I will not die with the season

It is January 11th and it feels like I have already died once with the season. Any of you living in a northern climate will have some idea what I am talking about. Those of you living in a northern climate and who are stay-at-home mothers to small children may have an even better idea. Winter sucks. It just does. When it takes half an hour to get out the door, and then you are greeted with whining about cold hands and brisk winds, it almost doesn't seem worth it to go out in the first place. But you do it anyhow because staying inside for four months is just not an option.

Back to dying with the season...

Winter affords this great opportunity to put on cozy track suits, cuddle under blankets, drink hot soup and indulge in other human hibernation activities. Which works well if you consider yourself to be avid indoorsman. Unfortunately, I am not one of those souls. I am a lover of the out-of-doors. I am an "open-the-windows, pitch the tent, jump in the lake" type of woman. So winter with a toddler presents a unique challenge of the mental health variety.

I mentioned I already died once with the season. It is true. I should have seen it coming with my 10 hour sleeps (not usual, but great for the patience). Ever since I was pregnant with my first, and if I think about it, perhaps even farther back than that, I have had an angry relationship with these darker months. I'm angry that it's cold, and if it's cold, that I can't do what I want to do in the out-of-doors. I am not good at relenting control, and if old man winter is at the wheel, I hate him.

There is a little light at the end of my tunnel. I got a job. Not a full-time job, but a full-time-enough job. Twenty-one hours a week delivering mental health education to high school students. Not bad. Actually, very good. It is an amazing synthesis of my education and experience to date: teacher's college and teaching and psychotherapy school and counselling. Having ended my teaching career teaching grade eight, I am really excited to work with older students. And mental health is my middle name, ever since I recovered from debilitating panic and anxiety ten years ago.

I WILL GET OUT!! I will get out three days a week. I may even get to go for a walk during the daylight hours in between presentations.

Old man winter, you are my arch-nemesis. With you at the helm, it is a dance with depression where I am fighting for the lead.