honoring our wintering

I've been returning to Katherine May's book Wintering lately, and one idea keeps resonating: the importance of learning to winter well. Personally, the early darkness of the season has affected me more than ever this year; and even though I regularly plunge into freezing water, I really hate being cold.

May writes about how we're conditioned to push through difficult seasons, to “get over” sadness, to hurry back to productivity. But she suggests something different: that there's wisdom in pausing, in letting ourselves rest in the cold, dark seasons of life.

What strikes me most is her idea that we can hold this darkness without being consumed by it. That wintering (whether literal or metaphorical) isn't about fixing ourselves, but about allowing the necessary transformation that can only happen when we stop running. Like a good night's sleep, where our bodies and brains recover and we wake renewed.

In a culture that prizes constant growth and visibility, there's something radical about honoring the fallow periods. Whether you're intentionally moving through this season with drive and hustle or finding yourself needing to slow the pace, perhaps the most productive thing we can do is honor ourselves in the season we are in.