Letters for a Lighter November

Letters for a Lighter November
Thoughts, practical ideas and weekend writing prompts to make the darker days a little easier.

Monday 2nd November 2026

Hope & Fairy Lights

I have an interesting relationship with November. It leads up to my birthday, right at the end, and then to Christmas. So it’s filled with hope & fairy lights … and also heavy with memories of sadness & Seasonal Affective Disorder. And I often wonder how much of how I feel about winter is connected to my birthday being cold, dark and wet, rather than outside in the sunshine.

I’m a typical Sagittarius, and also a Manifesting Generator in Human Design. Both explain why my bottomless curiosity, ever-present wanderlust, and my pull to be out exploring in whatever way calls feels stifled in the winter: there’s something about the days getting shorter and darker that still just feels wrong, like there’s not enough time.

My energy drops, the world feels closed for business.  I used to spend most of my winters battling SAD, until a few short years ago: the depression would arrive after the clocks change and 5pm would suddenly become nighttime, somehow surprising me every single year. 

Things are different now, and I want to share some ways that that happened for me.

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But why are some of us are more affected than others? That’s our complicated individual make-up; and why we shouldn’t blame ourselves for ‘being wrong’.  But also, we don’t need to stay in a negative frame of mind.

That’s why it matters to look at our challenges, and more importantly, exactly how to change them.  We can change some of the ways we experience winter by learning something new.

I make space for the little joys of fairy lights and I allow those difficult feelings to be true, without pushing them down. I find this really helps. Acknowledging and accepting our feelings is so much more useful than pretending they’re not there; it gives us capacity to notice what we need and when we need it. 

Making autumn different doesn’t mean we simply ‘positive’ our way out of depression, but at the same time we don’t want the memory of winters past to make all the decisions for the one ahead.

And that’s where these letters begin.

A different path through…

Ready?

Today: Why does the dark change how I feel?

There’s a particular point in autumn afternoons when we look outside and feel as though the day has ended before we’ve finished with it. Like we’ve only been up a few hours instead of a whole day.  You’re getting on with things, look up and it feels like you blinked and missed it. It feels like evening, although there are several hours left before bed. That’s something I used to find torturous.

We might find ourselves feeling sleepy, flat, restless, or (and this is the interesting one) disappointed. Not just at the darkness, but at feeling that we lost something important. And if you’ve had difficult winters before, that early darkness can feel like the beginning of something you’re not ready for. 

Even worse, you might feel like there are sad memories of something you don’t quite know how to remember.  Make sense?

This week, we’re looking at what changes when the days get shorter, and what we can do to make those changes easier to live with.

What’s Happening in the Brain?

Light does more than help us see. Special light-sensitive cells in the eyes send information to the brain’s central body clock. This helps coordinate the daily timing of sleep and wakefulness.  We now that darkness allows melatonin (the hormone that signals biological night) to elevate. This needs to build to a level where our brains register that they need rest.

But before that, there are other signals that have to do their thing first: ‘sleep pressure’, builds while we’re awake and this is led by other hormones, like cortisol and adenosine.

Morning light is vital to start it off, so that by the end of the day there’s enough of it in our bodies to trigger the sleep process. Bright light, particularly late in the evening, can interfere with that signal.

So an afternoon that looks like bedtime isn’t necessarily an afternoon when your body is ready for a full night’s sleep. And feeling exhausted doesn’t always mean you’ll fall asleep easily. Timing, sleep pressure and mental alertness all matter.  It’s a balance, and our short days can interfere with it more than we realise.

And Psychologically?

We also give darkness meaning: it’s too late to go out, the day’s over, here come those long evenings again. It’s interesting to notice where they come from; how they started.  Saturday’s writing practice might help with this.

Sometimes they do reflect real practical limits. And they also close off possibilities for us that are still available because we’re at the mercy of life-long beliefs, feelings and behaviour habits. Habits are things that are unconscious and programmed into us, usually without our knowledge or permission, not a reflection of us as people.  Because of this, can be really hard to change. But they can be changed…

I had SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) for the longest time. Probably from my teens ‘til my mid-40s. I’d feel this huge wave of sadness and even anger. Honestly, I sometimes felt like time had been stolen. I know it was my perception; that if I’d paid more attention during the day, or went out to events or classes in the evening, I might have felt differently. But it never ceased to amaze me how much I felt sneaked-up on. And I’d feel alone, even when I wasn’t.  It can do strange things to you, SAD (and what an incredibly accurate acronym).

