankets looking out windows. I am watching the trees and colors change, the quality of light, the stretching claws of night.
This is an imperfect practice. I still took on more than I would have liked this fall. My October was insanely busy and extroverted. But in between events, I took loads of downtime, focused on getting alone time (and napping, all the napping!). I am striking some kind of balance.
And while I do feel tired, and sometimes quite sad, I am not really feeling depressed this fall. Or, rather, I’m working with the depression as part of the ups and downs and cycles of life. Letting it be a colortone of my experience. And in this way, I’m not drowned by it, not swallowed. I buoy on the waves of it; I float.
And I know, trust, know that come spring, my energy will rebound. I will churn out new writing. I’ll reinvigorate and find joy in producing. Again.
For now, I’m listening to my body, and my body says: rest.
Lay it down. Let things settle and fall. Let the leaves compost. Let it go to sleep; much is done in dreams. Rest. Release. Nothing will be lost that needs to stay. It will all wake again after winter. As will we.
Photo by Bence Balla-Schottner on Unsplash