SAD without seasons

Hi! Thank you for reading – and welcome to new peeps! Here are some relevant pieces of information a reader of

Learning, by Nature

should know: 

1. I live most of the year in Nairobi, Kenya with my family (husband, Eric, daughters Clara (6) and Nora (4), and dog, Arty). 

2. We moved here from Colorado in August 2022 for Eric’s work. 

3. Also, I run a non-profit in Colorado and now in Kenya called Good Natured Learning that empowers educators to bring nature’s proven academic, wellbeing, and planetary benefits into school through the way they teach. 

These things are frequent themes in my writing.

Listen to this post if you want:

I woke up tired. Exhausted. Disoriented. 

I hadn’t gotten up early to write, which seemed like a good choice for my sleep-deprived body, but was probably bad for my muddled mind and heart. I made tea and spin cycled around our house aggressively tidying, listening to a Taylor Swift Spotify playlist loud in my ear buds, sinking into my angst. I felt sad and everything around me made me angrier and more exhausted.

I assailed everyone in my family with my piss and vinegar immediately as they got out of bed. Before Eric’s coffee. While Nora rubbed her eyes. Only Arty escaped unscathed, curled in his bed, snoozing.

As I reshelved books in Clara and Nora’s room, my eyes fixated on a pile of artwork and framed pictures stacked on top of the bookshelf – pieces we’ve planned to hang since we moved into this house almost two full years ago. Gathering dust. Darkly cluttering the horizontal surface. And my mood. 

I walked into our office. Another pile. Then our bedroom. Another pile.  

These piles confronted me: “Are you in or are you out?” 

They weren’t the cause of my melancholy, of course. That came from a deeper well. They were just tangible objects upon which to fixate my sadness and rage. And they were symbolic, too. Of living between. One foot in, one foot out.

Placeless and unmoored, adrift in interstitial space, I started weeping. 

Fallen petals, leaves

As I biked along a small pitch of singletrack – actually a day-laborer shortcut strewn with trash linking a wealthy neighborhood to a main drag full of matatus (Kenya’s public transit vans and buses) – my front tire rolled over hundreds of purple Jacaranda flowers. It was so beautiful.

Next thing I knew, I was in Colorado in September, riding through golden Aspen tunnels, my wheels turning over tens of thousands of yellow leaves. A yellow brick trail of nature’s magic. 

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

I told my friend Matt about my time travel on a jog as our feet landed upon scattered purple petals. He recounted Octobers when he lived in Tanzania, running laps around a field ringed with carpets of Jacaranda flowers.

Then, a phone call. My friend Eric, who recently returned to sugar maple country after three years living in Nairobi, set his scene: crisp fall sweater-and-jean weather, bright red leaves, his breath hanging in the morning air. 

I felt overwhelming longing and disorientation.

S.A.D.

The Oxford dictionary defines Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as depression associated with late autumn and winter and thought to be caused by a lack of light.

I don’t mean to conflate a clinical diagnosis with melancholy. I’m fortunate not to suffer from depression or anxiety in a medically recognized way. Or at least not in a way any medical professional has so-far recognized in me. Imposter syndrome? Not-enoughness? Insecurities? Bouts of aloneness? Check, check, check, check. Plenty more demons, too.

That disclaimer aside, I think I’m experiencing SAD. This makes exactly zero meteorological sense because it’s coming on summer here and Nairobi’s climate is mild year round. Every day is more-or-less the same-same length, solstices be damned. Literally, there is a total of 9 minutes of variation in day length annually, with the sun rising and setting in the sixes every day. 

This feature of equatorial latitude is awesome for bedtime routines. The sun sets like a stone at 6-something every night. Bedtime after that is fair game. In Colorado last summer, Clara and Nora wholly rejected the premise of bedtime on account of it still being light out. 

In addition to daylight consistencies, the climate here is extremely pleasant year round (my new very narrow range of comfort hovers between 68-74 degrees F; 20-23 C).

But still, I’ve been riding what feels like seasonal bouts of melancholy, even amidst frequent joy and beauty. 

My best girlfriends from high school and I have been only-sort-of-jokingly using perimenopause as an explanation for everything. But for me, I don’t think it’s that. At least not yet. 

I think this lack of seasonal fluctuations is messing with my circadian rhythms and sense of place. I’m missing decades of seasonal signs. I’m longing for cultural and contextual and environmental smells and sights and sounds and feelings and traditions and experiences. 

Maybe it’s about seasons of work, too. Since our amazing first cohort of Kenyan Good Natured Learning Fellows graduated a little over a week ago, for the first time in the past 2.5 years, I am not actively facilitating a program for Good Natured Learning. Lest you conflate this with relaxing, let me assure you: That’s not how it is. Instead, I’m plugging away on our enormous to-do list of deferred organizational building and maintenance. I’m thinking big and strategically. I’m (trying to) raise money. Which is some combination of tedious, satisfying, uncomfortable, and fun – and also profoundly disorienting. There’s nothing to ground me. To connect me to the earth. Which I think is part of why I feel SAD. Or at least am showing some of its symptoms. 

Level enough

So last weekend, I asked Eric if we could finally hang the artwork and pictures cluttering the shelves. Commit a little bit more to being here. 

He said yes. And I am beyond grateful and amazed by his ability to respond to my recent bad behavior with compassion and action.

We walked around the house and I identified where I wanted different things to hang.

Then, in a slow burn of drilling and drywall anchors and screws and level-enoughness that took the better part of a day, we hung all of the piled-up pieces on the walls. 

This one feels timely.

❤️,

B