Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

everybody else is drowsing while I am wide awake and hounded by sharp fears.

The times when we fall out of sync with everyday life remain taboo. We’re not raised to recognise wintering or to acknowledge its inevitability.

Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out.

Beivve, their sun goddess, travels across the sky each day in a ring of reindeer antlers, casting fertility back down to earth.

That’s what humans do: we make and remake our stories, abandoning the ones that no longer fit and trying on new ones for size.

There are days when I can say with great certainty that I am not strong enough to manage. And what if I can’t hang on in there? What then? These people might as well be leaning into my face, shouting, Cope! Cope! Cope! while spraying perfume into the air to make it all seem nice.

We changed our focus away from pushing through with normal life and towards making a new one. When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs.

Samhain was a way of marking that ambiguous moment when you didn’t know who you were about to become, or what the future would hold. It was a celebration of limbo.

By doing a resilient thing, we felt more resilient. That circular process of being resilient and feeling resilient kept us afloat.