I was talking with a friend a while ago about how difficult a month January can be.She called it an inward time, and said she felt like the last of the Mohicans. I found this an interesting analogy. What might a last Mohican feel like?
On Christmas Eve in 1995 my father and I had watched the film together. My mother was in Velindre Hospital having a blood transfusion. She came home a few days later but died the following March. I had stayed with her the final three days and on the morning she died I drove home listening to the film's theme tune - "No Matter Where You Go I Will Find You". I wanted some magical thinking to help bear the terrible loss, despair and feeling of isolation.
I have been thinking how best to negotiate January? Perhaps to see it as a time of reflection and preparation. In Bear Medicine, hibernation or The Great Sleep is regarded as a time of introspection and restoration, through to re-emergence.
In his poem "Sweet Darkness", David Whyte explores the positive possibilities of going into the dark, where "The night will give you a horizon/Further than you can see". When light and energy are low, l can reference both the song and the poem as a way of affirming my connection with my essential self - until the Bear awakens.
