Walking in Shadow

Traveling as we are through the dark time of the wheel, I walk a fine line between embracing the lessons of the shadow self and the dark face of the goddess, while also trying to find light to get me through the seasonal affective problems that have been ramping up. My previous coping mechanisms have leaned strongly toward taking root on my couch or in bed until the sun came back, but that doesn't help in the long run.

I haven't really exercised since Samhain due to injury, but I started again this week with a gentle half hour on the elliptical. It's not much, but I'll get there. I also started taking SAM-e for depression (with a B complex vitamin) and will see how it goes. My hope is that it'll at least lighten a little of the thick, heavy blanket of numbness that keeps creeping over me. I made all these great plans on how I was going to fight off SAD this year, but when you don't have the energy to actually do those things, it makes the best made plans rather useless. 

Freehand drawing makes for a
wobbly triskele, but I like it

One thing that's really come through is gentle exercises in no-pressure creativity. I'm a lot more likely to partake in something that my brain would try to convince me is frivolous if I've committed to doing it with friends, so a couple of us planned a trip to the ceramics studio. It's a paint-your-own affair, so there was no pressure to create a masterpiece from scratch (although that'd be really fun). It was my second time around, so I'd learned from my bigger mistakes and made something that was forgiving of uneven paint application. 

I went for something bright and green that would remind me of spring's promise. It diverges from my focus on the darktime and my shadow self, but I'm not quite fully able to embrace the dark on this journey through the wheel while also battling depression. I'm not shying away from the darkness of the internal underworld, just making sure I have light when I need it most.