You're Not Seasonally Depressed ~ You're Seasonally Grieving
A HUSH Case Study about Seasonal Affective Disorder and Grief
Sarah came to me in early October.
She was 48. She owned a gardening business, spending 40 hours a week in nature, hands in soil. She’d been diagnosed with depression three years prior and was resistant to her doctor’s urgings to take anti-depressants.
“I’m fine most of the year. Especially when I can get my hands in the soil,” she told me. “But, as soon as it’s time to start putting the gardens to rest for the winter, I feel this weight. Everything gets dense, my body, my thoughts, and I start having these feelings. I don’t feel like myself. Sometimes my thoughts scare me. My doctor keeps pressuring me to try anti-depressants.”
She paused, her fingers twisting together. “When I take those depression quizzes, I don’t resonate with any of the questions. I like myself. I have so much to live for. I don’t understand how this can be depression. It feels more like something’s missing. I tried a half-dose of whatever it was my doc prescribed, and I slept the whole day away. She wants me to try a different one, but it just doesn’t feel right to take a drug for a condition I don’t think I have.”
The Body Keeps the Season
“At the end of September, something in me flips every year,” she said quietly.
She goes on to tell me that her mother had died three years ago in early October. A heart issue discovered at a routine annual physical. Three weeks from diagnosis to death.
Sarah had been working in a client’s garden, harvesting tomatoes, when she got the call. The autumn light was slanting through the trees the way it does in late September—golden and fading. She remembered the smell of the soil, the sound of the leaves, the feeling of the plump red tomato in the palm of her hand.
Sarah’s body remembered. Every autumn she’d experience bouts of chronic fatigue, food sensitivity, and pains that made her wonder if she might have fibromyalgia. Each winter, she white-knuckled her way through the desolation, the feeling of emptiness, the incessant looking for what was missing. Each spring, she felt better, more like herself. Then September would arrive again, and the cycle would repeat, each time, slightly worse than the year before.
“Sarah,” I said gently, “you’re not depressed. You’re grieving, and your body is telling you to let yourself Grieve.”
She looked at me like I’d just told her the sky was a different color than she’d been taught. Then her eyes lit up.
“Thank you!” She explained. “That’s what I needed to hear,” and then she reached for a tissue and openly sobbed. She let out several loud sobs before she looked up at me again, “that felt so good.”
“That’s what I mean. You just need to let yourself be sad for a bit. Your body is doing exactly what bodies do when they’ve lost someone irreplaceable,” I continued. “Your nervous system marks time by sensory memory: the slant of light, the quality of air, the smell and feel of ripe tomatoes, the temperature drop. These are all cues that October is coming, the anniversary.”
“But I’m not sad all the time,” she protested. “Sometimes I’m just... blank. And I just want to sit on the couch and stare out the window, at nothing.”
“That’s grief too,” I said. “Grief doesn’t always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like numbness, like fog, like going through the motions while your soul is somewhere else, searching for what can’t be found.”
“Sarah, you are doing everything right. You eat well, you exercise, you spend time in nature, you have a healthy emotional support system and community. You like yourself. You have a passion and a purpose to your life. All those factors are serious anti-venom for depression. You’re not depressed. But Grief, capital G— Grief doesn’t respond to lifestyle interventions the way depression does. You’re currently experiencing an annual disconnection from joy because it’s really difficult to let life matter as much when the person who mattered most is gone, especially when winter is coming.”
“I thought something was wrong with me,” she whispered. “Like I was broken or defective somehow.”
“No,” I said firmly. “Many women your age deal with both grief AND hormonal shifts—and the combination is what makes you think you’re broken. Oh, and doctors telling you that you’re depressed despite your protests doesn’t help. Listen to me. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a daughter who lost her mother and was never given permission to grieve the way you needed to grieve because our culture says have a funeral and move on.”
The Path Forward
Sarah had a body that remembered September as the month everything changed emotionally, and a perimenopausal nervous system that responds chemically to the sensory signatures of late summer.
