Crafting A Life With Seasonal Affective Disorder
When the light shifts as winter approaches each year, I become a different person. Like a witchy Janus, people who see me in the winter time say I even look different. I am not the summer Runa that is cheery, active, and social. I am the winter Runa that is slow, introspective, and solitary. This is life with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), aka seasonal depression. The fact that I suffer with this disorder is no secret, but I have many new folx reading my work, and it made sense to address one of the challenges I face in my life regularly and how it impacts, shifts, and informs my life – writing, food growing, and my Practice.
This disorder is a form of depression that shows up in a seasonal cycle, usually lasting around four to five months each year. It presents a lot like clinical depression, but has its own seasonal twists since different symptoms tend to show up in the winter-pattern versus the summer-pattern SAD. As its acronym suggests, sadness and other depressive symptoms dominate the winter season for SAD sufferers, including having little or no energy, changes in sleep and appetite, physical aches pains, and bodily system problems (think digestion, breathing, or reproductive) and thought processes become cloudy. SAD sufferers are not immune to suicidal ideation either. Let me spotlight here that if you are feeling like you may cause yourself harm, please seek professional healthcare support. Witches have therapists, too.
As a Witch, the awareness of these energetic cycles is helpful. It helps to acknowledge SAD as the real mental-health condition it is. That said, it’s important to remember that SAD doesn’t make you broken, or “too much,” although the overculture wants you to think you just need to shake your head, pat yourself on the back, and – wa-la! you feel better. Instead, it’s been helpful to me to approach this time of year and the onset of SAD, as a natural response to seasonal changes in light, energy, and routine – like a Witch does. The Land is fallow, so sleeping more, eating differently, and needing more physical comfort and deeper roots & connections seems more aligned with our planet’s natural rhythms.
In naming and acknowledging SAD, it both grounds you by giving you language for an experience many others share, without labeling yourself as a problem. It’s about understanding your rhythms so you can care for yourself with more compassion and intention. Once you’ve named and acknowledged, you can weave practical support with not just treatment routines and actions, but with Witchcraft and/or energetic practices. There was a moment back in 2016 – a decade or so after my diagnosis – where I literally yelled out the back door after like the 30th day of gray skies, “I fucking have SAD, give me a break!” It was a crude acknowledgement, but it was a positive energetic step in reckoning my shadow. If you are reading this and have SAD, I hope your reckoning is more graceful and kind.
Both times of the year suck for having a seasonal depression. But in both cases the overculture – capitalism, the patriarchy, and living under a surveillance state – wants you to behave the same 24/7, 365-days of the year. Practitioners know this is unsustainable. However, when depression shows up – seasonal or otherwise – your brain may not be your best friend at any given moment and you will need to have in place ways to cope, destress, and build tolerance and grace to get through. This may be especially important if you’re like me and cannot take or have an atypical reaction to typical medications prescribed by western doctors. Also, the typical length of time it takes for many of these medications to ‘work,’ are about the time the disorder fades again. This means med management is often complicated depending on the individual (per the American Medical Association). And if you’re past your second Saturn return you may find that the SAD symptoms are hitting you harder than earlier in your life. But giving it a Saturnian perspective – developing infrastructure to support your life even under SAD has been helpful for me.
Foundational to that structure is a combination of psychotherapy, Vitamin D intake (all year), and light therapy. Treatment focused on this combo has been the most helpful for my body. Your mileage may vary. As I write this, I’m under the glow of a full-spectrum light box. I do this early in the day to not disrupt my sleep. Also, there are grow lights in my greenhouse, and working with my plants while those lights are on is also helpful. If the rare and brilliant sunny day in the midst of the Big Dark here in the Pacific Northwest shows up – You will find me outside getting all the sun rays I can. Before having access to artificial sunlight, I went so far as to split my time between the PNW and the Mojave to try to battle SAD. But the Land called me back, so I had to come up with new tactics. It was normal to then approach SAD with my Craft.
