Your Quiet Season Is Where the Next Bloom Begins, Wintering by Katherine May

Picture a seaside town in the southeast of England as autumn turns. A writer’s husband suddenly needs emergency surgery for a burst appendix. Soon she is unwell herself, and the busy life she built begins to slow to a crawl.

She could have fought the slowdown. Instead she got curious. She studied how animals, plants and whole cultures move through the cold months, and she wrote down everything she learned.

That book is Wintering, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May, first published in 2020. It became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, and I think I understand why. It offers a gentle, brave way through the slow, dark chapters every life holds.

Hold that picture of the seaside town. By the end of this post, I think you’ll see your own quiet seasons in a warmer light.

A Gentle Guide for the Seasons That Ask You to Slow Down

Wintering by Katherine May is a memoir about the fallow periods of life, the times when illness, loss, burnout or change pull us out of our usual rhythm. Drawing on nature, ritual and her own year of retreat, the book invites us to meet these seasons the way the natural world meets winter, with rest, repair and quiet preparation for growth.

The book moves month by month from early autumn to the edge of spring. Along the way it visits the solstice at Stonehenge, a candlelit Santa Lucia service, icy swims in the sea and the deep sleep of hibernating dormice.

Wintering is a season in the cold.

Katherine May, Wintering (2020)

One Idea Holds the Whole Book Together

Winter is a season, and seasons turn.

Every chapter returns to that truth. The cold months belong to the cycle of life. They are where the deep work happens, underground and out of sight, getting ready for spring.

So instead of asking how do I push through this, try asking what is this season asking me to tend?

10 Lessons From Wintering

Part One. Welcoming the Quiet Season

1. Everyone Winters at Some Point

The quiet seasons arrive for all of us. A diagnosis, a heartbreak, a lost job, a long stretch of exhaustion. Seeing them as part of the human cycle makes them so much easier to hold.

2. Fallow Ground Is Busy Ground

Farmers rest a field so it can come back richer. Your rest works the same way. Beneath the stillness, roots are deepening and the soil is renewing itself.

3. Next Spring’s Buds Are Already on the Branch

Look closely at a bare tree in November and you’ll find tiny buds already set for spring. The tree prepared its future before it let go of its leaves. Your next chapter is forming too.

4. Rest Is a Wise Strategy

Dormice spend months curled in deep sleep, their bodies slowing to save energy. That rest is exactly how they thrive. Borrow a little of their wisdom and let yourself sleep a little longer on these long nights.

5. Warmth Grows When We Gather

Honeybees spend winter clustered together, shivering their wing muscles to keep the whole hive warm. Your people are your cluster. Let them close.

Part Two. Living Well Through the Long Nights

6. Ritual Carries Us Through the Dark

Candles for Santa Lucia, a solstice sunrise, a cup of tea at the same hour each evening. Rituals give the darkest months a shape and a glow.

7. A Little Cold Can Wake You Up

Many people who try a winter sea swim describe coming out wide awake and strangely joyful. A brisk dose of cold, approached gently and safely, can remind you how alive you are.

8. Long Nights Are Made for Slow Pleasures

Soup on the stove, a stack of library books, an early bedtime. Comfort is a form of care, and winter hands you permission to enjoy it.

9. Your Winters Become Wisdom for Others

The stories of how we came through our quiet seasons are precious gifts. Sharing them helps the next person trust that their winter will end too.

10. Spring Always Returns, and You Return Changed

Every winter ends. The person who walks out into spring carries new depth, new patience and new tenderness. That is the harvest of the quiet season.

Science Agrees That Your Winter Mindset Matters

There’s a study I love here. In 2020, Kari Leibowitz, then a Stanford researcher, and Joar Vittersø of UiT The Arctic University of Norway published a study on how people in Norway feel about winter. They surveyed 238 people in southern Norway, northern Norway and the Arctic island of Svalbard.

People who saw winter as cozy, beautiful and full of special joys reported greater life satisfaction and more positive emotions. And the further north people lived, where the winter darkness runs longest, the more positive their winter mindset tended to be.

That is Wintering in the language of research. How we frame the cold season shapes how we feel inside it. I wrote about this kind of gentle reframe in How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed and in Everything Is Changing and the Part of You Watching Stays.

Your Practice for Today. The Wintering Ritual

This weekend the clocks fall back and the evenings start arriving early. Let’s make that a gift.

1. Name your season. Write one sentence about the season your life is in right now.
2. Choose your rest. Pick one way to rest more deeply this week, an earlier bedtime, a slow morning, a quiet walk.
3. Light a small ritual. Choose one simple evening ritual for the dark months, a candle at dinner, tea at dusk, ten pages before bed.
4. Gather your cluster. Invite one person into your winter with a call, a walk or a shared meal.
5. Find the buds. Write down one small sign of the spring already forming in your life.

Make it automatic with an if then plan. If the sun sets before I finish dinner, then I light a candle and take three slow breaths.

If a heavy season is shaping your days, please reach out to a doctor or therapist too. Rest and ritual travel beautifully alongside professional support.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Wintering by Katherine May about?

Wintering is a 2020 memoir by British writer Katherine May about the fallow seasons of life, times of illness, loss or exhaustion. Drawing on nature, ritual and her own experience, it offers a gentle approach built on rest, retreat and preparation for renewal.

What does wintering mean?

In the book’s sense, wintering is a stretch of life when we feel pulled into a cold, quiet season and called to slow down. May treats it as a natural part of the cycle of life, a time for rest and repair before new growth.

Who is Katherine May?

Katherine May is a British writer and podcaster who lives by the sea in Whitstable, England. She is the author of Wintering and Enchantment and writes the newsletter The Clearing.

What can Wintering teach us about rest?

It teaches that rest is a wise and natural response to difficult seasons. Like animals that hibernate and trees that shed their leaves, we can slow down, conserve energy and trust that renewal is already forming.

How can I practice wintering today?

Name the season you are in, choose one form of deeper rest, create a small evening ritual for the dark months, reach out to someone you love and notice one sign of the spring already forming in your life.

Your Quiet Season Is Already Growing Something Beautiful

Think back to that seaside town, and a writer whose busy life slowed to a crawl. She turned toward the cold with curiosity, and what she found there became a gift to readers all over the world.

Your quiet season holds a gift too. Rest in it. Tend it. Trust the buds already on the branch.

Start early. Start resting. Start today.

Complement this with Lao Tzu on Stillness and Water, Your Vagus Nerve Is the Calm Button You Already Carry and Make Today Your Fresh Start.

Want a calm, intentional start every day? Hold Until Sunrise is our little app for mornings that matter.

For a little goodness in your inbox every Sunday, join us here.

With love, Paolo

Sources

• Katherine May, Wintering, Penguin
• Leibowitz and Vittersø, Winter Is Coming, Wintertime Mindset and Wellbeing in Norway, International Journal of Wellbeing (2020)
• NPR, Katherine May on Wintering (via KUOW)
• LibraryThing, Wintering summary and description