Katherine May

An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down. Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas. Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Wintering

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A beautiful, gentle exploration of the dark season of life and the light of spring that eventually follows' Raynor Winn, bestselling author of The Salt Path 'A peaceful rebuff to life in fast-forward' Guardian Wintering is a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life. 'Every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself' Elizabeth Gilbert 'Absolutely beautiful' Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

The power of rest and retreat in difficult times

taylor miles hopkins

We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical.

If we don't allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.

…that life is, by its very nature, uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalise our comfort and security, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life…’If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape."

The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world…Like the robin, we sometimes sing to show how strong we are, and we sometimes sing in hope of better times. We sing either way.

When you start to use your voice as music, you are allowed to demand attention...I was gabbling out my words because I felt I had to get them in before I was interrupted.

Usefulness is a useless concept when it comes to humans. I don't think we were ever meant to think about others in terms of their use to us…We flourish on caring, doling out love. 

Over and again, we find that winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet still we refuse them. The work of the cold season is to learn to welcome them.

Light nowadays can feel like an intruder, carrying with it a unit of information or an obligation.

But then stress is a shameful thing, a proclamation of my inability to cope. I am slyly pleased that I have pain to contend with, rather than a more nebulous sense of my own overwhelm. It feels more concrete somehow. I can hide behind it and say, See, I am not unable to manage my workload. I am legitinately ill.

It's a message I rarely find in my buttoncd-up home country, and I think about the times I've suffered silent furies at the treacheries of my own body, imagining them to be unique. We don't know ourselves in context.

Plants and animals don't fight the winter; they don't pretend it's not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that's where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.

Emma Hak-Kovacs

What can you do when you’re already doing everything? The problem with ‘everything’ is that it ends up looking an awful lot like nothing: just one long haze of frantic activity, with all the meaning sheared away.

Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.

There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into Somewhere Else. Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on.

Laura Mei

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear; a long march from birth to death in which we amass our powers only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us – revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

Veronica Overholt

If our current society lacks a way to offer us the meanings we seek, then it’s entirely reasonable to reimagine the old ways of doing it or to create new ones. 

Amelia Hruby

But here I am and here it is. The only difference—the only reason I have finished this is experience. I recognised it. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I've learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favoured child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?

In the high summer, we want to be outside and active: in winter, we are called inside, and here we attend to all the detritus of the summer months, when we were too busy to take the necessary care. Winter is when I reorganise my bookshelves and read all the books I acquired in the previous year and failed to actually read. It is also the time when I reread beloved novels, for the pleasure of reacquainting myself with old friends. In summer, I want big, splashy ideas and trashy pageturners, devoured while lounging in a garden chair or perching on one of the breakwaters on the beach. In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, the muffled quiet of bookstacks and the scent of old pages and dust. In winter, I can spend hours in silent pursuit of a half-understood concept or a detail of history. There is nowhere else to be, after all.

A snow day is a wild day, a spontaneous holiday when all the tables are turned. This one had a bit of the spirit of Halloween and a little of Christmas. It was wild and cosy at the same time; rebellious and heartwarming. Here was yet another liminal space, a crossing point between the mundane and the magical. Winter, it seems, is full of them: fleeting invitations to step out of the ordinary. Snow may be beautiful, but it is also a very adept con artist. It offers us a whole new world, but just as we buy into it, it's whisked away.

Snow creates that quality of awe in the face of a power greater than ours. It epitomises the aesthetic notion of the sublime, in which greatness and beauty couple to overcome you—a small, frail human—entirely.

Sleep is not a dead space, but a doorway to a different kind of consciousness—one that is reflective and restorative, full of tangential thought and unexpected insights. In winter, we are invited into a particular mode of sleep: not a regimented eight hours, but a slow, ambulatory process in which waking thoughts merge with dreams, and space is made in the blackest hours to repair the fragmented narratives of our days. 

Yet we are pushing away this innate skill we have for digesting the difficult parts of life. My own midnight terrors vanish when I turn insomnia into a watch: a claimed sacred space in which I have nothing to do but contemplate. Here, I am offered a place in between, like finding a hidden door, the stuff of dreams. Even dormice know how to do it: they wake a while and tend to business before surrendering back to sleep. 

But those sacrifices now seem casy to make, knowing whs they will give me. I feel as though I, too, have shed some leaves: those last shreds of belief in my youthful robustness, when I could do anything, endure anything, and bounce back Winter is asking me to be more careful with my energies and to rest a while until spring.

As we so often find in ancient folklore, the Cailleach offers us a cyclical metaphor for life, one in which the energies of spring arrive again and again, nurtured by the deep retreat winter. We are no longer accustomed to thinking in this way Instead we are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flour- ish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

Once we stop wishing it were summer, Winter can he a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It's a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. 

Doing those deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you'll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you'll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you. It's one of the most important choices you'll ever make.

I read this over winter and it was quite helpful. I enjoyed lots of the ideas about living slowly and recovering during and after hard times. It has quite a one dimensional lens though.

