I’m depressed.
Plain and simple.
I’m not seasonally depressed.
I’m not kinda depressed.
I’m not oh my gosh sooooooooo depressed.
I am, at all times, carrying a sadness inside my rib cage. It’s heavy, it’s burdensome, it’s often more than I can stand. But, every day, I carry it.
I bear it.
bear
/ber/
1. carry the weight of; to support
2. to endure (an ordeal or difficulty)
Speaking of bears (smooth transition, Jess) I recently learned that bears are something called “faculative hibernators”. This means that they do not hibernate spontaneously or even annually. They hibernate, or enter their “winter torpor” as a direct respsone to the stress in their environment. This could be the cold, the lack of food, what have you. The world outside becomes too much, so they withdraw inside.
Honestly, same…
This past fall marked the beginning of a season in my life that I think would be classified as the definition of stress. And slowly over the last few months I have felt myself withdrawing inside. I started to deeply crave simplicity. I started to shed the extra weight of things in my life. I felt this innate desire to wrap my close friends and family up in my arms, as if I could protect them from the rain cloud that loomed over the edges of my daily life. I dug a den. I put them all inside.
And then the rain came. It came on hard, and fast, and all at once in a spectacularly visceral display of emotion after my work Christmas party. I sobbed into my friend’s arms as she held me in her living room. I wailed about how unjust and unfair and un…everything my life was. And when I was done, when the squall ended, the light pitter patter of that rain cloud remained. And it has not left me since.
But in the absence of the sunny spring day my life once felt like, I have found a new season. A season of hibernation.
When bears enter hibernation, they do so voluntarily unlike “obligate hibernators” (think groundhogs) who do so every year regardless of what is happening . In the time bears spend sleeping their den, they don’t hunt, they don’t do much of anything outside of what is absolutely necessary for survival. The male bears can sleep for up to 100 days. The females gestate their cubs and wake throughout to give birth and care for their babies. It is a season of rest, or self sufficiency and of caring for those close to you. Nothing more, nothing less. And then, when the snow melts and the ice thaws, they emerge from their homes lighter, leaner and prepared to take on what the next season brings.
I feel I am being called this year to find rest, self sufficiency, and to ensure the care of those close to me. If 2022 was a year of doing, 2023 is a year of doing less. A year of keeping my head down and of doing the work required to survive. A year where maybe I will not accomplish the most I ever have in a 365 day span, but when I emerge I will be lighter, leaner, and prepared to take on the next season.
So, without further ado, welcome to the year of the bear.
The Year of the Bear 