Hibernation
This is what helps me remember that being slow when my body needs it is not just an okay choice to make, but a necessary condition of my wellbeing.
Image description: Illustration from a Frog and Toad book, in which Frog is coming to Toad and telling him that it is time to get up because it is May. Toad is in bed, and Frog is holding a calendar with MAY printed at the top.
Audio recording of the essay section:
Context
Hi friends. I’ve been avoiding you.
This winter feels more like hibernation than winter ever has before. Maybe it’s the hearth magic class I’m taking,1 or the fact that I’ve not been working much, or that I got a cold and have been sleeping sometimes 10 or 12 hours a night. I’m not sure, but whatever it is it has me rejoicing about canceled plans, then promptly curling up on the couch with a book or a video game and a candle and a cup of tea.
I think the internet is presently calling this vibe Rotting? It doesn’t feel like rotting, though. It feels like wintering.
Months ago at a Shabbat dinner with friends, my beloved Beth offered us a little ritual around garlic. They gave us each a clove and very specific instructions not to peel it.2 Then they told us about how garlic is planted in the Fall and “overwintered” before it’s ready to harvest in the summer. “It needs the winter, the time and stillness. Without it garlic can’t grow.” They invited us to think of our little clove of garlic as representing something we needed to winter on, a part of our experience that needed time and stillness, something we could trust to start sprouting when the time is right, when the snow over it melts. I will be honest: I have no recollection whatsoever of the thoughts I burrowed into that little garlic clove. But I have certainly been wintering.
I’ve been working on a family tree. While I’m listening to webinars, I pull up the website and click through pages and pages of other people’s research, accepting suggestions about my 7th great grandfather Richard Kitchen and 5th great grandmother Margaret Mary McMath and the 2,694 other people on my tree. Hearth class is teaching me that so many of my ancestors lived in a way that paid deep attention to the subtle shifts in the land they were on. Their bodies knew the rhythm of the seasons, knew which was the last sheaf of wheat they’d harvest and when the buds would break through the soil in the Spring. When they weren’t wearing masks and dancing in the dark stretch of time when things don’t grow,3 my ancestors were wintering.4 They were, like garlic, like all living things, moving more slowly.
Maybe part of the reason that I can’t bring myself to tackle the ever-mounting pile of things I have to do in order to make enough money to pay my $831 monthly health insurance bill5 is because our bodies are living things, and living things have seasons, and this season is not one of production. Maybe that’s part of why no amount of work-back planning or setting timelines is feeling motivational to me. I know that in order to give folks time to register for the next round of spiritual practice class that starts on March 14th,6 I need to start telling you about it now. But instead I’m darning socks.
I feel, in waves, some shame about it. “Now is the time to hustle!” my brain says brightly, encouragingly. “You could be using this time to hustle! Do the legwork before you run out of money! Do it now! And now! And now!” it says with mounting panic. “GO TO THE COMPUTER AND JUST WRITE THE NEWSLETTER FOR FUCK’S SAKE GRACE,” it wails in desperation.
But honestly? I am done pushing through chronic pain and exhaustion and sore throats and sore nerves in order to do the most. I won’t do it for a job that underpays and overworks and undervalues, and I won’t do it for the Voice of Capitalism in my head telling me I’m worthless if I don’t behave.
Instead, I remember that I am safe. Not only are there no bombs falling on me, but I have so much safety net—so many people who would let me move in with them if I couldn’t make rent, so many people who would help financially before it ever got that bad, so many skills that would help me find employment if I decided a Regular Job was necessary, so many people who are recommending me for consultancy gigs every day so that that won’t become necessary. Remembering that I am safe helps me to choose to be slow with less shame.
The ancestral work helps me to know that being slow when my body needs it is not just an okay choice to make, but a necessary condition of my wellbeing. Remembering that our bodies were not built to Produce Consistently 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50ish weeks a year is helpful. Remembering that some part of my body, no matter how small, carries the DNA of my ancestors, carries their bodies that knew how to change with the seasons, is reassuring me.
The choice I’m actually making is not to rest but to trust: trust that it’s okay for me to be less productive today than my most productive day, trust that productivity isn’t the measure of my worth, trust that the urge to Do Things will return. Which it did. Today. Just a couple of hours ago, when I read someone else’s newsletter and felt suddenly abruptly able to write my own.
That’s the point, really. Today I learned (again, for the millionth time) that I can trust my body to tell me what it needs, and that when I do, things tend to work out. I have no illusions about remembering that the next time there are deadlines looming and I didn’t get enough sleep, but I am committed to learning this lesson again, for all of us who need it, for as long as we need it, maybe every winter, again and again and again.
Stuff
Bricolage: Tools for a Non-religious Spiritual Practice returns on March 14th. Register here. About last time, on a scale from complete-waste-of-time to excellent, participants gave it an average of 10/10. You should definitely join us this Spring, on Thursdays at 10am.
This is the newsletter that made it feel possible to write today. Honestly it almost always both makes me cry and teaches me something. By way of teaser: “For every thing there is a season,” they say, to comfort the living after the death of a loved one. But no one has yet given us the words with which to mourn the death of entire seasons themselves.”
The person who teaches my ancestral hearth magic class is teaching a version for the Spring for the last time ever. I’m trying to figure out how to get it to fit in my budget, and if I do I’d love to take it with you.
Every time I talk about the ways that we all deserve rest, that we all deserve ease, I feel the sharp stab of how far from ease so many of us are. These days I cannot talk about fighting for my own right to rest without also feeling fired up to fight for the people of Palestine, for a future in which their ease feels possible too. I’ll be in the streets next week with JVP NYC (more info here). If you’re not in NYC, you can look for protests in your area here, and make calls and sign onto demands from anywhere.
There’s whole rituals for slowing down. 🫠
Instructions I only sort of followed due to low impulse control and a rebellious spirit. Sorry Bethy!
No joke, some of these ancient European winter rites are mesmerizing.
Or, as my favorite Katie once told me: “In January all we’re supposed to be doing is fucking and making soup!”
Yes, this is what health insurance on the open market costs when you are over 30 and made too much money last year to qualify for any help. It is criminal. Our healthcare system is so so broken.
I’ve renamed it Bricolage, and there’s a whole story about that, which I think is nice. But the idea of telling it makes me want to nap, so for now you’ll just have to take my word for it.