Sometimes we feel guilty for seeking solace. I am not talking about the heroic kind of solace we imagine when we first hear this word: a solitary person meditating on a rock by the ocean, or a single figure hiking through the towering forest. No, I am talking about a darker kind of solace. The kind of solace taken when the world is just too much. The kind of solace that comes from retracting inward, sometimes literally.
A few months back I felt myself beginning my annual retraction. At first, I fought it. Walking with my glasses off my face towards the sun in the morning. I opened my eyes wide and prayed to the sun: fill me, innoculate me! I did this for a few weeks, starting in November. But then, inevitably I felt the smooth pull of self curling inward, towards a dark center (you may have noticed that it timed up with the ebb in this blog). I felt the familiar paradox of tight clenching and completely inert motivation that comes as the world begins to take on a different ombre. My winter was here.
And this is where the guilt comes in. Because if you stay in bed sick, you can forgive yourself, but if you stay in bed sad, it is a little harder. But this year I wasn’t surprised by my retraction. This year I had given myself the gift of poetry. And something magical happened. Not magical happiness or motivation or even optimism. But magical acceptance. My poetry gave me the words I needed to accept and name that I was officially in my Snail Mode. And that I could emerge and retract and somehow it was perfectly natural and maybe even a little beautiful. So this is me emerging for a bit to share a poem and a few updates below. I hope you enjoy it, but if you are in snail mode too, don’t worry. Someday, we will both peek our heads out at the same time, give each other a knowing look, and allow ourselves to be a little vulnerable and briefly seen.
First the poem
yesterday I was awoken gripped by an electric hand I retracted into the spiral of myself I went into snail mode that is what I have decided to call it when your world shrinks to the size of your room, a bed It sounds cuter than "briefly overcome by seasonal depression" less worrisome everyone knows that the snail will emerge eventually and I did emerge one slow eye at at a time
Now the Updates
Postcast: Recently I was honored to be interviewed on the Schoolutions Podcast. Olivia Wahl and I had an incredible conversation about the power of natural patterns to shape learning for both students and educators.
🎧 Listen: https://lnkd.in/e7d_XRiH
📺 Watch: https://lnkd.in/e_mNrr5g
Article: I have an article coming out in the next issue of The Learning Professional called “Moving from the Factory to the Forest: Why Learning Metaphors Matter for the Design of Professional Learning”. I look forward to sharing that with you.
Book: I am working on a book based on Starting Small. Thank you to my dear friend and fellow educator and writer, Sam Bennett who lured me out of my shell to do so and is acting as my mentor and editor!! I will share future updates as they emerge. Fingers crossed for finding the just right publisher!
💗 That is it for now. Sending you love and light in the long winter nights! 💗
So beautiful, Gwyneth. Thank you for giving words to how I feel. And legitimizing it. Peace to us all.
Thank you for this perfect metaphor. I've always felt good about the night coming earlier in winter, I suppose because I needed its shell around me. I love how imagining things this way, like a snail, gives us permission to rest; always knowing that the spring comes.