Dear Pinkies, Please welcome Jenn Boire, author of the blog MuseMother, whose words on the Posse Blog so often serve to calm, comfort and ground us Pinkies. She's here today with some thoughts on how we might sit with the blues ... especially at this time of year, when many of us are starting to yell a loving-but-impatient "Enough already!" to Mother Nature. Take it away, Jenn!

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Just back from a weekend workshop with Sweet Adelines' coaches in Massachusetts, and it's Monday morning. Blue Monday, laundry day, day to pick up groceries to feed giant appetites of teens, juice and more juice, healthy snacks ... and venture out into icy streets under pouring rain.

I was so high Saturday night, hearing choruses and quartets sing, driving back 7 hours on Sunday, yakking with fellow chorus members about all the things we learned and changes we want to make. On an energy high, a big new-learning buzz.

As I stepped out of the grocery store and headed back to the car with my grocery bags this morning, I thought, usually a day like this gets me down. We haven't seen much sun since Christmas, going on over three weeks, and that's a definite bummer. S.A.D. time, low light time, extra Vitamin D time.

But today, there's also a deep pewter colour to the sky and the frozen lake ice, with all the snow washed away, is revealing patterns of silver, grey, and mottled white. Just before the rain started pouring there were puffs of dark grey cloud swiftly moving overhead and trees waving as the wind picked up. Lots of action for a quite empty scene, lots of movement and shades of monochromatic color. It occurred to me that this day I was open for musing on the sky and lake, instead of napping and trying to 'get past it', moving in fast forward mode to get to evening.

On these moody low energy days, since I work at home, I do some yoga, stretch out on the floor, move my breath down into my body. Be still. Stay open. Observant. Observe the moss on the north side of the giant oak in my yard, right near the bathroom window. Watch two crows flap their wings from tree to ice-fishing hole on the lake, hunting for fish remnants probably. Listen to the patter of rain on the metal roof.

I can be here wth myself, be kind to my self (instead of beating myself up for how unenergetic I feel).

As I write this, I am struggling against those blues, waiting to swamp me with lethargy and grunginess. I may not feel perky and bright, but I can revel in the slow moody retreat space I need to work on anyway for a retreat I'm leading on Sunday. It's just not the way I imagined my day would go....but here it is, an opportunity, to soothe myself by being with myself, right where I am.

Appropriately enough, the retreat is called Journey into Presence. I guess it begins now.....

What about you Pinkies? How do you find yourself coping with not only the winter blues, but those oh-so-common "come downs" that accompany returning to the everyday following a few days of magic?

Stretching, breathing, being ...
Jenn

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