And winter falls silent all around
10 things I'm thinking, watching, reading, and doing right now.
One: Journal entry: January 7, 2024: What am I supposed to do with all of this drive, desire, inspiration, and energy? I feel like God is an annoying three year old kid. A lot of urgent noise about nothing at all. Just a manic thing in me jumping and shouting all the time ‘I’m alive! I’m alive! Listen! Listen!’ Okay - good for you - now fuck the fuck off. I have things to do. Like just be here. With my coffee. But then again, maybe inspiration is not a big screaming jumping overwhelming thing. Maybe that is actually the Resistance. If it is too big and too cumbersome—so much so that it shuts me down—then it’s not God or inspiration at all.
Two: I watched Dan Levy’s Good Grief last night—it was absolutely gorgeous and magnificent. Generous in every way. To me, Dan Levy is brilliance, artistry, wit and warmth personified. I watch him on screen and I feel like I want to formally ask him if he in fact does contain the spirit of my Guardian Angel. The one I pray to every morning. The one I ask to please guard and protect me, to please guide and light my way in this world. He makes things come to life in this movie: intimacy, grace, pain, love, loss, beauty, sexuality, desire, relationship, creativity; and the aesthetic of every room, angle, outfit, and scene lights up my soul. Somehow it’s cold and desolate and warm and sweet all at once. Majestic and cozy. He’s a masterful visionary and I can’t believe how lucky we are to be alive when he is. To watch what he creates on regular old Netflix, as though it isn’t a heavenly, otherworldly gift like none other.
Three: I’m reading The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest (as so many of my recovery friends are—maybe you are, too?). Each day, a small paragraph of wisdom and insight. I’m grateful for it. I like having something to open my daily journal with, a thoughtful prompt to keep me in touch with my pursuit of my most evolved, revolutionary self.
Four: There was a moment in a recent therapy session when I asked aloud if I could cut a particular toxic person out of my life and my therapist responded: “Who are you asking?” And we stared at each other stoically through the open, empty air. It is quite a thing to realize you are the one making the big decisions. A remarkable thing to realize you have been asking when you should have been answering all along.
Five: I came across a Sylvia Plath poem that includes the line “Winter is for women.” And I wrote down: A woman understands winter. She knows the bones of it, hard against the fragile air. I can feel poetry returning to me. I can feel that this year will be grand in the sense of stark awareness. I will succeed in slower, softer, more subtle things. For now, I am inside a paring back.
Six: To that end, I cleared out some old clothes from my closet. Things that hung there and I hated them every time I looked in my closet. Which for the past year has been exceedingly rare (three times, maybe? four?). My life has been loungewear, inside and out. I don’t know what’s next but I know it’s going to be different. I refuse to come out of my loungewear. This feels like progress in life and living all around.
Seven: I just finished reading Wintering by Katherine May. It was a lovely book. I skipped over many pages because for some reason it felt like trying to read through some kind of static in my head. That’s on me, not the author, though. I’m in a curious time of my life right now. Very few things, even beautiful things, can seem to break through (Dan Levy can though, and this IG post by the crushingly brilliant ALOK - see also their 2024 list of genius). I especially liked the bit near the end of the book about her brutal cold plunges in the ocean. I might even try. I probably won’t.
Eight: January is firmly here. Yesterday it snowed quite heavily for maybe an hour or two which was magical. I love snow falling near dusk and the way it glows translucent-blue on the rooftops and trees. After a while, as I sat eating shrimp and pasta with my husband in front of a fire in the fireplace and my guardian angel Dany Levy on the screen, the snow turned to heavy rain and made the cars swerve as they cruised down our street in the dark.
Nine: I feel at a loss for words and direction lately. I feel overwhelmed, paralyzed, and confounded by what the rest of the world seems to assume are simple things. I’m in my third year of recovery. The newness of sobriety that so many talk about in Dry January, that kind of newness is long over for me, none of it catches in my mind (I’m grateful, believe me). But I am consumed with a new kind of newness all the while. I just don’t think it’s an outward thing. The newness is within me, growing. I’m learning how to build a new life. I’ve never done it from on such solid ground.
Ten: Wintering is an idea. Everything we do and believe is an idea. What are we after when we conjure these ideas up? How do we decide which ideas, dreams, visions, aspirations to make into reality? I write to you not sure what to say, not sure what I know that is worth anything. I’m lost, and as Holly Whitaker said once so perfectly: Lost is a place. I guess that means: I’ve finally arrived. It is Sunday morning. I am new but quiet about it. The ground and the coffee are cold.
Allison Marie Conway is a published author (Love Me Sober, 2023; Luminae, 2018), addiction recovery coach, mentor, researcher, and advocate. Allison currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, John, of seventeen years. Follow on Instagram: @allisonmarieconway
That was a very nice read. I really resonate with the understanding of God and spirituality that people in recovery have. Yep, God is also the little puppy biting and terrorizing me right now as I write this reply!!!
I like your wintering relections too. It’s a time of year when things retract, pull in and gestate. Under the snow in dens and hollows; pregnant bears are carrying new life. Cells are dividing....evolving...growing. Winter is potential...stored energy..waiting for that day when the sun shines just long enough to spark the emergence of new creation.
Good stuff Allison!!
I feel all of this in my bones, Allison ✨