haven’t exactly kept it a secret around here that winter is not my favorite. When I first moved from California to Idaho in 2020, I was entirely unprepared for how different winter was in the high desert vs the Central Valley. Who knew that there was literally NOTHING GREEN for months on end besides a few scrubby pine trees?? At home, November-March ish are usually the greenest months of the year. Talk about a shock to my system. 🥲

Winter has gotten progressively easier for me as I have gotten used to it a little more. Or at least that’s what I would have told you a few weeks ago before we had a wave of single digit temperatures and blizzard days and sheets of ice on the roads.

The cold snap made me realize that as I’ve grown more acclimated (the actual meaning lol) to the winter months here, I’ve stopped being as intentional about getting through them.

In the winters of 2020-early 2022, one of the things M and I prioritized on the bleakest days was Doing Beautiful Things. We would go for a drive, go to a greenhouse, walk outside and look at the trees. Sometimes we would get coffee or a lovely meal or a soda. Often we would drive to the city because Boise in winter is much prettier to look at than our muddy fields.

Even on the days we felt least like it, we would try to do something beautiful. And it always
always
always
helped.

I’ve known this, but have been forgetting, I think.

This past Friday, we dressed up in pretty Valentines clothes even though it was snowing/sleeting/freezing outside. The roads were mostly clear so we drove to Trader Joe’s to buy some chocolate and cookie butter and a hydrangea plant, and then to Barnes and Noble to browse and add to our enormous to-be-read lists.

They say grief needs beauty, and I would venture that the dark days of the year can feel a whole lot like grief. (Bringing up, exacerbating, solidifying).

Beauty, though, reminds us of what is Ultimate and True.

If the grief of winter is getting to your bones, try doing something beautiful.