Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.0/5.0 - This is going to be a two part review, one of the book and a second part of how it spoke to me. Katherine May is an English writer and former faculty who is writing about "wintering" which describes a period of retreat, rest, and healing. As a teenager, she is diagnosed with Asperger's and that, coupled with her husband's near fatal bout with appendicitis and her own serious stomach issues, led her to turn in her notice at university and search for new ways to live. One way she finds helpful is swimming in ice cold water. (End of part one).
The bookmark I used for this book has a quote: "Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know." - Alberto Manguel, and it totally described this book. Here are a number of quotes that spoke to me.
Describing wintering: "Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. (10) However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. (11)"
I think we can all relate to this, perhaps we are living this ourselves right now.
May talks about northern cultures, Finns, Danes, Scandinavians, who embrace winter and cold and darkness, the Finns having a word hygge to describe "cosiness as a mindful practice, a turning towards domesticated comfort to console us against the harshness of the world outside.(32)"
In a passage where she describes her grandmother dying in hospital, she says "In my naïve way, I expected her to get better and come home." I felt that way when my father entered the hospital, before the cruel ER doctor said to me "why are you worried about him getting into a room, he's just going to die."
On page 68: "Life meanders like a path through the woods, (w)e have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones."
About waking in the early hours, and she describes her books pulled beside her chair as "waiting to offer up fragments of learning, rather than cover-to-cover pursuits." This book to me is more of the former than the latter, but thoroughly enjoyable. Further, she tells about how night was divided into two periods (before the Industrial Revolution) first or dead sleep, and second or morning sleep, where you are coming back into the world, separated by a period of wakefulness known as "the watch." When we experience it now, we treat it as a problem, but back then it was a time to pee, visit, pray, or make love. (85)
May talks about the importance of communities and rituals to get us through tough times, and embracing the wisdom of those who have faced a problem before us. Sometimes that means not "fixing" a problem, but learning to live a life that you can cope with, especially when the challenge you are facing is a permanent condition. Keeping well can be a full time job.
She ends the book talking about robins. "In the deepest of winter, the robin begins to sing" and sometimes "we sing to show how strong we are, or in hopes of better times." (228)
Some people might find this too new age. But I believe for others, who are struggling to find their way through these tough times, there will be many things to relate to, and in which to find hope.

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