12 Nights Ritual -The Mid Point.
The soup from 2025 might just be what sustains you in 2026….
We drive home from Portobello Beach in focussed, companionable silence. Sandy, salt-covered and freezing after the New Year’s Day swim; every thought is on food and warmth.
We arrived at Porty a little before high tide and before the official “Loony Dook” will take place, further down the beach. As regular sea-swimmers, the shrieking thrill of launching yourself into icy waves has long since become a steadier practice of wade & glide. I don’t judge or begrudge anyone who throws themselves into the water in a big crowd – that was the very thing which got me started 5 years ago – but a mob feels a little…much… for today.
The water, when I enter, feels raw and bitter. It never ceases to amaze me that - even though the sea temperature is apparently 6 degrees right now and broadly stays around that – it can feel so much colder, or more bearable, depending on my body.
It’s the 1st of January in Scotland.
My body is booze-raddled and tired.
My tolerance for discomfort is low.
The water feels bitey.
Hogmanay brought a lovely party at our friend and neighbour Cassandra’s house, followed by bringing in the Bells on the edge of the Meadows, drinking straight from a bottle of fizz like students and watching Edinburgh Castle become luminescent with the firework display. We hugged other neighbours and friends we bumped into. It was joyful and warming, made all the sweeter on returning home, when we sat out in the back garden, listening to the pipes playing, the fireworks banging, the crowds singing, without having to be IN the mix.
Today is the morning after the party.
A little hungover, desiccated and lacking quality sleep, my body doesn’t feel like it’s firing on all cylinders. I’m asking a lot of it to cope well with the cold.
I choose optimism over experience – it’ll be great.
Whatever comes, I know I’ll feel better on the other side.
A decent breeze coming in off the sea means my skin is goosebumping long before it touches water. I wear neoprene gloves and boots, a bobble hat & swimming costume – a look that would be regarded as mildly insane, were it not for the 100+ other middle aged folk around in similar attire. Insanity is for the bikini & santa hat brigade who do not protect their feet.
It takes me a long moment to enter. The bite of cold on tender flesh, mixed with my tired, dehydrated, depleted system, means my body objects to being asked to fire up. I use the excuse of the dog, burying his ball deep in the sand, to procrastinate the inevitable. When I do eventually push into the water and feel icy liquid grip around up my back and chest, I gasp and swear, several times.
But it settles.
It always settles.
I even-out my breathing and push forward, consciously settling myself.
Neck deep in the gently rolling waves, I look up at the sky and I am, as always, grateful for my health and my ability to be here, cold and alive… and pre-emptively for the warmth that will come later.
The water humbles me.
I love it for that.
B holds my bobble hat as I dunk, twice, under the waves. The first time steals my breath and my scalp contracts, tightens and tingles. The second dunk is more intense, a black warning not to stay under. I break surface, with every part of my being awake, alert and jangling.
Time to head shoreward.
Wading out of the swell - towards the young labrador who only wants the ball thrown and to swim until he, too, is shivering – the breeze catches my skin, making it nip and sting. By the time I reach my clothes, less than a minute out of the sea, my skin is hot-pink like I’ve been sun burned.
The beach is hectic and my usual routine – gloves off fast, slip the swimsuit straps off before donning the dry robe, Moonbag down, boots off, swimsuit off, get dress quickly – seems to go astray. My fingers are too cold to unzip my boots and I can’t haul them off my feet. I wrap my wet hair in a fast-dry towel, but the wind cuts through its thinness and my head is getting too cold. My nose is full of snot and running like a toddler…..I need to get dressed, get warm… the cold could feel like a crisis. I just need to focus.
It takes few minutes before I’m wrapped up and ready to go – fully dressed and dry, wet stuff in a bag, heading back to the car.
I cannot feel my toes.
My fingers are too cold to activate my phone.
But there is this glorious sensation of being alive… the good chemicals racing through my body, all activated and no longer sluggish…I’m wrapped deep in a Dry Robe and grinning.
We point ourselves home. We are quiet, determined, aiming for warmth and food.
Before leaving the house, B took some soup out of the freezer – a Thai chilli butternut squash coconut thing. It had been made for a party in early December – the feedback was it had a kick to it. It got frozen because we made way too much and it was delicious. Today seems like a good day to revive it.
Within 20 minutes of getting home, one of us has hosed down the boots, gloves and swimming paraphernalia and the other has warmed the soup and got the bread on the go.
We eat gratefully, quickly and silently, feeling the chilli-buzz add to the chemical mass of endorphins already flying around.
- - -
Perhaps because of 12 nights ritual and being half way through the daily writing prompts, I am a little introspective. The last two days of writing have shifted focus from past to future - from what last year brought and what it taught, to how this might be applied and woven into the fabric of 2026.
So, I think about soup made in 2025 for one purpose, reheated for something else entirely… I think of the wisdom of storing good stuff and be able to access it when I am most depleted… I think of my journal, filling with words and realisations, and how this is laying down something fundamental and useful for me, going forward.
And then I clear up, go have a hot shower; rinsing salt and sand from skin and acknowledge the privilege I have – a home, hot water, access to food, a healthy (ish!) body that can move unaided, warm clothes, love and a labrador.
Somewhere between the sea and the soup, I understand the point of this practice. The ritual isn’t fixing anything, it’s just making sure there is something to reheat.
For now, that’s enough.
How it started: Here in the Inbetween
First 4 days: 12 Nights Ritual - the journey so far
About Me:
I’m Julie Drybrough – Edinburgh-based writer, speaker and Master coach practitioner. Founder of Write Nights online writing community & writing retreats (see more here - come and join us!!!) and fuchsia blue ltd – a Organisational Change Consultancy - I work with people & organisations to improve conversations, relationships & learning.