She had an unprocessed grief that wore seasonal clothes.
“If it’s not depression, then, what am I supposed to do?”
“This is where conventional medicine often fails,” I suggested. “There’s no prescription for grief. No pill that will bring back the dead or erase the anniversary of loss. But there are ways to work with the grief instead of pathologizing it.”
I explained to Sarah how Indigenous tribes manage Grief by offering various times to grieve as a village. I explained the grief rituals I had participated in and facilitated as part of my shaman training, and suggested that I could help her adapt these kinds of practices to modern times for herself, to create her own mini-grief rituals to process her grief each year when it came knocking.
For Sarah, this meant:
Acknowledging the timeline. Recognizing that late August through October would always be tender months. Not fighting against her body’s natural response, but preparing for it with self-compassion, and managing it with self-grace.
Reframing the emptiness. Understanding that the “blank” feeling isn’t depression—it was her psyche’s way of making space for something too big to fully hold, a sacred space where her mother’s absence now lives.
Creating ritual. Developing ways to spiritually honor her mother’s memory that felt active rather than passive. Developing a relationship with her mother through Spirit, by planting a specific section of her garden for her mom, creating space for the grief to have form and purpose.
Nervous system work. Practicing breathwork and somatic exercises that didn’t try to “fix” the grief but helped her stay present with it and process the stored emotions through her tissues.
18 Months Later
Sarah and I worked together through the winter season that year. When spring came around and her energy returned to baseline, we agreed she would check-in the following September. I didn’t hear from her until October when she texted a quick “I think I can manage this on my own this year.” I didn’t hear from her again til the following spring. When we met for coffee in April, she looked different.
“Last fall was still hard,” she told me. “But it was honest-hard instead of confused-hard. And it was also really beautiful. Those garden rituals I do have brought my connection to Mother Earth to a whole new level, and I’m forever grateful to my mom for bringing me that. My business is flourishing in ways I never knew it could!”
Sarah’s story isn’t unique. I see versions of it constantly in my practice:
The woman whose “winter depression” is actually unprocessed grief for a sister who died in December.
The man whose “anxiety disorder” spikes every spring because that’s when his father had a massive heart attack.
The person whose “chronic fatigue” mysteriously worsens in July, around the time they were unexpectedly laid off from a 20-year job and forced into early retirement.
Our bodies are time-travelers. They hold anniversaries in their tissues, marked by sensory memories that conventional medicine doesn’t acknowledge or understand. When these anniversary responses get labeled as mood disorders or seasonal patterns, we end up treating symptoms while the source remains untouched.
Sarah is a composite character based on multiple client experiences. All identifying details have been changed to protect privacy while preserving the truth of the healing journey.
My work is not that of a doctor or a therapist. I’m also not entirely against medication. Sometimes medication can be genuinely helpful, and necessary.
I’m a shaman and a somatic yoga practitioner. My work isn’t about fixing you or resolving your symptoms. It’s about listening to what your body has been trying to say all along.
Book an initial consultation and let’s explore what your nervous system is trying to tell you. Sometimes the path forward starts with someone who understands that you’re not depressed—you’re human, and your body is doing exactly what bodies do.
Looking Ahead
Next week, Forest Therapy Guide Sam Messersmith and I are co-authoring a piece about what the darkness teaches when we’re brave enough to listen.
And starting November 30th, we’re co-facilitating Candlelit Soulstice—a 4-week community journey through winter’s darkest days for those of us whose bodies keep seasonal time. We sensitive souls need more than a light therapy lamp. We need ritual, community, and permission to move at winter’s pace.
Details coming soon. Subscribe to be notified when registration opens.
Those anniversary feelings are really real! Every winter seems to be when our pets move on, one cat passed on Christmas Day- Butchie. 😢 It's odd when the days of celebration are tinged with grief. Everything gets all mixed up. Joy and despair.