Saskia Hughes 

Really lovely, even the second time round

Sarah Erle

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! AS HEARD ON NPR MORNING EDITION AND ON BEING WITH KRISTA TIPPETT “Katherine May opens up exactly what I and so many need to hear but haven't known how to name.” —Krista Tippett, On Being “Every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself. . . . This is truly a beautiful book.” —Elizabeth Gilbert "Proves that there is grace in letting go, stepping back and giving yourself time to repair in the dark...May is a clear-eyed observer and her language is steady, honest and accurate—capturing the sense, the beauty and the latent power of our resting landscapes." —Wall Street Journal An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down. Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas. Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

Gelaine Trinidad

4.5/5 

"Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered."

rebecca

Lisa Lindquist 

Gisela Ayala 

Meghan Navoy

I really enjoyed this one!! I am convinced of the healing affects of the sauna, a cold dip, working on knitting and going to bed early

This just proves to me how much I need to be intentional with my life. 

Ian Betteridge

Brilliant 

This is a powerful book about seeing yourself and your life not as linear but as cyclical. It’s not about depression, but if you are feeling dissatisfied with your life, or if you’re going through a tough time it’s a book that I would very much recommend.

This is wintering. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering, the dormant periods in our lives, the dark moments we endure - which can be brought about through myriad of ways; from the death of a loved one to a sudden change in circumstances or mental health issues - can be lonely, damaging and catch us off guard. Katherine May recounts her own year-long journey through winter, and how she found strength and inspiration when life felt frozen. Part memoir, part exploration of a human condition, Wintering explores the healing nature of the great outdoors to help us overcome and embrace our own wintering experiences, and how, much like nature, we can learn to appreciate these low periods, and what they have to teach us, before the ushering in of a new season.

How to Survive When Life Is Frozen

Katie Chua

lovely, just what i needed for my planned hibernation >:)

Fraser Simons

This was certainly competent and novel in concept—at least, to me—it’s even got a knack for prose i jibe with. It is, however, wildly uneven for me. I think this could have made a really powerful essay with laser focus, rather than an overview that stretches into tangential matters of life that vary in importance, privilege, and hyper fixations that may-or-may-not be shared. I find myself tuning out of some of the things that felt meandering and coming back for the overall summation of the point she was trying to hone in on for each section, rather than be gripped throughout.

Brigid prior 

A very helpful book to read and I do recommend it despite the low rating. I enjoyed it thoroughly, especially the first half of the book. I took off one star because it wasn’t especially riveting and another because I felt the second half was a bit scattered and unfocused. But overall very much enjoyed the concepts from this book and will certainly be incorporating them into my daily life.

Julia

A quick little reminder on the importance of slowly down and taking care of yourself. 

Little stories within of examples of how others winter. 
I enjoyed this book! Such good moments of how to weather seasons in your life when not all seasons are going to be summers.

Shelby Doherty

** spoiler alert **
           Likes:
- Really enjoyed the ending/epilogue (made me cry)
- Enjoyed her talking about her struggles finding her place within a mother role
- Good time to read this book as I am going through my own "winter" right now. Helpful to be reminded that some days will be good and some days will not be and to just roll with the punches.
- Enjoyed the parts about nature and how different species deal with their own "winters".

Dislikes:
- for a while it seemed to be a lot about her personal life and travels, etc. I was not expecting a memoir style book and was more expecting a self-help style book

Ashley S

I enjoyed this read though it isn’t my typical. It’s very real and raw. The authors personal story is incredibly relatable. 

'A beautiful, gentle exploration of the dark season of life and the light of spring that eventually follows' Raynor Winn, bestselling author of The Salt Path 'A peaceful rebuff to life in fast-forward' Guardian Wintering is a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life. 'Every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself' Elizabeth Gilbert

How I Learned to Flourish When Life Became Frozen

Maytal

I'd say this is a 2.5 for me. I'm not really one for self-help books but I did find solace in some of what she wrote, even if I couldn't identify with some of her personal journeys. She would lose me for a few pages and then get me back with a paragraph that hit home. Wintering as a concept resonates with me. I feel like I have lost many years and months of my life to a foggy haze due to depression that I can now hardly recall. Only in the past few years have I felt like I can acknowledge and take the time to tend to myself when it hits and with that, this book engaged me.

Pam Sartain

Wintering, How I learned to flourish when life became frozen, is a book that I read a little while ago, and only now, whilst writing the review in this time of Coronavirus, do I realise how needed this book is.

It's about accepting that at times you need to withdraw, and that you can't do everything with enthusiasm and bounce.  That at times you need to take time for you.

Katherine May discovers Wintering when she is ill, her husband is seriously ill, and when both of them are getting better, her son hates school, and she decides to home school him.

It was an enjoyable read when I was reading it just in the winter, and thinking about the idea of having time to recuperate, and not be angry at yourself for not being able to do everything.

And then Coronavirus has happened, and the world is mostly in lock down.  

This book looks at going into wintering, but also coming out of it.  There is hope, and there is certainty that things will get better.

Wintering was published on 6th February 2020 and is available on  Amazon  and  Waterstones , and through your local bookshop!

You can following Katherine May on  Twitter  and through her  website .

If you're interested in self help books, then here's some others that I've reviewed:

The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo 

 An Edited Life  by Anna Newton 

 Hinch Yourself Happy  by Mrs Hinch 

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Penguin Random House, Ebury Publishing (the publishers) for this book.

Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

Wintering The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

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