Wintering - the power of rest and retreat in Difficult times

A friend gifted me this book by Katherine May. She knows me quite well and thought the premise would resonate with me. It did, indeed.

Wintering is about a woman struggling with health issues, borderline depression and the doldrums of slogging through the same life day after day. As she suffers with a physical ailment, her guilt compounds her situation, having never developed a lifestyle or attitude that allowed her to prioritize herself. Her career, family and marriage always came first leaving her with meager leftovers.

Eventually, her illness requires her to take a leave from her writing and teaching career so she decides to use the time to reevaluate her life. She takes trips, mid-winter, to places where traditions evolved in rhythm with nature.  Resulting in an honest account that weaves modern life experience with folklore, human evolution, nature and the quest for balance and meaning in one’s life. The book is written as a memoir, but leans into the author’s poetic style resulting in what I could comfortably describe as a written meditation.

Through her travels, she explores winter as a metaphor for the cycle in one’s life and those times when outside influences require yielding rather than defiance. She introduces the concept of living in harmony with that for which we have little understanding and can only gain that understanding by living within it.

As a determined, highly motivated, aging woman, I read with great interest what May was learning, but also sensed a strong resistance to the lessons as they pertain to me. I realize I am not only living the winter of the natural world, but also entering the winter of my own life.

Along her way, May is introduced to Pagan philosophy. She learns how the early Pagans, who proceeded other formal religions by thousands of years, honored and respected the cycles of nature and learned to live within the confines and abundance of those cycles, especial winter. She found her way to not only survive but thrive when one’s power becomes the ability to adapt, to enter the confluence of nature peacefully, rather than struggle to swim upstream as a modern human and to respect those influences that are stronger, bigger and present true danger. Ironically, I read this book during one of the most destructive ice storms the United States has seen in years.

Although, I live in California and only have chilly temperatures with which to contend, I have developed an aversion to the cold. I now find it zaps my energy and causes me more than mild discomfort, limiting my time outdoors and reducing my social life to daylight hours on mild days.

Just as other age related conditions have caused me to take more breaks on the trail to the top of the ridge and to adopt a new caution as I work out with weights, I still challenge myself and keep a regular schedule of exercise. But as my 80 year old friend said recently, we can still do it, we just do it more carefully and a bit slower now. I love that thought, and embrace any adjustment that allows me to carry on with what gives me joy and a sense of freedom even if it’s only on warm afternoons these days.

As a result, this book has become a kind of road map for me. I’m learning how to regulate my energy stores and to allow myself to rest, not as a surrender to defeat, but to rejuvenate, without experiencing shame for not staying perpetually busy. I prioritize nutrition and eat more, on a regular schedule, consuming extra calories on days with heavy workouts and have extended myself the grace of a few additional pounds rather than jeopardizing my health, trying to maintain an unrealistic body image.

I’ve even accepted more readily those occasions when the unexpected happens and I find myself in need of assistance, guidance and support and have overcome my pride in order to ask for what I need. I’ve stopped rushing to the rescue of others so immediately, waiting until I am asked, and finally understand the old adage, you can’t pour from an empty cup.

These are lessons essential for this era of my life, for this season, at a time when change is rapid, surprises are frequent and sometimes unpleasant. As I lose friends, loved ones and personal power, I often feel worry and fear, insecurity about the future and how I will fare, but now, I’ve learned to sit with those emotions and draw from the certainty I do have, a strong and enduring sense of self and my ability to adapt, a loving and supportive circle of women who I can count on and an optimism that looks for confirmation that it will all be all right.

Just like the winter of May’s journey, the sun will shine again and I will immerge from the long, cold nights, not as who I was when I entered the dark, certainly changed by the experience, but with heightened awareness and a new found way of being who I am becoming.