Mid-Winter Blues

Learn:

January. It’s tough coming off of the excitement of the holidays and having to face the coldest and darkest month of the year. Added to that, here in the Midwest we’re more likely to have days that are overcast than those bright, sunny, cloudless January days. It’s a perfect storm of mood-dampening ingredients.

So it’s not just in your imagination - January can be a month that brings on the blues. But it can also be a month of new beginnings and fresh starts. Set intentions and look for nuggets of positive in each day. Choose what you focus on, and choose how you spend your thoughts and your time. Be the glass-half-full person even on those gray winter days. It’s worth it!

Read:

This is the rare time that my post was based on a book, rather than me finding a book to go with a post. A Day So Gray by Marie Lamba takes this concept straight to kids. It shows how two different children look at a situation in two different ways, and how to find a little bit of love and hope in any context. Bring it up on one of those gray, gray days to show a new view on getting through winter.

Do:

Head outside with a pad of paper, some kind of coloring materials, and something to sit on. Watercolor paints, colored pencils, crayons work really well for this activity! Find a sit spot and just notice the colors around you. Without drawing a specific picture, just wash a space on the page with colors that you see around you. This can be across the whole page or in circles that map out where the colors are seen around them. Bonus activity: if you do this a few times a year or once a month, it becomes a great phenology calendar that shows the colors of your outdoor year!