Kirsty Cummins is one of our National Breastfeeding Helpline Link Workers. She has written this post about changing the perception of new year as a time to make huge changes or rush to achieve unrealistic goals. Instead, she’s championing a more laid back approach, taking cues from nature to rest, reflect and prepare for the excitement of warmer months ahead – a near-perfect analogy for the sometimes intense experience of new parenthood.
A New year makes me uneasy. I dread all the slimming programmes on TV, the ‘how to get yourself in shape’ articles, whether physically or mentally. I struggle in January and February and the last thing I need is more media making me feel I am doing a bad job of it. That the left over 12 boxes of mince pies (yes I DO bulk buy my favourite winter treat) cannot be touched because I should no longer be indulging, and that I should be making health choices (whatever they are) or else I am failing. I feel it unfair that it is the end of January that heralds the release of the small chocolate gooey filled eggs that are my favourite treat, when the guilt of having done nothing still lingers. Why is it now that I feel I am being told to don a stretchy outfit and be physical when I would much rather do that when the nights are lighter and I feel more alive? My head, if I let it, can be so full of what I am not achieving in this murky, dank, cold time that I forget what IS actually going on.
I have always dreaded that certain time in September when you know the summer is over. I would feel bereft that the summer was all but lost to me and all I had ahead was winter and cold and having to pretend that I love Christmas and New Year, when I would much rather carry on enjoying the warmth and the hope that truly fills my soul in summer. I would ignore the beauty of autumn because it heralded the coming of the cold. I would tell anyone that would listen about my woes in winter. I did exactly this to a lovely lady who was treating me with acupuncture last January. And her reply has turned things upside down. She mentioned the Chinese, as she often does with little snippets of Chinese beliefs and said quite simply that January really should be a time to slow down and make things as simple as possible and really enjoy the stillness before the spring slowly starts to sneak its way in. In that pause you might think about what it is you wish to achieve over the whole of the coming year.
Thinking about it now I am guessing this would be connected to Chinese New Year which is sometime between 21st January and 20th February, depending on the New moon and building up to the New Year in the quiet, sleepy weeks gives you time to reflect. Perhaps it was her own ideas and not Chinese beliefs but either way I listened and remembered what she said to me. It seemed important to remove the need to take quick, drastic action in January and the guilt that I hadn’t done that sulking away to itself in the corner in February.
She was suggesting that if I stopped hating the supposed emptiness of this time of year I might start to find the time to reflect and truly listen to what I do want and what I do appreciate.
Whilst simple and glaringly obvious somehow it was a jolt to my own beliefs and I decided to really try very hard to do just that. To find the beauty in the weather and the land and the lack of much to do. I decided to remove things from my life that made me unhappy and to think what would really make my life feel better all year round.
I really took time to ponder that the earth beneath my feet and all around me is resting. That the trees and other such magical beings are sleeping, conserving their energy for greater moments when the Sun begins to linger for a little longer each day in the sky. This whole hemisphere is on a well-earned break from the busy busy of ‘getting it on’ except it would seem us humans.
Over the coming months I acted upon those things I had fully absorbed and appreciated during my rest and reflection.
I am doing the same again this year without the feelings of dread and despair I have suffered in the past. I am enjoying the dark evenings while I can so I can prepare myself for an energy boost and throwing some shapes in the warmer months, when I don’t mind leaving the house after the kids are tucked up because it is still warm and light out there. I always aim for the clocks changing because then I know things are really on the move – including me!
I am using this time to think about what I would like to give to others. I am not failing if I am not giving now – I am preparing myself to do it the right way for me. Volunteering has a huge part to play in our lives but it has to ebb and flow like the seasons and we should never beat ourselves up when our own lives get too full to support others. Perhaps for you this quiet time IS your time to support. When the busy of the world slows, is it that you have more space to hear the thoughts of others. In the stillness of these months can you can give others the wisdom of the benefits of slowing down, listening to themselves and what their instinct is telling them, that it is ok to take time to make decisions or to practice rather than be immediately perfect?
Winter (especially that January panic) sounds a bit like a new mother doesn’t it? In that scary time when all is new and we are expected to do so much in the right way when actually perhaps what a new mum needs to hear is bed down, listen, reflect and trust that life as you knew it will return in some recognisable form at some point in the future but it doesn’t have to be now. That the early unfurlings of motherhood is a time to slow and snuggle and make choices without all the background noise of life.
The comfort of knowing things are ever changing, like the seasons, can bring comfort to us whether we are new parents or volunteers choosing our next adventure or women going about our ever changing lives from maiden to mother to grandmother. Sometimes the still bits are just what we need.
And now we are in February and every snowdrop lifts my heart.