The Dread of Winter

Getting Through the Depths of a Danish Winter

For the longest time now, I have been dreading winter.

Winter here in Denmark can be beautiful, frosty and snowy, but more often than not, it is muddy, dark and dragging.

As I am writing this, I am sat in my bed with a my newborn son sleeping next to me, and a thick afternoon fog is approaching us from the road outside our window. I cover them up with curtains so I don’t have to see it darkening once again when it feels like there has never been any true light all day.

Winters have made me feel unproductive, slow and most of all lazy. Hence why this piece is late and has remained in my draft for weeks. Without direction, and without a clear message, and of course I have been banging myself in the head with getting it done for as many weeks.

I’ve been sad without knowing why. I have been questioning all my life choices, and I have hated that melancholic part of myself - my wintery self - for a very long time.

A couple of winters ago I was in such a drab mood that I googled something like ‘sad every winter’ and ended up self-diagnosing as a person with SAD - seasonal affective disorder.

Basically one that feels the change in seasons deeply, so that when it rains - as it does a lot in the Danish winters - it pours.

My wintery state of being is very much not appreciated by myself and certainly not by society. With 9-5 jobs and studies, almost every weekday of the year, it left me feeling guilty and lesser than, when I could not match my “usual” energy levels in winter.

This year especially I have been dreading my winter rut for the sole reason of it correlating with me having a newborn. Taking care of a newborn is somehow both slow work and stressful work. It is singing and walking and nursing for hours on end, and it’s being interrupted every 5 minute you try to do any productive task.

At the end of the day, I find myself having nothing to show other than a more or less grumpy baby, sleeping in my arms. The dishes are still dirty, the clothes unfolded and the trash cans somehow even more full.

For this winter with a newborn I have been more or less forced to just sit down, truly inactive and unproductive. For the first time in my life, probably since I was a baby myself, I have had a truly slow winter.

Instead, this is what I have been doing:

• Looking out the windows to the birds that are gathering oats from the feeding board we set up in our cottage garden.

• Watching our cat, moving from sleeping on the carpet in front of the fire, to the couch and unto the bed and back in front of the fire again.

• Holding my newborn son, who is nursing, then sleeping until at some point slowly opening his eyes to look at the blue winter light outside the window or the warm light of the fire indoors. Just looking, before falling asleep again.

And to myself I have been thinking: The birds, the cat and the newborn are not rushing through winter for spring, so why should I?

Instead they rest, they eat and they observe. The watch the light come and go, the snow fall and melt again. They are not productive, they are dreaming and building strength for the year to come.

And this year, for the first time, so am I.

I write, I knit, I read fiction, which I have not set out time for in a very long time. I rest, I sleep and I observe.

Most of all, I try my very best not to feel guilty. I am much less productive and much less energized, and that is okay. This piece is coming out later than usual, and I have not been able to stick with my usual schedule of a newsletter every Sunday, and that is okay.

Instead of dreading winter, I need to relish in it. I don’t need to be productive or on schedule. I need to cuddle up, just like my cat, I need to sleep like my baby, and focus of getting enough to eat just like the birds. I can dream without putting any action behind.

Winter is a sacred season, if only I can allow it. Winter is resting, and so should I.

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Video of February

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