Winter walk

Just a girl in her Transitions lenses on a winter walk.

My therapist recently announced to me, after asking me a list of questions, that I have “a mild depression.” Not exactly shocking news. It’s been pretty hard for me to get out of bed lately. It’s been a struggle actually off and on for the last couple of years. It’s weird. It’s how I felt when Lars was a newborn and I didn’t quite know what was wrong with me. Now I do know, and I suppose that’s helpful! It’s also helpful that I don’t have an infant or a two-year-old.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s seasonal or pandemic-induced or what, but gosh darn if I don’t have the hardest stinkin’ time getting out of bed in the morning. It’s extra strange because I truly do not feel sad or despondent or any other feelings you associate with depression. I just... don’t want to get up. And since my kids are fairly independent, I don’t really have to. But leaving them to their own devices in the morning has effects that show up later, with kids acting out, or eating candy for breakfast, or skipping class... so the practice of staying in bed all morning is really not sustainable for a mom of any age kids. 

But I am working on ways to manage it. Going to ponder whether I can weave it in to some sort of New Years resolution, which I frankly really enjoy and always enjoy each year. I like putting away the Christmas decorations, feeling like my house somehow just got bigger with all the sentimental holiday knick-knacks put away, layering on the winter clothes and facing the longest and coldest month of the year head-on. 

Granted, I usually do this after a two- to four-week break from real life which has been spent in mountains and/or sunshine with people I adore.

But I’m a grown-up girl (as Neil Diamond would say)(“look at what you’ve done... why, you’ve become a grown-up girl”) and I can handle it. Bring it on, January! And February! And March...