Wintering

When life falls apart—when illness, grief, or loss pulls you under—how do you respond? Do you rush to distract yourself, or do you slow down and listen? In Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May offers a quiet revolution against our culture’s obsession with constant productivity and positivity. She argues that just as nature cycles through seasons of growth and dormancy, we too must learn to honor the winters of our lives: those inevitable periods of retreat, uncertainty, and transformation.

May contends that our pain, burnout, and crises are not failures to be hidden but essential moments of renewal. “Everybody winters at one time or another,” she writes, “yet we treat these times as shameful deviations from normal life.” Through personal narrative and reflection, she turns winter into a metaphor for the human experience of hardship and change. Her book blends memoir, nature writing, travelogue, and cultural history to show that wintering—when welcomed consciously—can become a period of profound growth.

Falling Into Winter: A Crisis Unfolds

May begins with a literal and emotional collapse. On the cusp of her fortieth birthday, her husband is suddenly hospitalized with a burst appendix, her own health unravels, and she finds herself leaving a career that’s drained her spirit. What follows is a descent into what she calls her personal “somewhere else”—a liminal space outside the regular flow of daily life, where she must sit with uncertainty. This fall from stability into disorientation becomes the book’s call to awareness: that the seasons of suffering often begin quietly, almost imperceptibly, until we realize we’ve crossed a threshold.

She likens this moment to nature’s rhythm. Just as trees shed their leaves and animals hibernate, humans too enter internal winters. Instead of resisting them, May suggests, we can learn from nature’s strategies: preparation, withdrawal, conservation, and trust that spring will come again. Her thesis challenges the modern myth of endless summer—the idea that we should remain happy, productive, and “up” all the time. Winter proves that dormancy isn’t death; it’s part of the cycle of regeneration.

Learning to Live the Seasons of the Soul

Throughout Wintering, May moves between her own story and cultural explorations. She writes about visiting Iceland’s geothermal pools, learning Nordic winter rituals from Finnish friends, encountering ghost stories at Halloween, and awakening to the power of cold-water swimming on her local beach. Each scene offers metaphors for how to survive and even delight in life’s coldest chapters. From the art of preserving quinces to the eerie comfort of dormice hibernating underground, she discovers that survival often involves humility, preparation, and conscious slowing down.

May also draws on legends and literature—the Cailleach, the Gaelic goddess of winter; Sylvia Plath’s bees; the children’s worlds of Narnia and The Dark Is Rising—to show how winter has always haunted human imagination. Across all these stories lies a single truth: winter brings transformation. It’s when we shed what’s worn-out and reenter the cycle anew. In this sense, wintering becomes both metaphor and practice. She finds that doing “deeply unfashionable things”—resting, slowing, tending to one’s home—are radical acts of survival in a hurried world.

The Gift Hidden in the Cold

By the end of the book, May rejects the cultural impulse to treat suffering as deviation. Instead, she insists it’s as natural as the seasons. “Winter is not the death of the life cycle,” she writes, “but its crucible.” When we allow ourselves to rest, to stop fighting the darkness, we find that winter gives us back to ourselves. It asks us to pay attention. It shows us what we actually need. The stillness isn’t emptiness—it’s preparation for growth.

May’s story reminds you that your own winters—times of loss, burnout, grief, or isolation—are not personal failings. They’re part of your belonging to the natural world. If you can learn to recognize and accept them, you’ll uncover their quiet wisdom. The rest of Wintering expands this insight into lived practices: preparing for hardship, resting through illness and fear, finding transformation in stillness, and finally, returning to light. It’s less a self-help manual than a lyrical permission slip to be human—to pause, to hurt, and to begin again.

The first major idea in May’s book is her radical call to “invite the winter in.” Rather than resisting or hiding hardship, she encourages you to welcome it as part of your natural rhythm. For May, wintering is both noun and verb: a season of life and a skill to be cultivated. Everyone winters differently—through illness, loss, depression, or burnout—but the act of wintering consciously can transform suffering into renewal.

Recognizing a Winter

Wintering, May explains, usually arrives uninvited. In her case, it began with her husband’s sudden illness and her own collapse afterward. At first, she felt ashamed—like she was breaking some social rule by stepping back. But over time, she realized that these periods of retreat have always been part of the human cycle. We’re simply no longer taught how to endure them gracefully. She compares this to trees shedding their leaves before frost hits. Instead of clinging, they let go to survive.

