Six feet apart … and close in —. Written by Sheri Fella, CEO and…
Tags: Seasons, Motivation, Silence, Support, Winter

Written by Sheri Fella, CEO and Founder, Bloombase

When I shared my reflection for Thanksgiving, I mentioned how unlike Thanksgiving it felt. And I am seeing many of those same descriptions from other writers as winter and the holiday season approaches … “it is beginning to look a lot UN-like Christmas …” is how many of those writings begin.

And now, as my siblings and I get creative in how we might celebrate Christmas safely with my high risk parents, I wonder if maybe it is going to be more like Christmas than it has been for years. More like it was when I was a kid … less hustle and bustle … more “close in” time with ourselves and with those closest to us — even if we are 6 feet away from each other. It feels to me like we are stripping down our holiday together to just that … the TOGETHER part.

For us to give our parents a Christmas, we cannot safely be inside together, so my brothers, sister and I decided we’d do it outside — no matter the temperature, no matter the weather. We laughed as we thought about this — about how funny it might be to see us in a driveway bundled up in a blizzard if that is what the day brings for us. No big lavish meal and eating all day. No fretting over gifts. Just being together was what our Christmas is going to be this year … which seemed, well, very much LIKE Christmas.

Growing up, we didn’t have Gore-tex or waterproof anything — but we were lucky enough to have spare bread bags my mom would save to put our feet in so when our shoes got soaked from snow, our feet wouldn’t freeze. We didn’t have waterproof gloves, but we did have big bonfires in the countryside to warm up by as we blissed out in hours and hours of sledding. We didn’t have a lot of material things growing up and we always figured out how to be together and celebrate for birthdays, holidays — you name it.

If we could be outside for hours back then without modern winter gear, we could be outside now with it. A dear friend of mine said to me weeks ago, “Sheri Fella there is no bad weather — only bad gear.” So we are channeling that and busting through our limiting beliefs of what a holiday together can look like this year. AND we are all looking forward to it — it feels like a new adventure and a return to our small town, country roots.

For me, my family is another example of how much possibility and inspiration is always around us — if we look for it. Every time over this past year and all of its depths of darkness, I have found inspiration when I looked for it. I found it the other day when a friend reminded me of a poem by David Whyte that I adore — “Start Close In.” My two friends who provided the poem and the advice about gear, provided the inspiration my siblings and I needed to give our parents a Christmas I guarantee none of us will ever forget.

I invite you to listen to David Whyte as he reads his poem, “Start Close In,” here.

Start close in this winter season. Get still. Get quiet enough to hear your own voice. Your own heart’s desires. The quieter we get, the more we hear our truest selves. The quieter the holiday gets, may it give us a chance to hear each other more deeply.

This quiet is a chance to begin again … to put back into the quiet space we have, only the things and people, that make our hearts sing. That make our lives light up.

While we knew a pandemic was possible in our current day, none of us could have predicted the immense and varying ways it has impacted each of us, our family, our vocation, our vacations … all of those impacts emerged whether we wanted them or not.

That is the hard truth of our everyday day lives. The day will unfold in immense and varying ways and it will impact each of us, our family, our vocation, and our vacations whether we want it to or not. So what if we lived without the mask of certainty on everyday. What if we lived without taking tomorrow, this holiday or the next year for granted. What if we all got quieter.

What if we started close in … and stayed there.

Wishing you a winter season of regrounding and ease.