Feeling Brittle?
A possible curative for you...
Winter helps us identify areas of our life that have become frozen, brittle, and lacking in vitality.
Alexis J. Cunningfolk, The Apothecary of Belonging
There is a certain kind of cold that descends here in the North, a frigid, painful aching freeze that you can’t help but take personally. If you’re in a grim frame of mind when it descends, it can really fuck you up. You have to be vigilant: I’m talking SAD lamps, color therapy, all the heating pads, hot water bottles, cats, blankets, happy trinkets, warm tea, lots of music, good books, cozy EVERYTHING, candles—all the candles, stupid Christmas movies, twinkle lights, bring it all on. The past few weeks in Minnesota have been bone-chilling. Lots of gray days, too. Grim. Beyond grim. Basically, if you don’t have a prescription for Lexapro, you better get one soon.
These are tough times for writers in the North. Not all of us can be snow birds. And for writers who have to leave the house—writers with day jobs or with busy family lives or a slew of medical appointments—it can be excruciating to keep the creative fires burning.
Even if you’re not being pummeled with arctic blasts of punishing icy winds, the frenzy of the holidays and the inevitable internal audit of the year where you find yourself coming up short in oh so many ways can be enough to turn any writer brittle—and not the fun peanut butter kind you get in Christmas tins.
Before I dig into some strategies for how the hell we keep the lights on this time of year, let me first remind you that we have a lovely way to get a big dose of dopamine this Sunday!
The Good Thing About The Bad Thing
The silver lining here with winter in the North (and winter as a season in general, wherever you are), is that, as Alexis J. Cunningfolk says above, “Winter helps us identify areas of our life that have become frozen, brittle, and lacking in vitality.”
You see right away what doesn’t do it for you. When the weather is good, there are things that you simply don’t notice are “good enough.” But when “times was hard and gritty,” as Jon Batiste says, you really start to separate the wheat from the chaff. You see right away what doesn’t nourish or sustain you. And you absolutely can tell the impact of not investing in your self-care has.
I’m speaking for myself here. Sometimes it feels like I open up my Substack template and it’s like I’ve sat my ass down in a confessional. While I practice mindfulness all the time, my meditation practice has gone sideways. Poof. Gone. I need to get back on the cushion. Yes, this happens—even to meditation teachers! It’s now, more than ever, that I see the impact of not having that practice. It’s so much harder to restart it when I’m already feeling brittle.
Journal prompt: What are the areas in your life that are frozen, brittle, and lacking in vitality?
We’ll be exploring this at our Mini Cozy retreat, so if you’re going on Sunday, no need to dive in now, but if not, I encourage you to find some time to dig into that question. The silence of the season asks us to go within, to be contemplative, to be in tune with the quiet and the dark.
On Being Brittle
The silver lining of how damn cold it is here: My fellow Minnesotans have taken schadenfreudian glee giving ICE what-for as the goons have descended on our frozen tundra, hunting down members of our community, including harassing one of our congresswoman’s sons. You might have seen in the news how people from my community are up to all kinds of Northern resistance, proving that you really shouldn’t mess with the North, especially in winter. I’m proud of how Minnesota has shown up for our immigrant families. We have more refugees per capita here than anywhere in the country, and proud of it. This isn’t a post about ICE or about immigration…but it’s a post about feeling brittle, and this makes me feel brittle.
I feel brittle when I drive down the street and I don’t know where ICE is, what’s happening to my neighbors, and not knowing who is safe, who isn’t. I feel brittle when I get a text from my husband saying he has to come home because there is a possible active shooter suspect at his school and everyone has to be sent home. (Yes. This happened yesterday. The kid go arrested. It’s terrifying). I feel brittle when I read the news and see all the terrible things. I feel brittle that my friend is a widow and my other friend, her husband, is gone and might not know he just received a big recognition for the book he has coming out next year (I hope he somehow knows). I feel brittle that AI data centers are being built over our beautiful farmland across the country, taking up our drinking water when scientists are projecting we might not have enough drinking water for everyone down the line and people are going along with this and saying get with the program, this is progress.
Brittle rhymes with little and, yes, brittle makes me feel little. It makes me feel small and vulnerable and triggered. I feel myself getting smaller, dimmer.
I can’t write from a small, dim place. I can’t write from brittle.
This is why it’s vital we attend to ourselves and do the work of restoration.
As the land contracts and settles, our own energy pulls inward, and we have to guard against feeling separate from the dark instead of part of it and be mindful of the parts of our inner landscape most in need of restorative rest after a busy year.
Alexis J. Cunningfolk, The Apothecary of Belonging
Restoring Ourselves
The work of winter is to restore ourselves to ourselves. This can be so difficult, especially now. Many of you are in the middle of Hanukkah, and grieving over what happened at Bondi Beach. Your community is frightened and shattered. Others are gearing up for Christmas or the Solstice or other kinds of celebrations.
All of us know the New Year is ahead, just a few weeks away. That carries a weight. Maybe some relief. Possibly some dread.
We know this: Spring is coming. But we must stay present and attend to the now because looking ahead will not resolve what is frozen, brittle, and needs our attention in this moment.
Whether or not you join us this Sunday, my hope for you is that you will find some quiet time to yourself to go inward, embrace the dark of this season, the cozy hibernating warmth it can offer us. Allow yourself restoration. Allow what is frozen to be thawed. I’m curious what you’ll find underneath the ice.
Yours in doing right by the miracle,
P.S.
✨ I’ll be publishing the Get Clear Workbook by the end of this year (fingers crossed) and no later than the first week or so of January.
This will be a workbook that can be done any time of the year, but will be supportive as you launch yourself into 2026. More soon!
☎️ If you need support during this time, I have some space (limited) for calls. Book here.
Brittle is a great word. I feel that. If you want to snowbird it for a few days, you have a sofa bed waiting for you. <3