To “invite the winter in” means to stop hiding your vulnerabilities. It might mean saying no to work you can’t sustain, acknowledging when you’re sick or sad, or refusing to pretend everything’s fine when it isn’t. This requires self-compassion and a willingness to be seen in your rawest state.

Learning from Nature’s Preparation

May turns to the natural world for metaphors of resilience. Animals, she notes, never fight the cold—they adapt to it. Swallows migrate, trees drop leaves, and bears hibernate. Each act might look like withdrawal, but it’s really preparation. She writes that human beings can practice similar wisdom. Before the darkness deepens, you can ready yourself emotionally and materially: simplifying your life, building quiet routines, leaning into supportive communities. These rituals, small but sacred, help sustain you when light fades.

(This echoes teachings from Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, which also encourages embracing discomfort instead of escaping it. Both recognize that growth happens when you stop running.)

The Cost of Denying the Cold

Modern society trains us to avoid downtime and disguise our struggles. We fill every silence, work through illness, and measure worth in productivity. May calls this a collective denial of winter’s place in the cycle of life. The result is burnout, alienation, and quiet despair. The longer we postpone our winters, the harsher they become. True healing requires surrender—the courage to stop pretending we’re invincible.

When you invite winter in, you reclaim your right to ebb and flow. You remember that retreat is not failure but part of life’s rhythm. As May puts it, “We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.” That choice—to slow down, rest, and attend to your inner world—becomes the first act of renewal.

When Katherine May collapses under stress after her husband’s illness, she confronts a truth most of us ignore: we’ve forgotten how to rest. Signed off from her job with physical pain and exhaustion, she begins a slow recovery at home. Cooking simple meals, walking slowly to the market, tending candles—these become her rebellion against a culture that worships busyness. Rest, she argues, is not laziness; it’s intelligence.

The Myth of Endless Productivity

Modern life, May observes, measures virtue by output. Her own achievements—lecturing, writing, parenting—had become both armor and prison. When illness forces her to stop, she sees how deeply this culture has starved her creative and emotional self. “The problem with ‘everything,’” she writes, “is that it looks an awful lot like nothing.” Restoring meaning requires deliberate slowness.

She connects this to the Danish concept of hygge, finding solace in small pleasures: warm socks, tea, candlelight, silence. Yet she reminds us that hygge is not consumer comfort; it’s communal presence and simplicity. Rest, in this sense, becomes a sacred pause—a reordering of value around being rather than doing.

Domesticity as Healing

In her chapter “Making Ready,” May turns to small domestic rituals. Failing spectacularly at baking bagels with five-year-old yeast, she still finds peace in the tactile rhythm of kneading. She fills her house with cooking, candles, and quiet craft. Through these simple gestures, she cleanses the chaos left by years of overwork. Like the Finnish concept of talvitelat—preparing to be “stowed away for winter”—this process brings both order and self-compassion.

(Psychologists note similar restorative power in mindful routines; even chores can anchor stability during uncertainty.) By restoring these rhythms, May rebuilds the foundations of a life worth living.

Rest as Resistance

Resting, in May’s vision, is a subtle form of rebellion. To step out of capitalist time—to sleep, cook, read, breathe—is to reject the idea that human worth equals constant motion. Winter teaches that slowing down is not optional; it’s survival. “Doing those deeply unfashionable things,” she insists, “is a radical act now, but essential.”

Through stillness, she rediscovers creative energy and presence. Rest, far from being passive, becomes generative. It’s the crucible that allows new life to emerge. Slowing down, paradoxically, is how we move forward again.

May describes winter as the season of metamorphosis—a time when life hides, transforms, and is quietly reborn. Drawing parallels between human crises and natural cycles, she reminds you that change often looks like stillness before it becomes visible growth.

The Wisdom of Trees

In her November reflections, May watches trees shed leaves and describes the process of abscission: a tree severs its connection to each leaf, allowing them to fall to the ground while protecting its core from loss. Hidden beneath bare branches, next year’s buds are already waiting. What looks like death is preparation. The metaphor is simple yet profound: when you shed what no longer serves you—old identities, toxic ambitions—you create room for regrowth.

