Overcoming winter S.A.D.ness

"In the depth of winter, I learned that within me lay an invincible summer."

Albert Camus

Winter Barn

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/winter-barn-lianne-schneider.html 

Seasonal Affective Disorder used to be laughed at as the hypochondria of...attention seekers, the lazy, or maybe just the "winter blues" - a harmless enough low feeling that will go away on its own soon enough. Even when I was younger and very active in the winter with snowmobiling, skating, winter parties at the sugar shanty, I still experienced this kind of "dread" as November approached. I'd say over and over, "I hate November." As the years went by, the dread got worse, the low feeling became real depression during the winter months. At first, I chalked it up to personal losses that had occurred in November or early December - my Dad's death, my husband's, my grandfather's. But each year, it got worse and I began to equate winter with the season of my life - that I was entering the "winter" of my life journey and while death didn't exactly terrify me, I wasn't in that big a hurry for it! Moving back up north after years in the south seemed to make things much worse - as my physical mobility became more limited, winters stretched long and drearier. The sudden change to Standard time in October (now November) would hit me like a ton of bricks as the daylight hours were instantly one hour shorter. I'd tell everyone I was going into hibernation and I'd come out again when the time changed in March! And off I'd go into what I called "my cave."

S.A.D. is actually very real for millions of people and for some, downright dangerous. According to the Mayo Clinic, those with severe depression from untreated S.A.D. should not ignore the symptoms. They can get worse and lead to problems if it's not treated. These can include:

• Suicidal thoughts or behavior
• Social withdrawal
• School or work problems
• Substance abuse

Treatment can help prevent complications, especially if seasonal affective disorder is diagnosed and treated before symptoms get bad.

So...what to do. See a doctor if symptoms persist - you may benefit from antidepressant medications but even if you don't choose this course, a health care professional will be aware of your condition and that's important. But there are lifestyle changes you can try as well - get special real daylight bulbs for your lamps and avoid fluorescent lights if possible. There are also actual light therapy boxes you can use several times a day to increase your exposure to daylight. Go outside - even if you aren't very mobile, bundle up and sit on the porch, the patio, a park bench and soak up the sun for a half hour. Get what exercise you can - you don't have to ski or snowmobile or shovel snow with a bad heart to get a little exercise to raise your serotonin levels. Get CREATIVE - that's finally what saved me. In winter time, I pour myself into my art and writing in between treks up and downstairs for exercise. I think about winter poetically instead of with dread. In fact...I wrote a long poem called, "Even Winter Has Its Joy" and you can hear me read it on this short YouTube video:

I hope you enjoyed that...would love to get your feedback though I apologize for the quality of the artwork - I've worked harder on that in recent years! The poem is from my last book, "Ecclesiastes for Sixty: Seasons in Solitude." 

 

Hope...has eyes

"Hope is the dream of a waking man" ~ Aristotle

 Being Temperamental

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/being-temperamental-lianne-schneider.html

Words of despair seem to be bandied about in many contexts today – the economy (and perhaps our own personal financial situation), unending wars, inevitable destruction of the environment, the nastiness of politics, the inhumanity of man toward other human beings, the starvation of children…indeed, the list alone seems a cause for despair. And personal despair is on the rise as well – one in four Americans will develop a mental illness relating to depression and 150 million doctors’ visits a year pertain to that depression. This must not be a new phenomenon, however. Sometime during the second century B.C.E., Pliny the Elder said, “The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Clearly depression and despair were understood to be a significant aspect of the human condition even 4000 years ago. But read that sentence again…and note the second half of it particularly. That phrase smacks of something called hope – and hope is a universal attitude that gives us eyes to see the world through a different lens. “Despair is blind. Hope has eyes,” says Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series, “Conversations with God.” Hope gives us the courage to face our deepest fears and our greatest grief. As artists in every genre, our gift, we hope, is to open the eyes of the despairing to beauty, grace, love, common experience, compassion and light – to foster hope in others, to remind them that even in the darkest moments, they are not alone. As Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games wrote, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.”

HOPE BREAKS

Hope breaks…upon the rocks –

shattered into droplets,

dashing itself against the

unforgiving, immovable crags,

their remote faces rejecting

the pleading grasp of blown spume.

At the height of the tide,

in the fury of the winter storm,

it might almost seem as if

nothing could remain of hope.

Yet when that futile surge

of lost promise slips away,

rebuilding for a new onslaught,

there is a poignant sense of loss,

a bleak feeling of abandonment.

But then, close to despair, I recall

that it is those storm driven tides

which bring the gifts from the sea –

casting them like so much refuse

beyond the coastal drift line,

tossed atop the beveled berm,

treasures revealed only when

the wave draws out to sea again

exposing the blessings in the sand…

laying there amidst the seaweed,

with other trash the sea has swallowed,

are pearly shells, small and large,

the driftwood, the beautiful stones,

a piece of Kelly green sea glass,

perhaps a letter in a blue bottle,

each with its own story to tell

of the challenging voyage

that brought it finally to this shore. 

©Lianne Schneider