January Quiet
January Quiet
The holidays are over. The travel, the houseguests, the logistics of getting everyone where they needed to be. The meals, the noise, the negotiating of who sleeps where and when to leave for the airport.
Now the house is quiet.
For some of you, that quiet is a relief. The kids are back at school. The routine has returned. You can hear yourself think for the first time in weeks. You're not managing anyone else's needs for a few hours a day, and something in you is finally settling.
For others, the quiet is harder. Your kid went back to college, or moved back to their own apartment, and the house feels too still. The visit was wonderful or complicated or both. Now you're standing in the kitchen and there's no one to make coffee for but yourself.
What the chaos covers
During the holidays, there's no room to feel much of anything beyond the next task. You're in logistics mode. Getting through it. Managing.
That's not a complaint. It's just what December requires.
But now there's space. And in the space, things surface. The thing you've been putting off thinking about. The tension in your marriage that got papered over by family obligations. The low-grade exhaustion you've been ignoring because there wasn't time to address it.
You might notice you're not bouncing back the way you expected. Or that the return to normal life feels flatter than it should.
The window
January is a strange month. The momentum of the new year fades fast. The resolutions lose their shine. But the quiet is real, and it won't last forever. The calendar fills back up. The noise returns.
If you've been waiting for space to pay attention to something, this is the window. Not because January is magical, but because you actually have a rare moment to pause.
What to do with it
You don't have to do anything dramatic. But if something has been asking for your attention, this might be the time to stop postponing it. Your sleep. Your mood. Your marriage. Your sense of who you are now that the kids need you less.
Not everything needs to be a crisis to deserve attention. Sometimes the quieter things are the ones that matter most.
If this resonates
I work with adults in transitions. The kind that don't always announce themselves as transitions. A child leaving. A role shifting. A quiet that reveals something you hadn't let yourself see.
If January has you noticing something, I'd be glad to talk.
Margaret Sigel is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) in Santa Monica, California, specializing in somatic therapy for anxiety, trauma, and burnout. She works with adults in person and online throughout California.