She pairs this insight with her own diagnosis of a chronic gut illness. Facing frailty, she must learn new habits and relinquish illusions of invulnerability. Like the trees, she realizes she isn’t breaking; she’s conserving energy for new life. “I have to change,” she concludes. “Those sacrifices now seem easy, knowing what they give me.”

The Cailleach and the Cycle of Renewal

Myth gives her another guide: the Gaelic goddess Cailleach, ruler of winter. Each year she reigns until spring goddess Brìghde returns, and then turns to stone. The two are not enemies but two faces of the same being—old age and wisdom alternating with youth and vitality. From her, May learns to see life not as a linear rise and fall but as cyclical: ebb followed by flow, darkness by light. We are never one season forever.

(This echoes Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey,” but inverted; the transformation comes not from conquest but surrender.)

Making Peace with Change

May’s hospital imagery—sterile white rooms, passive bodies—reveals another dimension of metamorphosis: the surrender of control. Like a patient on a ward, you can’t rush recovery; you can only trust the process. Each wintering requires letting go of an old self. Every transformation begins as loss.

To live meaningfully, she suggests, you must learn to winter as trees do: to go still, to conserve, to trust that unseen work is happening beneath the surface. What appears stagnant may be the most creative season of all.

In the darkest days of December, Katherine May searches for ways to recover a sense of meaning. Her exploration of ritual—from the Scandinavian St. Lucy’s Day procession to the solstice sunrise at Stonehenge—illuminates how collective ceremonies help humans endure the cold seasons of both nature and spirit.

Remembering the Light

In London’s Swedish Church, May witnesses young girls in white dresses carrying candles to honor Saint Lucia—the bringer of light in midwinter darkness. The image stirs her, restoring her faith in community and stillness. Participating in rituals, even as an outsider, allows her to feel part of something enduring: the human impulse to keep light alive when days are shortest. She learns that ritual is not about belief but about belonging.

Inventing Modern Rituals

Later, at the Stonehenge solstice, she joins druids, tourists, and mystics celebrating the turning of the year. The scene—part chaos, part reverence—teaches her that humans crave meaning in seasonal change. Whether rooted in ancient lore or new invention, these observances offer a rhythm missing from modern life. The eightfold Wheel of the Year, as druid Philip Carr-Gomm tells her, creates continual points of reflection every six weeks—a healthy antidote to our endless grind between Christmas and summer holidays.

May realizes that such rituals provide mental scaffolding. They punctuate the year, allowing space to process change rather than rush through it. You can craft your own—lighting a candle at dusk, walking at sunrise, naming gratitude at each solstice or equinox. These are reminders to notice time passing, to make beauty amid uncertainty.

Spiritual Connection Without Certainty

Despite her secular rationalism, May admits to her secret prayers—what she calls “earthwise” devotion. Like poet Jay Griffiths, she believes prayer can be an encounter with beauty rather than a dialogue with a god. The sacred, she concludes, is not distant; it dwells in rhythm, nature, and shared celebration. When she lights a candle or stands among strangers singing about the returning sun, she feels reconnected to a world larger than her grief.

In embracing ritual, you reclaim your place in this cycle. You acknowledge that darkness will return—but so will light. Ritual, May shows, is the art of preparing your heart for both.

The middle winter months bring May face-to-face with physical extremes that mirror her inner ones: darkness, hunger, and cold. Each becomes a teacher. In moving north to Iceland, swimming in freezing seas, and confronting her own cravings, she learns that endurance breeds clarity—and that discomfort can be a form of wisdom.

Lessons from the Arctic

May’s trip to Iceland is both a literal and metaphorical plunge into winter. Beneath the geothermal mist and northern lights, she experiences illness, insomnia, and awe. The Icelandic landscape—harsh, volcanic, luminous—reflects her internal turmoil yet also heals her. Immersing in the Blue Lagoon’s hot waters, she sees how warmth coexists with cold, and how surrendering to an environment beyond control can restore balance. The Finnish sauna rituals she later adopts reinforce this: purification through contrast, rest through intensity.

Hunger and the Wolf Within

In January’s “Hunger,” May compares herself to wolves—beings both feared and misunderstood. Their constant hunger mirrors human longing: the ache for meaning, safety, creation. She meets a real wolf tracker who teaches her that wolves are “always hungry” because survival demands it. For May, this becomes a metaphor for emotional appetite. Our cravings—for love, purpose, even destruction—are signs of life’s drive to continue. Rather than fearing them, we can learn from their fierceness and restraint.

