the art of wintering well.
When you think about winter, how does it make you feel? Does it flood you with warm feelings of Hallmark movie delight and love-filled bliss? Do you embrace it with open arms, or do you feel instant dread? Do you feel bummed about the darker days? The grey hues? The shoveling? The ice? The chill in the air that hardly ever escapes your bones? Is it a season you look forward to or one you hope flies by?
As I look outside at this very moment, there is snow + ice on the ground, remnants from the last snowstorm. Generally, I enjoy winter, but I don’t know if I’ve ever gone into it with any other posture than to try and enjoy it — to stay warm, drive slow + get through it as unscathed as possible.
Last year, I read a book called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May and it opened my eyes to the delicate yet necessary art of embracing and enduring winter well. Wintering is about embracing the winter seasons. Be it the actual cold, snowy, and barren months of the year or the metaphorical winters in our lives that are filled with long days, dark corners, heartache, sorrow or hardship. We all face our own winters. And now that we’re deep in the throes of literal winter and my heart simultaneously finds itself in the midst of a metaphorical winter of its own, I can’t think of a better time to look back on the wisdom I gleaned from that book, starting with this quote:
“Here is a truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.
Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but it’s crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on sparse beauty and even the pavement sparkles. It’s a time of reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, and it’s essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you. [Wintering well] is one of the most important choices you’ll ever make.”
I love that. If we let it, winter can be a great time to withdraw, to transform, to let wisdom settle over us. Spring, summer, and fall are notably great seasons for planting seeds and seeing tangible growth, but what about winter? Is it a time for us to sit back bitterly and wait for the cold to pass because it’s not a season of growth we can see? I don’t think so.
How about winter for the farmer? Farmers maximize every season and use winter to plan for the growing season ahead. It’s the only season they can pull back, take inventory about what worked well and what didn’t from the past growing season and do some behind-the-scenes work without having to simultaneously and actively tend. It’s not just a time for hibernation, it serves as precious time to handle the tasks that’ll help them reach their goals in the seasons to come. What if we went about winter in the same way? What if we saw winter as a time to pull back and slow down? To plan and rest and be still?
Heartbreak reminds me a lot of winter. When you’re in the midst of unsettledness and deep heartache, everywhere you look things can feel bare, dull and desolate. It hurts to look ahead to the future when things feel so scant and raw in the now. But if we take notes from seasons past, we know the winter seasons in our lives aren’t here for long. And while I sit here happily looking forward to springtime, I know better than to push this current season away. I think that’s one of the most painful things about going through heartbreak — the force with which it demands to be felt. Winter is the same. You can’t move past it, you just have to unpack your bags and live with it for a time. There’s no quick way to push through winter in the same way there’s no easy way to escape the pain of deeply missing someone you loved with your whole heart. Like winter, you have to accept it and acknowledge it and feel your way through it — raw eyes, chilled bones, feeble heart and all.
Maybe winter is hard because it’s such a stark change from summer. Trees + grass that once brimmed with green lush life are now bare and brown. The change of winter is palpable and perhaps we’re reluctant to adapt and change with it because it stretches us in uncomfortable ways. But change is hard, necessary and good for us. Oftentimes, for something to change in our lives, we must surrender or shed something in order for something new to come from it. Winter and heartbreak are a lot like that, too. They all breed change, they all point to death and rebirth.
One of my favorite authors, Shauna Niequist says,
“I don’t know where you are these days, what’s broken down and what’s beautiful in your life this season. I don’t know if this is a season of sweetness or one of sadness, but I’m learning that neither last forever. There will, I’m sure, be something that invades this current loveliness. That’s how life is. It won’t be sweet forever, but it won’t be bitter forever either. If everywhere you look these days, it’s wintery, desolate, lonely, practice believing in springtime. It always, always comes, even though on days like today it’s nearly impossible to imagine, ground frozen, trees bare and spiky. New life will spring from this same ground. This season will end, and something entirely new will follow it.”
So, what does wintering well actually look like?
- If you need to focus on healing, use winter as time to rest and mend. Focus on your self-care. You know what you need. Take the time for it.
- If you feel cluttered and chaotic, take this time to go through your things. Purge what you don’t need, give things away. Marie Kondo your life. Be intentional about what you have and enjoy the freedom of letting go. Winter is a great time to get your house in order.
- If you’re dealing with heartbreak or the pang of loss, use this time to process and mourn in whatever way you need. Lean into God and those around you. Give yourself the time to properly grieve and feel. Cheryl Strayed says, “Whatever happens to you, belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.”
- If you’re feeling depleted and exhausted, use winter as a time to replenish your stores by stripping away what’s distracting you and re-establishing your foundations. Let the stillness of winter pull you back into some rhythms that are life-giving to you.
- If you’re feeling lonely, don’t fall into the trap that hibernation means isolation. Lean into your community, your friends. Find a new church. Call a friend you love, write someone a letter, send a text. Reconcile a relationship or reconnect with an old friend if you’ve been meaning to. Give what you need!
- If you’re feeling lackluster, foster your creativity. Dive into a new hobby or pick one you used to love back up! Try a new recipe, take a class, read a book you’ve been meaning to start, listen to music you enjoy. Don’t let the silent buzz of winter make you feel anxious, lean into the things you love.
- If your faith feels shaky, use this time to dive into scripture and let the truth of God’s word renew your resolve and your assurance, one verse at a time.
- If you know there’s something you need to let go of in this season - be it a stronghold, a relationship, or a habit — with prayer, let winter aid you in the work of loosening your grip and cutting those ties little by little.
- If you’re feeling stir crazy, wintering well doesn’t mean you have to sit inside and knit. Get outside, get into nature. Go for a walk. Go for a drive. Inhale deeply into the crisp, refreshing air of winter. Walk in the snow. Look up at the stars. Move your body.
Whatever wintering well looks like for you, I hope you’ll be intentional with it this season. New life will spring from this same ground. Winter will end and something entirely new will be on the horizon. In the same way that winter makes way for an abundant harvest in the growing season, enduring pain, heartache and loss will give way to new wisdom and fullness. So here’s to a transformative winter, my friends. Here’s to the stillness and the renewing, to healing what’s broken, to gleaning the best kind of wisdom that’s only born when we’re quiet enough to listen for it. Here’s to letting God make something beautiful out of this season, out of these darker, colder and more desolate, barren days. New life and new beauty always come after winter, but let’s lean into the beauty of this season, too. It might be harder to find, and we might have to look for the light in the corners and between the pages and we might really have to fight for it this season, but let’s let the cold transform and refine us. Let’s let it strengthen our resolve and our endurance, so when spring comes, we’re ready to bloom. We may not choose our winters, but we can certainly choose how we go through them.
“In our winter, a transformation happened. We read and worked and problem-solved and found new solutions. 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. That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.” - Katherine May
Let’s come out of this season wearing different, better, comfier, and more resilient coats. Let’s winter well. ❄️