Wednesday, November 13, 2013
The growing season here in Minnesota is now definitively over. The hardiest of annual plants that can survive a night when temperatures drop to 26F to 28F do not do too well when it reaches 10F. But at least the wind is finally calming down before bringing some relative warmth back in the coming days. As I walked around outside today I could witness the carnage of the very hard freeze we had last night; wilted flowers could be seen on many blocks.
Having grown up in north Texas (where some freezing weather typically occurs in the winter months yet nothing like what is normal in Minnesota) it is indeed a bit novel to live in a region with a 'genuine' winter season. I have lived in northern climates and their associated winters in past years but nothing as severe as what you can expect in Minnesota. The term 'growing season' is obviously most relevant to those who pursue agricultural activities. Once the growing season is over the orientation of your daily focus naturally shifts to a season of hibernation and eventually to preparations for the coming year. As darkness grows and the days grow cold and brief it becomes an ideal time to look within your own home as well as within the confines of your own body. It is now a good time for other projects. It is a good time for exploring the terrain of grief.
I attended a class focused on grief and the holidays yesterday. During my brief introduction of my background I mentioned the sadness I felt (both past and present) that this past summer became a time marked by adjusting my life to the reality of the diagnosis I was not expecting to receive. Dealing with such a development in the time of summer's power felt contrary to me. Indeed if illness could be correlated to a season I would wager it would be winter rather than summer. We typically are inclined to associate summer with warmth, light, pleasure and ease. Winter is the time of cold, darkness and hibernation. It is a time (outside of the tropics) when the world grows silent in its slumber of hibernation. Silence and darkness correspond very easily to qualities of being you would associate with illness; when we are sick or suffer it can feel like the equivalent of being silenced or existing (rather than vibrantly living) in the darkness that confusion (due to how illness can detour our entire lives and future) may so easily generate.
Even for winter hardy Minnesota natives I suspect winter is not always an easy experience. Once the energetic whirlwind of the holidays passes by we are faced with approximately three solid months of cold and snow. It could be easy to want to disassociate or daydream about the warmth of the coming summer or fondly remembering the warmth of summers past. And yet if I really want to live in the present (the only moment where I can truly actually live) it seems doing this too much is not the healthiest way of living in the circle of the seasons.
My recent experience of the day treatment program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital was helpful in many ways. I enhanced my life skills and was able to gain some significant perspective on my own challenges as well as the much larger challenges that many others often face. One important bad habit I was reminded of is the habit of collapsing the past, present and future into one moment. Many days have enough demands in them that just living in the moment is more than enough to fill our plates. So it becomes quite clear (unless your thinking is muddled or clouded) that thinking about the past, present and future in the same day or for many days at a time can be not only exhausting but fruitless and lead to a feeling of ongoing overwhelm. And I realize that in the past I have tended to do that too much. I believe it is vitally important to our own health that we find a way to cultivate not only gratitude for that which we have in the present but that we also do our best to be present in the present. When we constantly mentally drift off to other places and times we effectively vanish from the evolving stream of life full of so much possibility. The only place where life actually unfolds is in the present. Everything else is either memory or fantasy.
I am preparing myself now to compete in a contest this coming weekend here in Minneapolis. I have not kept my diagnosis a secret. Shame can debilitate the strongest of us. I hope that somehow by transmuting the darkness of my painful past losses into wisdom that I share with others here in my blog I will be able to find some healthy closure and move forward into the light of a much brighter future. I feel I am moving in that direction as fast as is possible. And taking comfort in the strength of my commitment will help me through the winter that stands before me.
The growing season here in Minnesota is now definitively over. The hardiest of annual plants that can survive a night when temperatures drop to 26F to 28F do not do too well when it reaches 10F. But at least the wind is finally calming down before bringing some relative warmth back in the coming days. As I walked around outside today I could witness the carnage of the very hard freeze we had last night; wilted flowers could be seen on many blocks.
Having grown up in north Texas (where some freezing weather typically occurs in the winter months yet nothing like what is normal in Minnesota) it is indeed a bit novel to live in a region with a 'genuine' winter season. I have lived in northern climates and their associated winters in past years but nothing as severe as what you can expect in Minnesota. The term 'growing season' is obviously most relevant to those who pursue agricultural activities. Once the growing season is over the orientation of your daily focus naturally shifts to a season of hibernation and eventually to preparations for the coming year. As darkness grows and the days grow cold and brief it becomes an ideal time to look within your own home as well as within the confines of your own body. It is now a good time for other projects. It is a good time for exploring the terrain of grief.
I attended a class focused on grief and the holidays yesterday. During my brief introduction of my background I mentioned the sadness I felt (both past and present) that this past summer became a time marked by adjusting my life to the reality of the diagnosis I was not expecting to receive. Dealing with such a development in the time of summer's power felt contrary to me. Indeed if illness could be correlated to a season I would wager it would be winter rather than summer. We typically are inclined to associate summer with warmth, light, pleasure and ease. Winter is the time of cold, darkness and hibernation. It is a time (outside of the tropics) when the world grows silent in its slumber of hibernation. Silence and darkness correspond very easily to qualities of being you would associate with illness; when we are sick or suffer it can feel like the equivalent of being silenced or existing (rather than vibrantly living) in the darkness that confusion (due to how illness can detour our entire lives and future) may so easily generate.
Even for winter hardy Minnesota natives I suspect winter is not always an easy experience. Once the energetic whirlwind of the holidays passes by we are faced with approximately three solid months of cold and snow. It could be easy to want to disassociate or daydream about the warmth of the coming summer or fondly remembering the warmth of summers past. And yet if I really want to live in the present (the only moment where I can truly actually live) it seems doing this too much is not the healthiest way of living in the circle of the seasons.
My recent experience of the day treatment program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital was helpful in many ways. I enhanced my life skills and was able to gain some significant perspective on my own challenges as well as the much larger challenges that many others often face. One important bad habit I was reminded of is the habit of collapsing the past, present and future into one moment. Many days have enough demands in them that just living in the moment is more than enough to fill our plates. So it becomes quite clear (unless your thinking is muddled or clouded) that thinking about the past, present and future in the same day or for many days at a time can be not only exhausting but fruitless and lead to a feeling of ongoing overwhelm. And I realize that in the past I have tended to do that too much. I believe it is vitally important to our own health that we find a way to cultivate not only gratitude for that which we have in the present but that we also do our best to be present in the present. When we constantly mentally drift off to other places and times we effectively vanish from the evolving stream of life full of so much possibility. The only place where life actually unfolds is in the present. Everything else is either memory or fantasy.
I am preparing myself now to compete in a contest this coming weekend here in Minneapolis. I have not kept my diagnosis a secret. Shame can debilitate the strongest of us. I hope that somehow by transmuting the darkness of my painful past losses into wisdom that I share with others here in my blog I will be able to find some healthy closure and move forward into the light of a much brighter future. I feel I am moving in that direction as fast as is possible. And taking comfort in the strength of my commitment will help me through the winter that stands before me.
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