The Winter We Don’t Talk About

Guest Opinion

By Kate Lewis | Dec. 20, 2025

Winter settles in quietly at first. A gray morning here, an early twilight there, the hum of holiday lights blinking on before most of us are ready.

And then suddenly, we’re in it, deep in the season of forced cheer. The shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the smiling. The relentless emotional dance of trying to make everything perfect. The lists that grow longer by the hour. The expectation to feel grateful, joyful, festive, whole. It’s enough to drive anyone a little mad.

From the outside, many of us look like we’re keeping up. Or at least keeping pace. We decorate, we travel, we shovel, we bake. We run to the grocery store for the ingredient we forgot, and then again for the one we forgot after that. We move through the motions because that’s what the season demands: participation, presence, good spirits.

But looking fine is not the same as being fine, and winter makes the gap between how we appear and how we feel even wider.

The truth is, winter doesn’t land the same for everyone. While some step easily into the rhythm of the season, others carry a heaviness that’s harder to see. It might look like distance, or a soft dimming of spark, or a bone-deep tiredness that no amount of rest seems to fix. Sometimes it’s simply not having the words for how you’re doing. And often what’s mistaken for indifference or withdrawal is just someone turning inward, holding themselves together the only way they know how.

Winter has a way of amplifying these quiet struggles. The daylight slips away, the nights stretch long, and the pressure to be joyful can feel relentless. For some, it’s loneliness inside a room full of people. For others, it’s having no room to go to at all.

The season can also stir up memories of people we’ve lost or winters we can’t return to. Add in the financial strain, the complicated family dynamics, and the reality that support systems are stretched thin, and this time of year can feel like more than many people can comfortably hold.

Even those who seem steady may be carrying far more than they show. And still, we find ways to keep going. Not with grand solutions but with small, almost unremarkable moments of relief. The things that lift us just enough.

For me, sometimes it is takeout in front of the fireplace, the soft glow settling the noise inside me. Or a gift from a coworker from my hometown, something simple that catches me off guard and reminds me where I come from and who I have been.

It is scrolling back through photos of past winters, my babies bundled like overstuffed stars in snowsuits they could barely move in. It is sweatpants and soup on a night when I have nothing else to give. It is taking homemade holiday treats to the neighbors with my girls, standing in a doorway with mittened hands and shy smiles, a small exchange that somehow feels bigger than it is.

And it is stepping outside. Every single day, even when I don’t want to. Especially when I don’t want to. The cold air meeting my face, the crunch of snow under boots, the quiet of a trail or the stillness of the forest.

Something in all of it cracks me open just enough to let a little light back in. I don’t always come home feeling transformed. But I come home feeling more here. More myself. More able to keep moving.

This season can be bright, but it can also be heavy. Both truths can exist at once. So if someone in your life seems a little quieter this winter, a little less available, a little more fragile around the edges, give them grace. You never know what they are carrying, or how hard they are trying just to make it through the day.

Maybe that is how we get through this season: not by shining brighter, but by holding space for the light we cannot always see.

Kate Lewis resides in Leelanau County and serves as the director of communications for Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation (TART) Trails. You can typically find her biking on a trail, paddling on the water, hiking in the woods, exploring northern Michigan with her kids, or dancing at a Phish show.