life path

To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. I would not, of course, seek to deny that we grow gradually older, but while doing so, we pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are

When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favoured child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable, and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed, and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air, and spent time doing things that

I'm beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. I would never dream of suggesting that we should wallow in misery, or shrink from doing everything we can to alleviate it; but I do think it's instructive. After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that

Being a mother felt like becoming invisible, or perhaps semi-visible - noticeable enough to be scolded for failing to fold your pram on a bus (how, with a baby under your arm?), or for taking up too much space on the pave-ment. But in yourself, now, a slightly detested creature, loose around the middle and contributing to the overpopulation of the

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. This may involve the breaking of a lifelong habit, passed down carefully

I didn't feel that the two should be in conflict - achieving your potential, and not being completely miserable. Happiness is the greatest skill we'll ever learn; it is not a part of ourselves that should be hived off into a dark corner, the shameful territory of the wilfully naive.

Happiness is our potential, the product of a mind that's allowed to

As we so often find in ancient folklore, the Cailleach offers us a cyclical metaphor for life, one in which the energies of spring can arrive again and again, nurtured by the deep retreat of winter. We are no longer accustomed to thinking in this way. We are instead in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear; a long march from birth to death

‘The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.’

• Wintering, Katherine May, p. 77

Halloween is no longer a time for remembrance, but it still reveals our need to enter liminal spaces: those moments when we're standing on the breach of fear and delight, and those times when we wish that the veil between the living and the dead would lift for a while. But most of all, it hints at the winter to come, opening the door to the dark