As the days grow shorter and the nights longer, I find myself, like so many of us, spending more time than necessary peering at my phone. There’s a woman I follow on TikTok with round, kelly-green wire-rimmed glasses and a delightful Scottish accent. She calls herself @thatglasgowwitch. I like her because she speaks truth, teaches simple mindfulness and manifestation practices, and just seems like a cool broad. I like to think we’d be friends if our paths ever crossed in person.
Recently, she shared her belief that the depth of winter is not a time to make New Year’s resolutions. It’s a time for planting seeds, not for the garden, but for the self. I thought of her and her message after my first therapy visit in more than a year, as the birch and cottonwood leaves blanketed the ground outside my door in Anchorage. Snow dusted the Chugach Mountains, and we were headed toward winter.
I’ve been experiencing health issues that mirror my mom’s when she was my age. Debilitating fatigue, inflammation in my joints and maddening brain fog that have caused me to question my career, my ability to take on positions and missions I would love to devote my energy toward. But my body said otherwise. My body said rest. Take care. Mom was roughly my age when doctors told her to retire.
The depth of winter is not a time to make New Year’s resolutions. It’s a time for planting seeds, not for the garden, but for the self.
So, after two years of trying in good capitalistic fashion to push through it, I listened. I took time away from the 8-to-5 to listen to my body and what it needs. And I made an appointment with my therapist.
During our first visit, I asked her to use sensory-motor psychotherapy, a kind of talk therapy focused on physical, bodily feelings. I sat across from Claire, and she placed headphones over my ears and played calming music. She asked what life would feel or look like if I was healthy.
“I’d be excited to make plans with my family,” I said. A fish head suddenly stuck in my throat. It’s such a simple thought, but one that filled me with fear and sadness, knowing my body has sometimes forced me to stay home when my family goes ugruk hunting or fishing, or even just for a simple walk through the birch and cottonwood outside our house. Migraines pop up or exhaustion smashes me to the couch a lot more often than I like to admit. Thinking about that specific vision of health, I immediately felt a tightness in my chest. A heaviness. I closed my eyes.
I felt sadness. Grief. And anger. I recognized the anger I carry in my chest as the anger of no longer experiencing Mom’s overflow of fun, giving, excited-about-life love. For decades, I’ve been so angry that my kids and our whole family don’t have access to the big love she gave.
“If it feels comfortable, place a hand on your chest,” Claire said. I did. She asked me to recognize and watch the sensation. It changed and traveled up my throat. The fish head, again, stuck. I felt like I couldn’t swallow. Or talk. I sat with the sensation. It moved up the side of my face. And then, it transformed.
A golden light surrounded my head. And it was then that I felt her presence. As if she were right next to me, her essence and heart and voice, I heard her say, “The love is there. The love is there. The love is there. Babe, the love is there. The love is there. The love is there.”
Love doesn’t leave. Love is energy, and that energy remains. In my kids. In our kitchen. In the fish we cut. In packing the tent, sleeping pads and Jetboil for camping. In making cranberry orange scones. In dancing when a good song comes on that makes your body need to move. In my husband, Timm, wearing the goofy, flowery pants I sewed and seeing him, for the first time, move with swag. In wiping the honey off the counter, the coffee stain, the dribbles from breakfast yogurt. In telling Pushkin, our little Yorkipoo, that his breath stinks and doing nothing about it and rubbing his little belly. In hugs when my grown kids arrive at the airport, when my young son Henning leaves for school. In reminding each other to take vitamin D during the dark winter. In lying on the couch and saying nothing. The love is there.
Mom left us 21 years ago. In the months leading up to her death, she experienced severe depression. She no longer slept more than 30 minutes a day. She said she thought twisted, messed-up thoughts. Behind her eyes she was no longer simply the mother who raised me and my older brother and sister, but a woman, now, in deep suffering.
Love doesn’t leave. Love is energy and that energy remains. In my kids. In our kitchen. In the fish we cut. In making cranberry orange scones.
Every year, at the beginning of winter, I grieve. And of course I miss her. She was the best of us, and she’d get a kick out of me saying that. And stick out her chin and dance to Otis Redding in the kitchen, in that way that made us laugh and told us not to take life so seriously. And this winter, as we approach solstice, I thank her as I remember her words. You’re right, Mom. The love is there.
I think of @thatglasgowwitch and know that this season, this is the planted seed. The seed is in the darkness. Sitting. Hibernating. Waiting and ready. Because thoughts become things. Intention is essential. And so I will say it over and over, just like Mom did in my therapist’s office. The love is there. The love is there. The love is there. Making plans is not a scary or sad sensation in my chest. I feel it in my belly and behind my eyes. Like a golden light, or the turning of a season, there is such a sense of possibility.
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This article appeared in the December 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The love is there.”
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