Katherine May

Memoir 2020 | 241 pages

We all encounter times of wintering. Our cold, transformative, challenges may be precipitated by a death, or one's illness or the illness of another, or a child who hates the school he is at, or financial worries, or a sense of a spiritual void, or depression, or simply the short cold days of a season we mostly want to end.

May tells us about her journey through her own wintering and shares with us what she has learned, what perspectives she notices and alters, what attitudes and attributes appear during the seemingly dark time of wintering.

She tells us about the bees and how they, and the ants, prepare for winter.  She relates stories of going to the Arctic, even though she is very pregnant.  She travels to Stonehenge one winter solstice to learn how the people who show up there view the shifting currents of winter.  She learns to plunge into icy cold waters to clear her head and regain a sense of presence, aliveness, resilience, and self-sufficiency.

I picked this up because of what I read about her integration of other authors, poets, mystics, philosophers.  I enjoyed this part ... she could have done much more of it!  Wintering is really a spiritual book, to savor and read slowly; to let her wisdom sink in.

Some reviewers did not like this book.  They were offended by her privilege and her financial ability to travel to a spa or to see the northern lights in Iceland (she lives in Britain). While these readers vehemently claimed they were not looking for a self-help book, I believe they were. They wanted "how to winter" advice that they could apply and integrate into their own lives.  Even though I am currently immersed in my own set of "wintering" experiences, I was just as vehemently not looking for any self-help.  I wanted to read this book just as one woman's account of her wintering. And, as such, it was astoundingly beautiful.  Her writing is simply beautiful and soothing.  And still, I know that I couldn't help but learn from her story.

I recommend Wintering.