Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

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.

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256 pages

Average rating: 7.48

66 RATINGS

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9 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

OceanCruiseReader
Oct 28, 2024
8/10 stars
As a sun-seeking gal, I have a fresh perspective on the transformative power of winter, rest, and giving ourselves a break when needed.
lady_of_shalott
Aug 22, 2024
10/10 stars
This book singlehandedly helped me out of the darkest time of my life. I want everyone to buy a copy of this book. Katherine May's writing is beautiful, Tolkien-esque, and naturalistic. She makes a snowy walk seem romantic and makes one look forward to learning how to survive the ups and downs of every day life. "Survival is a skill" was my mantra after this book, thanks to May and her wisdom. This whole book is a beautiful homage to survival.

Enjoy!
kristashwn
Jun 21, 2024
9/10 stars
This beautifully written book explores how the physical experience of the season of winter (dark, cold, etc.) can help us work through the metaphorically dark and cold times in our lives. A great book to curl up with by the fireplace as the days get shorter and the nights get longer!
Anonymous
Apr 08, 2024
8/10 stars
Core of the book relates authors personal experience, enduring periods of hardship, nurturing herself, and emerging wiser and ready for “spring.” She explores this theme: breezes thru psychological, mystic (trip to Stonehenge), and personal / idiosyncratic vignettes (Ex a pregnancy trip to the arctic to see the northern lights).

Does this well: enlightening perspective. I hope to consider this approach when I am “wintering,” namely recognizing emotional ebbs and flows and embracing them rather than rejecting them. The challenge of course is that when I need to winter, I do not. I push thru in an effort to get back to the summer.

The message that resonated with me here: there are times when your will is best set aside. When it makes more sense to pay attention to your need to rest and recover. The model of progress more like the seasons, dynamic and variable, than a locomotive, ever chugging forward with only brief stops to refuel and repair. I default to the locomotive, though as I get older I find the seasonal mindset more attractive - and realistic.

The second part of the book layers abstraction on this. Dangerous territory. Ordinarily, this is when the best biographically inspired non fiction can melt away into difficult to follow theorizing. But I think this worked. Why?

The author plays on her turf. She uses fiction, fable, and some biological reasoning as means to help us understand her view of the person and it’s broader moral responsibilities. The biology is the only part that falls a bit short (why does every liberal arts oriented author feel the need to take shots at EO Wilson? Does anyone talk about his work anymore other than as a straw man to set up a more complex perspective of human motivation? I digress.)

This is not how a philosopher or sociologist would write this - and the author isn’t one of those. That’s why I think it works.

Great read - though more of an early covid read than a late covid read.

Here comes Summer!
MillieSS
Feb 29, 2024
8/10 stars
Thought Wintering would be more “theory” on the idea of wintering, but was more memoir. I skimmed parts here and there—as May, like many people, have boringly dull pursuits. Some beautiful nuggets among the filler. Now I can politely decline Christmastime invites with the reply, Thank you dearly, but I’m wintering. The book is a good reminder that, as Katherine May says, “The only thing breaking me was pretending to be like everyone else.”

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