SPARCwellbeing

12/24/2025

While the holidays can be a joyous time of year, for others experiencing grief, the holidays can be hard. Copied from a friend, but on the 8th year of grieving…

These are the lessons that most helped me:

1. Scream in your car. It’s cathartic. Trust me. Give it a try.

2. Try not to compare your grief to others. Even if you lost the same person…it’s a different relationship.

3. Isolating is normal. Just remember to check in with the ones who check on you.

4. Ugly cries…like the ones that touch the depths of your soul are actually quite helpful. A release.

5. Express your feelings. Whether on paper, to a therapist, a trusted friend or using another creative outlet…get those emotions out so they don’t get stuck.

6. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you last heard their voice…the waves of grief can crash into you at any time. Any place..when reality hits again that they are really gone.

7. Let go of the guilt. We would all go back and do something differently if we could. You only had the information we had at that time with no way of knowing what was going to happen. You are only human.

8. Sometimes it helps to change traditions so it doesn’t hurt as much when they won’t be there..

9. But…Try to find a way to honor them at these events so they feel close to you.

10. Anxiety is normal. Because grief lets fear take over as you are now aware that terrible things can happen. It makes you feel out of control. Talk to your doctor if you feel it’s interfering with every day life.

11. Try a gratitude journal. I know this is the worst time to ask you to feel grateful but it helps. Just one thing a day. It could be that you didn’t burn dinner that night. But in time..it will get easier. That’s how you know you are moving through your darkest days.

12. Walk. Just getting out and getting fresh air and exercise can make a difference in your mental health. Try listening to comforting music on your walk. I love being out in nature to clear my mind.

13. Time doesn’t lessen grief. It’s what you do with that time. If you don’t grieve, emotions will have nowhere to go. You have to feel the pain of this loss. Lean into it even if it hurts. That’s how you move forward with it.

14. We are our own worst critics. Try giving yourself a no judgement zone. Grieving is frustrating. Especially when you have a particularly good day but end up a sobbing mess on the floor the next. Remember this journey is not linear. Try talking to yourself like you would if it was your best friend going through the same thing. BE your best friend because you are the only one who knows what this loss feels like.

15. Which brings me to self care. Give yourself love. And pep talks. And lots and lots of grace.

16. Grieving is a thousand conversations your mind has with your heart. Eventually your life (that you were given no choice but to live) grows around the pain. It’s a long road of getting used to this different world without your loved one in it. The pain will dull, wounds will heal, then the scab covering it sometimes gets ripped off again during special days. And so on. Which brings me back to #15. Give yourself grace.

Because I don’t have to tell you how hard this is. You know all too well. Just keep going. One minute at a time. One hour a time. Then one day. Just keep going.

Gina Allgaier Speakup About Drugs Helping Parents Heal

12/21/2025

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When the quiet, hard days feel heavy, reach out.

Support starts here. Call: 844-439-7627.

12/20/2025

A dear friend gifted me this book full of profound wisdom about the periods of darkness, grief, or struggle that come throughout our journey here on earth. These are cyclical and may come without warning. The lessons we learn and how we care for ourselves during these periods may determine how we move forward and what amount of growth we experience. Wintering can be hard. It can also be a sacred time of deep reflection and growth.
May you winter well.

It happened in the gleaming, antiseptic corridor of a hospital. My own personal spring—a period of relentless productivity and forward momentum—snapped like a brittle branch. In the forced stillness of a loved one’s illness, the world I had constructed from to-do lists and positivity mantras simply fell away. I was left raw, tired, and profoundly out of season. It was in this state that I found Katherine May’s Wintering, and it felt less like reading a book and more like being handed a lantern in a dark wood. This is not a guide for surviving a hard time. It is a lyrical, deeply researched, and radically gentle manifesto for surrendering to it. May reframes our inevitable periods of pain, illness, heartbreak, and depression not as malfunctions to be fixed, but as necessary, sacred seasons of retreat and renewal.

May weaves her own narrative—her husband’s medical emergency, her own autistic burnout, a sudden loss of professional faith—with explorations of nature, myth, and ritual. She observes the winter dormancy of trees, the hibernation of bees, and the Nordic concept of hygge, not as escapist fantasies, but as models for human resilience. Her prose is crystalline and compassionate, a warm voice in a cold room. Reading Wintering dismantled my deep-seated belief that to stop moving was to fail. Instead, May taught me to see fallow ground as fertile. She gave me permission to draw the curtains, to rest without guilt, to accept the invitation of quiet that my broken-open life was offering. This book transformed my understanding of my own fragility, not as a weakness to be overcome, but as a teacher of a slower, deeper, more authentic rhythm of being.

