Book Review: Wintering
Here’s my review of Wintering by Katherine May. Leave a comment if you’ve read it, plan to read it, or have any book recs to share. And don’t miss today’s writing prompt.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May is a great book to read this time of year, as it inspires readers to relish the winter months of their lives, both literally and metaphorically. Through her personal narrative, intermingled with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat.
Overall, I enjoyed how this book encourages its readers to celebrate the cold, quiet, sometimes isolating, difficult moments in life, and even celebrate how critical they are to appreciating our regenerative cycles in life, as life is not linear but cyclical, thus should be lived accordingly. It also offers readers examples of how to prepare for winters (difficult times) in life, and why, as winters in life are inevitable and can never be avoided, similar to the winter months we live through each year, for which we also must prepare, if we’re going to not only survive but outlast them.
This book posits that not only enduring painful times but anticipating and embracing the unique opportunities each painful time brings, is what will ensure new individual seasons of growth and renewal. Because, conceptually and literally, you cannot have spring and summer without winter and the rest and restoration it encourages and permits.
Instead of thinking we can or should avoid or ‘fight’ the winter months in our lives, this book reminds us why it’s best to accept them, welcome them, even relish their beauty, so that we can fully learn how to value and harness all they offer. May illustrates how we can heal and restore ourselves by using nature as our guide, by following the wisdom of the sun, embracing the cold and dark, accepting pain as an informative cycle that will pass, and finding comfort in simple, repetitive rituals that winters offer.
In short, this book is ideal for those who tend to experience low moods during winter months, as well as those who need to be reminded that downturns and setbacks in life are inevitable and not shameful, as the rest of the world would have us believe. And I will recommend it to those readers who might need a little bit of a boost during winter months.
Still, the narrative voice, style, and structure of this book did not resonate with me overall, and it often felt somewhat emotionally distant and dry to me, though I wouldn’t be surprised if most readers don’t have this experience, especially if they’re currently going through tough periods in their lives and seek all the practical wisdom this book offers.
Notable passages from the book:
“We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.”
“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.”
“If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”
“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
“You’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us.”
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© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: Winter Beauty
Write a piece of poetry or flash fiction in which the beauty of winter is being celebrated. Or write about what you love most about winter.
Writing Tip:
Before you begin writing, close your eyes for a few minutes and imagine yourself enjoying the perfect winter day. What do you hear, feel, smell, etc.?
