Wintering

Photo credit Avni Trivedi: Black Mountains, Wales

I’m re-reading ‘Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times’ by Katherine May and am again struck by the tenderness of this book.

In it she says “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 outisder. Perhaps it results from an illness; perhaps from a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humilation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition, and have temporarily fallen between two worlds”.

She describes different types of wintering such as the ones that are slow to come on, and the ones that are sudden and stark. In most cases, wintering is involuntary, lonely and deeply painful.

According to May, wintering is inevitable and although we may never choose to winter, we can learn how to recognise it and to engage with it mindfully.

Now I’m a complete summer baby, and yearn for the days when it barely gets dark. However in recent years, I’ve made it a practice to adjust my expectations and habits so that I could at least ‘be here now’ rather than wish it away. If we follow nature as a guide, the winter is stripped back and bare and a pause in activity. It’s never made sense to me that the shift from Autumn to Winter brings along so many festivities when really we are being called to lie low and recuperate.

If you’d like to explore the gifts (even begrudgingly), we’ll be exploring the theme of wintering in the upcoming Circling the Seasons.

Circling the Seasons is a workshop that will run every 3 months to mark the changing seasons (namely the Winter and Summer Solstice and Spring and Autumn Equinox).

And if you’re also someone who suffers with Season Affective Disorder (SAD), here are some suggestions to get through this time.