The worst time was after I had my son.  And especially in the 'non-time’ between 4 and 6 pm.  Not afternoon, not evening.  It felt like Limbo.  I called it the witching hour (in the days before I understood what witches actually are).  An in-between space, liminal, as though the air was thinner and my feelings were stronger.  Actually nothing to do with witches, it just felt…surreal.

Now, I don’t get SAD – although as I might have mentioned, this year, I’m a bit uneasy again.  My husband calls me a solar-powered human.  He says he still sees a little of the change in my mood, the fatigue, and my ability to go with the flow – or not so much. But the difference inside me is seismic. I no longer spend hours on the sofa in tears (wow, they were hard times).  Now, I look after my self a little better because the amount of research I’ve done changed everything.

And that’s what’s coming over the 30 days of November: things to ponder, thing that are practical and sensible, things that are comforting.

So What Can We Do?

We can notice: what our bodies are experiencing, what are we feeling, and what we’re deciding the evening means.  I believe this is important in any kind of healing, because ignoring it, pretending we’re ok, or simply just not facing it, doesn’t make it go away.  It makes it feel like a stone in our pocket, getting heavier and heavier. So we reflect, we wallow for a while if we need to, but then we Do.

Three ways to make this easier

1. Give daylight an actual place in your day.

Get outside during the morning, once it is light. Face the brightest part of sky. An overcast day still offers daylight; you don’t have to wait for actual sunshine. The reason for this is that biological build up you need of adenosine to get the day/night ball rolling in your brain.

A short walk, sitting outside with a drink, or part of your journey outdoors is a manageable beginning. Do what feels easy.  No huge promises you won’t keep, or unrealistic goals that you’ll give up on: make it so easy you’d feel stupid if you didn’t do it.

The point is regular exposure to daytime light, as early as possible, rather than an occasional heroic walk.

2. Make a distinction between an evening and bedtime.

If closing the curtains makes you feel that everything is finished, don’t.  Not yet, anyway. Start an evening ritual.  Even if it only extends your ‘afternoon’ by an hour, it’s a good start.

Choose something small to mark the start of your evening instead: preparing food, reading, putting music on, doing a little making or writing.

Try hobbies.  Pick 10 things to try and imagine you’re doing an experiment.  Don’t suppose you’re about to find a lifelong passion that cures all your ills: experiment.  Do I like this? Is it easy enough? What part of it is good? Find new skills and joys.  Just for one hour.  Then you can go back to moping. But notice that when you actively Do Something Different, you feel a little bit different too.

Later, reduce bright lighting as you approach bedtime. I won’t state the obvious, because you know your phone is a demon in disguise – so get blue light filters and turn it’s light setting to nighttime mode. Minimum.

You can have an evening that feels comfortable without spending all of it preparing to sleep.

3. Keep your waking time reasonably consistent.

A regular waking time helps give your days a reliable rhythm. Notice whether very early bedtimes or long lie-ins leave you feeling better, or simply shift your wakeful hours around, making you feel groggy or restless.

If poor sleep keeps happening, it deserves attention beyond an earlier night.

A word about vitamin D

Daylight’s effect on the body clock and vitamin D production are different processes. Your eyes receive the light signals involved in timing sleep; your skin makes vitamin D under suitable sunlight conditions.

During UK autumn and winter, sunlight is not strong enough for us to make sufficient vitamin D. NHS advice is to consider a daily supplement of 10 micrograms. That is useful seasonal health advice, rather than a promise that vitamin D will resolve low mood or insomnia.  And take it with something fatty (it’s a fat-soluble vit) like avo, fish or olive oil, and also magnesium, which helps your body activate and use it.  Magnesium is well-known for helping with sleep too. Perfect combo.

On Wednesday, we’ll look at energy: why everything can feel harder, and what happens when we expect ourselves to carry on exactly as before.

Yolanda X