A review by kelly_e
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Title: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Author: Katherine May
Genre: Non Fiction Mental Health
Rating: 3.75
Pub Date: February 6, 2020
T H R E E • W O R D S
Comforting • Reflective • Poetic
📖 S Y N O P S I S
An intimate book exploring the ways in which we can care for our beings in the most difficult moments of our lives. Wintering is Katherine May's personal narrative of wintering and the power of rest and retreat. It explores the importance of reflection and replenishing and restoring and transforming during fallow times.
💭 T H O U G H T S
This memoir came highly recommended to me during a particularly difficult period in my life. It was a reminder of the importance of embracing the difficult seasons and taking care of myself. May writes with confidence throughout each of the essays presented. She offers personal reflections and thoughtful observations through beautiful writing. In essence she forms a philosophy around the power of shrinking our world when life presents moments of retreat. It's a quick read, which I found highly comforting and validating. Sometimes applying the idea of 'wintering' is harder said than done, but after reading this it's as though I was given permission to embrace this particular season in my life and the comfort of simply slowing down. Overall, a book to find solace in.
📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• anyone in a season of change
• readers with a strong connection to nature
🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S
"Plants and animals don't fight the winter, they don't pretend it's not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sigh, but that's where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible."
"And although it's easy to think of bees as summer beings, adapted to drifting around flowers on hot days, their whole year is oriented in the opposite direction. Most of a bee's activity is directed towards its colony surviving the winter. They spend half the year preparing for it and half the year living it. Every April they emerge from their hive and start all over again."
"As I walk, I remind myself of the words of Alan Watts: 'To hold you breath is to lose your breath.' In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts makes a case that always convinces me, but which I always seem to forget: that life is, by its very nature, uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalize our comfort and security, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life. Our suffering, he says, come from the fight we put up against this fundamental truth. 'Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brace is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape."
Author: Katherine May
Genre: Non Fiction Mental Health
Rating: 3.75
Pub Date: February 6, 2020
T H R E E • W O R D S
Comforting • Reflective • Poetic
📖 S Y N O P S I S
An intimate book exploring the ways in which we can care for our beings in the most difficult moments of our lives. Wintering is Katherine May's personal narrative of wintering and the power of rest and retreat. It explores the importance of reflection and replenishing and restoring and transforming during fallow times.
💭 T H O U G H T S
This memoir came highly recommended to me during a particularly difficult period in my life. It was a reminder of the importance of embracing the difficult seasons and taking care of myself. May writes with confidence throughout each of the essays presented. She offers personal reflections and thoughtful observations through beautiful writing. In essence she forms a philosophy around the power of shrinking our world when life presents moments of retreat. It's a quick read, which I found highly comforting and validating. Sometimes applying the idea of 'wintering' is harder said than done, but after reading this it's as though I was given permission to embrace this particular season in my life and the comfort of simply slowing down. Overall, a book to find solace in.
📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• anyone in a season of change
• readers with a strong connection to nature
🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S
"Plants and animals don't fight the winter, they don't pretend it's not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sigh, but that's where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible."
"And although it's easy to think of bees as summer beings, adapted to drifting around flowers on hot days, their whole year is oriented in the opposite direction. Most of a bee's activity is directed towards its colony surviving the winter. They spend half the year preparing for it and half the year living it. Every April they emerge from their hive and start all over again."
"As I walk, I remind myself of the words of Alan Watts: 'To hold you breath is to lose your breath.' In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts makes a case that always convinces me, but which I always seem to forget: that life is, by its very nature, uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalize our comfort and security, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life. Our suffering, he says, come from the fight we put up against this fundamental truth. 'Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brace is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape."
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness, Medical content, Infertility, Cancer, and Grief
Minor: Suicide and Panic attacks/disorders