(This recalls Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s Women Who Run With the Wolves, where wildness is reclaimed as female wisdom rather than chaos.)

The Clarity of Cold Water

One of May’s most memorable practices is cold-water swimming. What begins as a dare turns into a spiritual discipline shared with other women. Immersing herself in near-freezing seas teaches her to breathe through shock, to find beauty in discomfort. Science backs her up: cold exposure floods the body with endorphins and focus. But for May, it’s also symbolic—a chosen winter, where she confronts fear on her own terms and emerges revitalized. “By doing a resilient thing,” she writes, “we felt more resilient.”

Through darkness, hunger, and cold, May discovers that life’s hardest conditions can strip away illusion. They bring you back to what’s essential—your breath, your body, your presence. These elemental encounters remind you that adversity, faced wholly, becomes alchemy.

In one of her most moving chapters, May applies her hard-won understanding to her son’s struggles at school. When six-year-old Bert becomes too anxious to attend, she realizes she must teach him what she has learned: that retreat and rest are not weaknesses but forms of wisdom. Wintering, she finds, is a legacy worth passing on.

Listening to the Call for Change

Bert’s distress signals a deeper truth: like many adults, children are pressured to endure systems that ignore their natural rhythms. May recognizes his refusal to go to school not as rebellion but as his body and heart saying no. So she pulls him out, despite judgment and fear. Together, they build a slower life—baking, reading, exploring museums, walking by the sea. It’s messy, uncertain, but real. In their shared “home-school winter,” both mother and son rediscover curiosity and joy.

Community and Solidarity

When May meets other home-school parents, she realizes that many families experience these collapses and renewals. Their community offers empathy rather than judgment—the very connection she argues society denies during hard times. “I could have cried just to know I wasn’t alone,” she writes. Wintering, then, becomes collective as well as personal. Those who have endured learn to guide others through their own cold seasons. That shared understanding is what keeps everyone warm.

A Different Kind of Education

By prioritizing her child’s happiness over performance, May redefines learning itself. She teaches him that “happiness is the greatest skill we’ll ever learn.” When you allow children to rest, to follow wonder instead of pressure, they flourish. This echoes her broader philosophy: growth doesn’t require constant striving; it requires the safety to slow down.

Through her son’s winter, May finds redemption for her own. To winter well is not just to survive but to model gentleness, to say: this, too, is part of being human. For the next generation, that’s the beginning of wisdom.

Winter always ends. In “Thaw,” Katherine May reflects on how to return to life after collapse. Her conclusion: rebirth is rarely dramatic. It happens gradually, quietly, through small acts of reengagement and the acceptance that uncertainty never goes away. Spring, she reminds us, is not a clean slate but a continuation of the cycle.

The Practice of Letting Life Flow

May draws on philosopher Alan Watts, who taught that to control life is to lose it. Her long struggle for security—career success, perfect motherhood, stable happiness—was an attempt to hold her breath. “To hold your breath,” Watts wrote, “is to lose your breath.” Acceptance replaces control. Life’s unpredictability isn’t a flaw; it’s its essence. We can only learn to breathe with it.

This doesn’t mean passivity. It means adapting like nature does: responding to change instead of fearing it. May learns to see her own grief, anxiety, and uncertainties as weather systems—passing through, never permanent. The work of thawing is to let warmth touch you again, even if the ground is still frozen beneath.

The Ethics of Gentle Return

Emergence from winter isn’t about reinvention but integration. May cleans her home, donates books, tends her garden—rituals of ordinary restoration. These small acts symbolize the abscission she described earlier: releasing what’s dead so new growth can occur. Each spring, she sets no grand resolution except to notice the gradual lengthening of light and to honor the cyclical nature of being.

Wisdom of the Wintered

In her final reflection, May addresses those who have “wintered.” Their task now is to share what they’ve learned. This includes compassion for others’ pain, humility about one’s own, and faith in renewal. “We, who have wintered,” she writes, “have learned some things. We sing it out like birds.” Emerging from winter isn’t triumph—it’s testimony. You survive, sing, and keep cycling forward.

May leaves you with the insight that there will be many winters yet to come. Each will ask for your surrender and reward you with wisdom. The goal is not to avoid them but to become skillful in their art—to winter well, again and again.