Timeline Melancholy

This is my December 2023 newsletter.

It’s early December as I write this, and we are getting into grief season. As the daylight gets shorter and the moon comes out more, it’s natural to think about what was gained and lost over the last year. Traditionally, the Winter Solstice was called Yule, a 12-day celebration of the rebirth of the light after the darkest moment of the solar year. It’s a time for revelry, food, and joy, but it’s also about remembering was came before, about being in the sweet, if melancholy, embrace of the darker season. It’s about looking forward to the next year, but also about looking back at the last one. It is a natural time to be engaged with the feelings and processes of grieving. 

A non-exhaustive list from The Full Moon Yearbook of the names December’s full moon has had from all over the world. The book is selling out and stock is low! I have a few copies in Vancouver and Edmonton that I can get to you in person if you need yours before the holidays. Email me back if you want to set that up!

I’ve been spending a little more time with the Death Light lately, especially on visiting Vancouver this month, a place where I lived for so long, but no longer have immediate plans to return to. I can see that version of myself, still living in my little glass apartment that hung over the swinging traffic lights of a busy intersection, still walking under the moon every night with my little dog Finnegan, still a little wet from the constant rain. That version of me made choices that I live with now, and that’s true enough whether those choices were wise, wild, or desperate. I’m aware that the choices I make today will impact some far future self living in some other timeline altogether. 

I moved away from Vancouver during the pandemic, and, over what felt like the blink of an eye, I went from being a poet and yoga teacher walking nightly in the rain to a suburban Edmonton mom searching for the morning moon while driving my toddler to daycare in 40 below. When I visit Vancouver now, many of the coffee shops yoga studios, and restaurants I used to love are gone. There is that uncanny feeling that you don’t always get to know when something is happening for the last time. 

Me and my best bud in my old Vancouver apartment (and I still have that random tupperware knocked over on the table in the background…)

I used to obsess about whether or not I was making the “right” decision. It was incredibly liberating for me when I realized that there’s no such thing: only actions that have consequences, some of which are predictable, some of which are not. We’re doing our best, and we can’t always know what it’s going to be like when our choices place us on a certain unknown timeline. And as hard as we try to steer our lives where we want them to go, life happens to us, too, and we don’t always end up where we were aiming.   

It’s comforting to know that human beings are generally pretty good at adapting—we don’t regret things as often as we fear. We are also pretty bad at knowing how we’re going to feel in the future, so we tend to make our decisions based on whoever we are now. It’s all a bit of a crapshoot, really. 

So maybe it’s not so much about the individual decisions we make, but more about the fact that we reflect on them. We may not be able to predict an outcome, but we can sit with our thoughts and feelings in the present and be honest with ourselves about them. We can make our choices in alignment with our integrity, our values, and our true desires, and not because of what someone else wants from us or what we think we “should” do. And I think this is important because no one lives our lives but us. We don’t get happiness, love, connection, meaningful practice, a good relationship with our body, or satisfying relationships just because we exist. We have to work on these things. We have to choose them. 

The Winter Solstice is a season for reflection, for grief as well as hope. It’s a time to look the Death Light in the face and see what wisdom it has for us. The bright lights of the merry season can be seductive (or garish, maybe), but the darker glow of the moon can be subtly sweet. If we’re willing to look at the places in our lives that don’t feel quite right, we can consider the choices we actually do have. That matters no matter what timeline we end up in.