The Gift of Wintering: Learning to Embrace Life’s Seasons

In Wintering, Katherine May invites us into a quietly radical rethinking of how we experience life’s inevitable pauses—those times when the world feels cold, slow, or uncertain. She defines “Wintering” as a season of life marked by rejection, loss, failure, grief, or fatigue—times when we feel out of sync with the productivity and light of the world around us.

But instead of resisting these winters of the soul, May encourages us to approach them as sacred intervals of insight and transformation. “Wintering,” she suggests, is not a failure of living, but an invitation to step back and listen to what life is trying to teach us.

The book is structured as a series of beautifully curated anecdotes that travel across landscapes both physical and emotional—from the cold seas of Scandinavia and quiet forests to libraries, churches, and home. Everywhere May takes us, she offers mindfulness and curiosity, showing how retreat and reflection can become acts of renewal.

May writes candidly about her own winters: her health challenges, the vulnerability of academia, and her son’s anxiety at school. She describes how she taught her son to “Winter”—to let the noise of the world recede by turning toward what brings comfort and wonder: library visits, snowball fights, and museum wanderings.

Her philosophy is deeply personal yet universally resonant. We cannot choose when winter arrives, but we can choose how we ‘Winter’. For May, it’s curling up under a thick duvet in a cold room, resting, allowing quiet to do its work. Through these deliberate acts of retreat, she discovers that Wintering holds its own form of abundance.

Ultimately, May’s reflections remind us that these colder seasons are not simply times to endure—they are invitations to transform. If we allow ourselves to step back, slow down, and listen, we may emerge with a renewed vision of who we are and what truly matters.

As May beautifully puts it, the gift of Winter is this: “we can come out of it wearing a different coat.”

So here’s to honouring our winters — not as interruptions, but as necessary chapters in becoming.

#Wintering #KatherineMay #SeasonsOfLife #Reflection #Mindfulness #RestAsResistance #PersonalGrowth

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