1. How to Work with the Winter Blues on Lion’s Roar. “Perhaps,” says Sylvia Boorstein, “these days of less sunlight are opportunities for more contemplative time, more looking deeply to see what can only be seen in the dark.” Elsewhere, in related news, You Can Get through This Dark Pandemic Winter Using Tips from Disaster Psychology, and A Scandinavian local explains how to make it through winter.

2. Lily Diamond and Rebecca Walker: Your Creative Power to Write a New Story. “In this episode of Insights at the Edge [Podcast], Tami speaks with Lily and Rebecca about the power of the right question to move us in the direction of claiming our narratives and using the power of our imagination to create our future. They discuss the importance of telling our own stories in the ways only we can. They also explore how rewriting the stories we tell about ourselves and our world can ignite the alchemical process of everyday evolution, moving us in the direction of healing society, the Earth, and our own spirits.”

3. 5 Things 2020 Taught Me About Being a Highly Sensitive Person. “Let’s not pretend we’ll all emerge stronger, but there are five key lessons highly sensitive people can carry forward.”

4. On Being Krista Tippett. “For almost two decades, Krista Tippett has been asking questions about faith, grief, hope, and the human condition. 2020 has given her a lot to talk about.”

5. Recipe I want to try: chilaquiles brunch casserole.

6. Future Gazing: What If Care Was the Organizing Principle of Our Society? “With a challenging year soon to be behind us, we asked community members to share their vision of what they hope becomes of our city post-pandemic.”

7. Dear HSP With a Bad Childhood: There Is Hope.

8. For Ijeoma Oluo, Books and Bedtime Are a Perfect Combination on The New York Times.

9. TikTok discovered a Netflix movie hack — and it’s a game-changer.

10. How to Be a Dog, a poem by Andrew Kane.

11. ‘Solidarity, Not Charity’: A Visual History of Mutual Aid. “Tens of thousands of mutual aid networks and projects emerged around the world in 2020. They have long been a tool for marginalized groups.”

12. The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020.

13. COVID-19 related news: Doctor Who Recorded Final Days Battling COVID-19 Said She Had To Beg For Proper Treatment: ‘This Is How Black People Get Killed’, and Cause of Life on The New York Times (“The more than 300,000 people we lost to the pandemic in 2020 form a portrait of America. For this series of short films, we asked five people to celebrate the life of someone close to them”), and ‘My Bank Account Has $4’: Pandemic Has Left Millions Of Livelihoods In Limbo.

14. Cleo Wade’s “It is okay (a poem of validation for the year 2020)”. “The poet and bestselling author sends out a year unlike any other with the promise that it’s okay if your banana bread never came out right— and it’s okay if you’re not okay.”

15. The Best New Podcasts of 2020 on The New York Times.

16. Giant Fabric Butterfly and Moth Sculptures Hand-Crafted by Yumi Okita.

17. A Woolen Menagerie of Miniature Creatures by Natasya Shuljak Exudes Joy and Whimsy. Something you might not know about me: I love all things small and felted.

18. 25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and Cry on The New York Times. “The popular column, which began in 2004, has become a podcast, a book and an Amazon Prime streaming series. Here are some of its greatest hits.”

19. ‘An absolute powerhouse’: Short film tells the incredible survival tale of Ada Blackjack. “A new Alaska short film tells the story of Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat woman who survived alone on a remote island after an expedition gone wrong in 1921.”

20. The Art of Activism: Hard Conversations Book Club 2021 hosted by Patti Digh.

1. Wisdom from Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel: “Interdependence offers us a new way of looking at things by drawing us out of the narrow tunnel of self-absorption into a broader awareness. It shows us the way to live in sane relationship to our world, in grace. This understanding is not only inextricably linked with our survival but with basic sanity and insight as well.”

2. What’s your whimsy? on Rita’s Notebook. I’ve always thought of this as “finding your thing,” and my friend Mikalina and I were talking about this last week and I said, almost as much to myself as her, “what if that gentle flow we feel when we ‘play’ isn’t merely taking a break but actually the way IN?” It’s worth considering.

3. Wisdom from Anne Helen Petersen: “…you really just need to give yourself a fucking break. Whatever you’ve done this year in your personal or professional life, it’s enough. You are beloved and worthy of rest. Not because of your capacity to work, or your relative capacity to subsist on fumes. You are beloved and worthy of rest because you are human, not a robot. This year has emptied us. Give yourself permission to continue to seek fullness.”

4. Grief in the Covid era will weigh on the American psyche for years to come. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

5. What Happened in Room 10? “The Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, was the first COVID hot spot in the U.S. Forty-six people associated with the nursing home died, exposing how ill-prepared we were for the pandemic — and how we take care of our elderly. This is their story.”

6. What Scandinavians Can Teach Us About Embracing Winter on The New York Times. I appreciated this article as it reinforced I’m getting at least one thing right this year.

7. End of year reflection questions from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

8. Ocean Vuong: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation, On Being.

9. COVID-19 News: ‘Absolutely remarkable’: No one who got Moderna’s vaccine in trial developed severe COVID-19, and A doctor on 9 things that could go wrong with the new vaccines.

10. Nez Perce Tribe acquires historic Hayes Farm. In related news, Clatsop-Nehalem tribes plan after return of ancestral land. “We realized that though we have a conservation mission, our connection to this land is not, and could never be, as deep and important and meaningful as the connection of the Clatsop people,” Voelke said. “What we owned was one of the most important places to other people, and why would we own that when we know that those other people will care for it even more greatly than we would?” Also, Biden makes historic Cabinet pick with Deb Haaland for interior secretary, “The Congress member would become the first Native American Cabinet member if confirmed by the Senate.”

11. Jena Schwartz: Day 209.

12. The 15 best books our book critic read this year.

13. Home for Christmas Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix. (video) Every bit as good as Season One.

14. Public Work | #EFF2020: A Holiday Campaign (Uncensored). (video) “Everyone agrees: the year 2020 could not have been worse. So, we decided to give it the send-off it deserves.”

15. Designer Can’t Stop Rearranging Everyday Objects into Visually Satisfying Compositions.

16. Andy Goldsworthy’s Ice and Snow Ephemeral Sculptures.

17. Thank God For Dan Levy.

18. While Making the World a Better Place, Jacques Pépin Also Wants to Make Our Lives Easier.

19. Nikki Giovanni, Finding the Song in the Darkest Days on The New York Times. “Part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, part of a Biden campaign ad in 2020, she has never stopped writing.”

20. Sevens by Deborah Thompson. Debby and I worked together at CSU. She’s a dog person and one of my favorite nonfiction writers.

21. Wild Writing Family [with Laurie Wagner] – Interview with Alison Luterman. (video)

22. 5 Survival Tips for When You Don’t Fit in With a Social Group.

23. On burnout: Buddhist teacher Mushim Patricia Ikeda shares her tips to avoid burnout, and How I Avoid Burnout: Buddhist Priest Daniel Soten Lynch, and How To Build a Burnout Recovery Plan.

24. Allie Brosh on Her New Book and the Trouble With Solutions, “an interview with the fierce and funny author and artist, Allie Brosh, plus advice on recognizing if someone you love is struggling with depression even if they’re not physically near you, and dogs, lots of dogs.”