Snowed In and Slowed Down

I’m writing to you from my house, which is where I’ve been snowed in for the past five days (and counting). The weather in my city is bad enough that my kids have been out of school all week, but not bad enough that my husband’s business trip was cancelled. So I’m here: Solo parenting and managing my kids virtual learning while also working. It has been a lot, yet also…kind of relaxing in a strange way.

Being snowed in feels a lot like the early days of the pandemic. There’s nowhere to go and not much to do, yet so, so much to manage and think about — and so much that exists outside your control, which is a weird feeling for…well, most millennial women, who tend to thrive on being in control.

How exactly does this relate to women’s health? I suppose it doesn’t exactly. But it does all feel very relevant to the idea of wellness.

A snowstorm invites you to lower the expectations, adjust the standards to which you hold yourself. That’s the tension so many of us feel when it comes to wellness: We know that sometimes, the healthiest thing we can do is give ourselves a break, a rest, or some grace. Yet we also know that sometimes pushing through and getting in that workout, or cooking that nutritious dinner instead of ordering pizza is the healthy choice. 

I guess that’s why I’ve been really connecting this snowstorm experience to the larger concept of wellness. Grocery deliveries are limited (and I’m not about to load two kids up to drive through the storm), so meals are just simple and made up of what we have. Exercise is very much on the back burner at the moment. And a friend of mine who was attempting dry January recently shared that the snowstorm made her ditch the attempt. A glass of wine at the end of the day helps her unwind, she says.

Ultimately, we’re doing what we have to do to get through this disruption to our routine, and that’s okay. But there's also this guilt of being off our game, out of our habits, and just generally...kind of functioning at a lower level, I guess.

The timing is especially interesting: While many people are probably still working to maintain their resolutions for the year, this snowstorm kind of asks us to throw the goals out the window.  And for me at least, this type of thing always makes me thing about it truly means to pursue wellness.