---
title: "Quickwrite: A reflection on Wintering by Katherine May"
pubdate: 2025-03-09T00:00:00.000Z
desc: "Katherine May draws a unique parallel in her book ‘Wintering’ between the coming of and living through the winter months, and those liminal times in your life – when a gap opens up underfoot and swallows us whole...."
tags: 
  - books
  - reading
---

Katherine May draws a unique parallel in her book ‘Wintering’ between the coming of and living through the winter months, and those liminal times in your life – when a gap opens up underfoot and swallows us whole. It’s never clear when such a gap appears to steal us away, and how long exactly we’ll spend in the liminality we fall into, and most of us claw at the walls in an attempt to scale up and out, back into the warm light of day – how things used to be. Katherine’s book is an account of how she learned to see it more as a wave to ride than a locked room to break free from. Her ultimate message is an argument to reframe it, or to see it for what it really is; not as a bleak, timeless realm devoid of hope and light, but of a necessary state we all find ourselves in at various points in our lives, and that this realm offers its own medicines for those who care to look. These seasonal and spiritual changes Katherine refers to as ‘Wintering’ – aptly a verb to articulate its ephemeral nature – serve much in the same way a good night’s sleep does: while a deep and peaceful sleep purges metabolic waste and toxins from our brains, a wintering can offer a more spiritual cleanse; a hibernation after a hot and unrelenting summer; a mirror held up in front to break our blind and frenzied sprint towards a goal we’ve long forgotten; a beloved teacher from our school days with a soft voice, reassuring smile and placations to calm our nerves.