Ten Lessons from the Fallow Season in Wintering

1. Wintering is a Recurring Season, Not a Catastrophic Event
Life is cyclical. Just as nature endures winter, our lives will contain repeated seasons of retreat, sorrow, and stillness. Recognizing this as a natural, inevitable rhythm, not a singular disaster, removes the stigma of suffering.

2. The Work of Winter is Rest, Not Repair
The active, striving energy of summer is useless in winter. The primary task is not to "fix" yourself or rush toward spring, but to practice radical acceptance and conservation of energy. Inactivity is the productive work of this season.

3. The Cold Holds Its Own Kind of Beauty
Wintering teaches us to perceive beauty in starkness, clarity in bareness, and grace in stillness. There is a stark magnificence in frosted branches and quiet mornings that the lushness of summer obscures.

4. You Must Make Your Own Shelter
Winter demands that we create pockets of warmth and comfort. This is the practice of hygge: lighting a candle, brewing tea, wrapping in a soft blanket. It is the deliberate, small act of nurturing yourself when the outer world feels inhospitable.

5. The Trees Are Your Teachers
A tree in winter is not dead. It is alive in its roots, drawing energy inward, waiting in profound wisdom. Our culture prizes the green leaf; wintering teaches us the equal importance of the dormant bud.

6. Joy Can Exist Alongside Sorrow
Winter is not a monochrome of grey. Fleeting moments of connection, small sensory pleasures, and sparks of humor can—and do—coexist with profound sadness. They are the vital, bright berries on a bare bush.

7. You Are Preparing for a Future You Cannot Yet See
The work done in winter—the rest, the introspection, the healing—is invisible. It is the work of composting the old self to create rich soil for a future self you cannot yet imagine. Growth is happening underground.

8. Winter Forces a Reckoning With Your True Needs
When all non-essentials are stripped away by circumstance, what remains? Wintering pares life down to its elemental needs: warmth, safety, quiet, and the company of those who feel like shelter.

9. The Path Through is by Going In
The only way out of a winter is to go fully into its heart. Avoiding the pain, numbing the feelings, or pretending it’s summer only prolongs the season. Healing requires turning toward the cold and listening to what it has to say.

10. You Will Emerge Changed, Not Cured
You do not exit a winter the same person who entered it. You emerge softer, wiser, with deeper roots and a slower pace. The goal is not to return to your old "summer self," but to integrate the wisdom of the winter into who you become.

Wintering is a necessary, soulful balm for a culture obsessed with perpetual sunshine and productivity. It is a book for the heartbroken, the exhausted, the ill, and anyone feeling out of sync with the world's demand for cheer. May offers no quick fixes, only profound companionship and the quiet, revolutionary assurance that it is not only okay to fall apart, but that in the careful, kind tending of that brokenness, we prepare the ground for a more authentic spring. This book is a permission slip to stop, to be still, and to trust the deep intelligence of your own dormancy.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4pSuuUy

You can ENJOY the AUDIOBOOK for FREE (When you register for Audible Membership Trial) using the same link above.

12/20/2025

My new band member arrived today. In honor of reaching the winter Sistine, heading back to the light of longer days that I crave, I am naming her "Sunny". She sounds as beautiful as she looks!!
Gina Allgaier

12/11/2025

Ready to feel better? Try to

12/11/2025

This week we are thinking about how to find balance and stability during times of chaos. We know that balance isn’t about staying still or in one place, but rather is making ongoing micro adjustments, as we make our way through each day.

We also know that stability won’t always be found right in the middle – that sometimes we may need to stretch a bit further to one side, the other, or perhaps towards both sides simultaneously, to keep ourselves in balance over time.

This week, get outside with a friend and feel your feet on the ground. Take a few deep breaths together – inhale through your nose for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, and exhale through your mouth for 7 seconds. Play a bit if you wish, by lifting up a foot, stretching out an arm, bending a leg, or perhaps all 3. If playing doesn’t feel accessible to you, tune into the places that your body is in contact with the ground. Notice any chatter in your mind, wish it well, and bring yourself to the present moment by focusing on your breath.

When you’re ready, notice what it feels like as you return to your original posture – a place where your nervous system has been reset through the connection you nourished between your body, mind, breath and the frozen earth that holds you.

🖼️: A South Indian Auntie finding her balance at Crosby Farm Regional Park earlier this week. A frozen waterfall is in the background.

📸: Asha Shoffner

12/11/2025

12/07/2025

What do you love most about your life ?