Shedding Your Skin and Grief in the New Year
This is our blue-tongued skink Luigi Macaroni. He’s the sweetest little guy — curious, smart, determined. He loves green peas and basking in the sun. And about once a month, he sheds all his skin and re-emerges with shiny new scales.
In the days leading up to a shed he can get a little cranky. He’s a little less friendly, he starts resting more, and he doesn’t always want to eat. He needs humidity to help him shed, so we try to help him out with hot showers or an extra humidifier near his tank. But mostly we just have to give him time and space to do it his own way. If he doesn’t shed completely and some scales get stuck — it’s uncomfortable for him and could hurt him in the long-term. When we first got him as a baby apparently he had an old shed that was bothering him and he responded by biting off his tail — much to the horror of everyone in our household. The vet explained that his tail would grow back — and it did…slightly bendy and weird, but he seems unconcerned by it.
I love watching him shed because it reminds me that I’m supposed to shed too. As living, breathing beings we’re constantly in a state of change, constantly evolving. We paint these rosy caricatures of the holidays where everything looks the same year after year — Norman Rockwell picture perfect—but nothing is ever really the same. If you look closer at those pictures, you’ll remember the year your mom was sick at Christmas, or you and your partner had a fight on the way to family dinner, or the year you put up a tiny tree in your new apartment and started making your own traditions.
Grief can be so painful — when we lose people who were special to us and when our lives continue to evolve and it seems nothing will ever be the same. But holding on to this idea that things “should” be the same, or even a certain way, can add a layer of distress on top of an already difficult time. One of the most common questions I hear from clients is “How am I ‘supposed’ to be doing this?” and my answer is always the same…there’s no “supposed to.”
Grieve in the way that works for you, in the ways your body is telling you to grieve. Cry having great sex with your partner. Let the uncontrollable laughter spill from your body at the solemn remembrance ceremony. Tell the random story about a mundane memory with the person you lost. Let yourself evolve and change through the experience without judging how you’re doing it. This layer of skin will shed. You will emerge changed, but also still yourself. The process may be ugly while it’s happening and you may have to grow back a few limbs along the way.
But I promise you this: you’re not doing it wrong. Be gentle with yourself as we start this new year and give yourself the rest and support you need during times of transition. I assure you, if you look around, you’ll see examples of other creatures shedding their skin as they move into the new season.
