For 365 days, you get to write a new story!! Which one do you want your life to tell this year? I hope that today, you can sense the possibilities and feel the power of the intentions you set. If you haven't set your intentions yet or said goodbye fully to 2017, click here for a letting go ritual that will help you do both. So we begin a brand new year! But some of us are still surviving winter. If you regularly suffer from winter blues, seasonal depression, seasonal anxiety or seasonal affective disorder, stay tuned this month because I'll be writing for you. I have experienced some degree of winter blues or seasonal affective disorder for as long as I can remember, but certainly at least since college when I remember being the most depressed I ever had been during the winter & then, feeling a cloud lift, for no particular reason at all, while I was walking across the courtyard to class one afternoon in May. A few years later, a friend of mine from grad school read an article about seasonal affective disorder & passed it on to me. It helped me understand what I was going through at the time, but years went by before I looked back on all the previous years and began to rewrite my memories of them in light of this new information. Decades have passed, and after thinking I had tried everything, I had long surrendered to living well for 6 months of the year and hibernating for the other half. Finally, something happened that gave me hope & I intend to pass that hope onto you, and anyone else who needs it. "Studies have shown that as sunlight lessens, so to do our levels of serotonin, yet Denmark – a small sub-arctic country where the sun often sets before 4pm – is one of the world’s top three happiest countries. So could the arcane concept be a contributing factor to the country’s happiness? ![]() When I found out that the happiest people in the world have a name for what keeps them sane through long, cold, dark winters & that I could learn all about it, I felt hope that it might work for me. Maybe I could hygge winter & not lose six months of my life anymore. It is a perfect match for the kind of experience I want to have in life anyway! But until I connected it to my own winter experience, I didn't understand how it could help. Now that I do, I want to devote a month to sharing it with you during the January edition of The Ultimate Blog Challenge. Waving enthusiastically at my UBC blog buddies. :) You can also read more about using hygge to conquer winter blues it in my new book, The Happy Winter Guide. See you tomorrow! Love, Jeanine
14 Comments
1/1/2018 08:48:48 pm
Hi Martha! Thanks!! I am looking forward to connecting with you, too, this month.
Reply
1/1/2018 08:51:23 pm
Oh, Elisa, I hope my blog posts will help. A lot will be about how hygge can help but these first few (this week, I'd say) will go into detail about what winter blues and seasonal affective disorder are.
Reply
1/1/2018 11:03:41 pm
It's great to be back with the UBC and to see your blog posts! I have seasonal affective disorder, too, and, this year, for a variety of reasons, it's been more intensive than usual. I'm looking forward to following your blog this month and with chatting with you. Have a great day.
Reply
1/2/2018 12:08:15 am
Alice, I hope you will find this month's posts helpful. With my own SAD symptoms, I kinda shot myself in the foot for a long time. I gave up because I could not find enough solutions to completely get rid of the symptoms. But, even some improvement is better than none at all and finally, that sunk in enough to help me gear up to get back in the fight. And that helped. Not perfectly, but so much better. And this year, I made even more changes and last night, had the best NYE I have had in a long time! Glad to see you again for another challenge. :)
Reply
1/1/2018 11:22:02 pm
Happy New Year!
Reply
1/2/2018 12:13:09 am
Hi Rachel! I have fairy lights that I often turn on after 5pm, and all the lamps go on, but I have noticed that I can't keep the fairy lights on too late or it keeps me up at night. I have been thinking for a minute or two about what I could say is "the only good thing about winter" for me. Soups? I do enjoy them a lot more during the winter, so maybe? But that would be about it, LOL!
Reply
1/2/2018 12:22:29 am
Waving to you too right back and great to get back in touch with all UBCers.. and this time hoping I will stay in touch after and in between UBCs
Reply
1/3/2018 08:12:58 am
Hi Jeanine!
Reply
1/3/2018 04:41:38 pm
Thanks, Dani! And that's wonderful that it's better for you now!! I love all your winter ideas. Hope you have a wonderful 2018, too.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Hi, I'm JeanineAuthor, hygge lifestyle blogger & connoisseur of delight writing about how to create a hygge lifestyle, with hearthcraft, comfy capsule wardrobe tips and cozy home decorating ideas. More here.
Archives
February 2021
Categories
All
|