The first week of the calendar year
how we find what we need in the winter
In the first week of this new year, as I see so many posts and writing about resolutions and goals and, increasingly, more challenging the idea of setting ourselves up in this way, I’ve been reflecting on how the meaning of this time has shifted for me over the years.
During my chemo treatments, as I approached the start of 2022, I had what felt like an epiphany after reading the incomparable
’s book Wintering. One of the many thoughtful gifts I received from friends at precisely the right time in the winter that came to my life and, fittingly, matched the season around me. Below, is an excerpt from the book project I’ve been working on for the past couple of years that drops me back into December 2021, a couple of weeks before the transition of the calendar year.
For the first time, I can see clearly the insanity of New Year’s falling on January 1st rather than honoring the cycle of the seasons. I see the pressures of capitalism in the commodification of Christmas and the focus on active goals and resolutions that mischaracterize what this time of year means in nature. We contort in unnatural ways to make this time something that it’s not, and lose out on what it is in the midst of the noise.
In many ways this time of year symbolizes hope as every passing day the sun returns. It represents hope in humanity and God and nature—by virtue of the season and certainly the Christian symbolism of Christmas. But while it’s a time of hope, it’s not a time of action—or not outward action. Like the trees whose leaves brown and then fall, but maintain energy and life in their center, so we also transition into dormancy.
Midwinter is our time of rest and reflection too, like everything else in the world around us. We can also choose an alternative to the consumerism, the productivity and goals. We can also choose to slip into the natural cadence of the season and, in the quiet stillness, integrate everything else we’ve experienced over the year. For the first time I can see this is not, in fact, a time to set goals, but a time to listen to our intentions and knowing and to let that percolate and ferment and alchemize. It’s not something that can be rushed or timed or even attached to a particular date, it’s in slow motion.
I have loved New Year’s goal setting for so long, and this is the first year in my adult memory I decide to put it down. This year I have new resolve. I’ve woken up to a new truth. This is the season to receive and collect love, ideas, and dreams. To plant seeds and wait patiently for the hard shells to split and new life to emerge in the spring.
It’s precisely not the time to set goals, but instead to rest, to plant and wait and see what germinates over the next few months. I can set my goals then, in the first days of spring when fresh insights emerge from the ground like seedlings. In May, around my birthday, I can set intentions and have them carry me just to December and then leave me there to sleep.
I read that January 1st and the celebration of “New Year’s” comes from the Roman calendar, implemented by Caesar, and that the month of January is named for the god Januarius who had two faces so he could look backward in time and into the future at once. In the winter, if we slow down almost to a stop, we can hear the murmurings from ahead and behind like that. Our minds becomes unclouded and fill with visions from both directions of our lives.
It’s remarkable how different this winter feels. In part, I’m sure, because this is the first winter I’ll spend on medication for my mental health, the gray days are not pulling me down as they have for years. Perhaps also, in part, because in some ways I am already resting down against the earth. It’s not an abrupt crashing, it’s been a gradual one, or at least the abruptness has already come.
For the first time, I can see how buying into the manufactured buzz of the winter holidays sets us up to fail—to be out of alignment with the time the earth has wisely gifted to us to lie in dormancy. So when we flounder against the artificial urgency of buying and doing, we feel sad or inadequate or experience seasonal affective disorder. Instead of fighting the current, we can flow along the river and even freeze with it for a time.
The surface of a frozen lake has its own kind of beauty.
For the first time, I see it all as a blessing and a gift. There’s so much I love about the holidays, including parts of what western, sometimes-white, human minds have manufactured: spiked eggnog, parties, and new holiday dresses. But this year will be my first Christmas with just Patrick and I. I won’t risk travel with my immune system so low and I can’t even imagine the nausea of a ten hour car ride. We’ll celebrate quietly at home. It won’t be loud and obvious. In a year when it might appear lonely, I feel a sense of sacred connectedness to the whole world.
Two years out, it becomes increasingly easy to forget this girl, her experiences, and the insights they carried on their backs. But one ritual I have around this time of year has always helped me to remember. On New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day or sometime thereabouts, I complete a small reflection journal. I go through all of my photos on my phone, read sections of my journal from the past twelve months, and think about everything that has come to pass.
Highlights, lowlights, how my values have shifted, what I’ve learned, what I’ve lost, what I’ve found.
Even when I put the goals aside, the space remains for this practice of looking back. This year, in addition to the past twelve months, I can look back to another touchstone in my life from the excerpt above. I imagine all of us have these types of moments of “before” and “after” that mark tectonic shifts in our world.
What has surprised me this year is that, in addition to resting, I also feel a calling to create in this season—writing, intentions, even (yes) some goals. At first, it is hard to tell if this comes from someplace, some expectation, outside of myself, or if it’s naturally bubbled up from within me.
The truth is, the seasons of our lives do not always reflect the actual seasons around us in every way, though I continue to find that a big part of them as human-animals always does.
There are often multiple cycles at play at one time. For me, this year, I am also in a cycle of growing a new life and I imagine part of my desire to create, to prepare, to actively nest and nurture comes from that. Not just for the new baby, but for myself, my family, and that same sacred connectedness to the world.
No matter what, it’s a time for gentleness with ourselves and a kind of quiet and deep listening that allows us to tap into what we need in this new year.
What I’m loving right now:
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer is an extended-essay in book form with reflections on communities and our systems, including economies, and what, as always, we can stand to learn from the natural world.
A Map for Falasteen: A Palestinian Child’s Search for Home by Maysa Odeh is one of the most beautiful and heart-expanding children’s picture books I’ve read in a long time (if you have kids and if you do not). It was short-listed for the 2025 Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award which awards children’s literature that sparks important conversations about social justice.
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Mountie and Maritza Moulita is a young adult novel about a Haitian-American girl who travels to Haiti from the states for the first time after an incident at school and ends up on an adventure learning about her family, the country’s history and culture, and nonprofits and U.S. interference. So well done and a delight to drop back into the beauty of Haiti at a time when it’s not safe to travel there.
Wingspan—an absolutely stunning board game with the most beautiful bird illustrations, it’s a card-based game where you attract birds to your wildlife preserve and includes lots of bird facts and faculties based on accurate bird biology. One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year.
Armoire clothing rental—I’m back on this train as I find myself increasingly in need of changing sizes of maternity clothes. This is a woman-owned company that rents clothing of all shapes and sizes monthly, I enjoyed it pre-pregnancy as a way to buy fewer clothes and create less fabric waste and have found it’s one of the best for maternity too. You can use my referral code (rachelv14) for 50% off.
Wintering by Katherine May if you’ve not already read it and didn’t click on the link above, I can’t understate how much of a balm it was for me and has been for others going through challenging storms in their own lives.
Speaking of birds, I have a collection of poetry out called A Mass of Feathers: Love Poems. You can order a copy at that link for $10.
Oh, Rachel! I love these reflections. I also use this time not rushed to contemplate the year just passed. Phone pictures function as a diary. Best wishes to you, Patrick and baby.