Wintering

“Everyone winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again.”

Does it feel to you, as it does to me, that most of 2020 has been a wintering season?

“Wintering...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....Some wintering creep upon us more slowly....Some are appallingly sudden....However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. Yet it's also inevitable.”

Wintering. This is a book of personal reflections, sharing times in the author's life when she faced periods of wintering.

And it is inevitable. We know that. The essential question is, then: How do we cope with it?

The author has a powerful answer: by embracing winter, rather than trying to push it away.

She shares more about one common wintering obstacle, snow: “Try as I might, I can't produce the adult hardness towards a snowfall, full of resentment at the inconvenience. I love the inconvenience the same way I sneakingly love a bad cold: the irresistible disruption to mundane life, forcing you to stop for a while and step out of your normal habits.” Intriguing, right?

And more, stated even more powerfully: “I'm beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savored....I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in....I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?

Beautiful writing. Thoughtful perspective.