My Craft practice is rooted in the ebb and flow of the natural world, so seasonal cycles become more than just weather. They’re invitations. Each turn of that ‘Wheel of the Year’ as many before us dubbed it, brings its own lessons, energies, and rhythms. These annual rotations shape how we move, rest, create, and connect. In the bright months, I rise with the growing light; in the dark months, I descend into reflection, stillness, and deeper magic. By honoring these shifts instead of resisting them, a Witch learns to work with the season’s current, letting it guide spellcraft, intuition, and the pace of daily life.
That doesn’t mean that I’m constantly doing spellwork, divining, building altars, or not just completely overwhelmed with magical work during the SAD season. I took a hint from the things I do for my body to apply to my practice. So you will find me focused on getting more ‘light’ into my Craft. I do more candle and fire magic in Winter. Fire scrying in front of the fireplace is stillness and depth. Even on some of my worst SAD days in the season, sitting by the fire feels healing; adding divination feeds my spirituality. Candles, bonfires, and wood stoves can also be healing like sunlight, if not simply comforting. On those sunny days when I’ve plopped myself out under the sun rays, there may just be a jug of water I’m charging to drink later – this is especially nice when it’s Capricorn season in the Northern Hemisphere, since it’s very grounding energy. I have found that using that grounding energy to make my tea (of uplifting and comforting herbs, for sure) or brew my kombucha.
Psychotherapy can be like an energy clearing – you talk it and clear the air. When I feel that the SAD season is approaching (each year it shows up in a slightly different time, but by Fallow Thursday*, it’s here, I remember to reset any and all stagnant energy in my life, especially within my home. ‘In the preparation there is a cure,’ as my Gigi used to say. I prepare by doing lots of energetic clearing and boundary setting. I create simple charms to ward off gloom or overwhelm, and each year I perform a cord-cutting from seasonal obligations and social pressures.
Next is where grace comes into my Practice. I upend any baneful thoughts with kindness towards myself, especially my higher conscience. I give myself the grace to allow winter to be a teacher of rest, surrender, and deep magic. I planted seeds in late summer and early autumn to honor both the struggle and the beauty of the season. Do I always get it right? No, but I learn, forgive (there’s that grace), and start anew.
This grace leads to thankful recognition: I am able to move at that darker, slower pace because I’ve been blessed to work for the Land, Kin, and Seekers of Magic. It also helps that my gnosis is strong in ‘this too shall pass’ and it does every year. In the midst of coping with the winter blahs (my former name for it before diagnosis), I approach each day with gratitude. Finding that gratitude can be a magical spell in itself, especially when SAD is beating a Witch up pretty hard. When all your brain is saying is to sleep, that gratitude can change the tide. I find this by winter introspection journaling, making rest sacred, and creating a small section in my BOS/Grimoire for winter mood tracking, dreams, and energetic tides.
Like Janus, the god of doorways, gates, boundaries, thresholds, SAD can often feel like being suspended between who you are in the light months and who you become in the dark ones. That’s a liminal space, and Witches love liminal space. So it still sucks, but it doesn’t last forever, you’ve already overcome this before, and there are choices and exits when things feel stuck – like a door having two directions. The Witch reframes this season as sacred and not punishing. May your season bring you that reframe, even if SAD has you by your witchy locks. May you find and step into a different type of power that centers, grounds, reframes, and is gracious and grateful.
If you’ve read this far, let me leave you with a bit of a Big Dark blessing:
May the dark months wrap you in gentleness, and may your inner flames glow steady and sure. May you honor the light you carry and the rest your spirit craves, trusting that both are sacred, both are needed, and both will guide you through the winter’s quiet magic.
Go drink some water now. 😉
Blessed Be,
~R
**Fallow Thursday is my term for the US’ Thanksgiving holiday. In 2024 our Covenstead finally decided we were not going to stress everyone out with this middle-of-the-work week holiday. Instead it’s dedicated to being fallow as the Land is doing.