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A review by daiinty
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
4.0
“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” — Katherine May
i came across this book during my own period of winter and found it to be very impactful. i read it after finishing my year of rest and relaxation which did hold up a bit of an uglier mirror to my own mental health. this book acted as a mirror in a different way. just within the first twenty pages i felt very vindicated in what i was experiencing. i needed to be shown that there is power within retreating into myself the same way the earth itself needs to do every year. the writing itself was very lyrically intriguing and almost had a poetic feel to it.
i think my main criticism of the book is that it does come from a place of immense privilege. may fails to acknowledge how most people experiencing hardships don’t have the ability to have the opportunities afforded to her that aided in her own healing. clearly i’m not traveling to the hot springs in iceland to fix my problems, but the way i looked at it was to just take what may was saying and finding experiences of my own that felt impactful in a similar way such as standing in the rain by the hudson river dam and having a really interesting conversation with a homeless woman who immediately pegged me as a writer.
i came across this book during my own period of winter and found it to be very impactful. i read it after finishing my year of rest and relaxation which did hold up a bit of an uglier mirror to my own mental health. this book acted as a mirror in a different way. just within the first twenty pages i felt very vindicated in what i was experiencing. i needed to be shown that there is power within retreating into myself the same way the earth itself needs to do every year. the writing itself was very lyrically intriguing and almost had a poetic feel to it.
i think my main criticism of the book is that it does come from a place of immense privilege. may fails to acknowledge how most people experiencing hardships don’t have the ability to have the opportunities afforded to her that aided in her own healing. clearly i’m not traveling to the hot springs in iceland to fix my problems, but the way i looked at it was to just take what may was saying and finding experiences of my own that felt impactful in a similar way such as standing in the rain by the hudson river dam and having a really interesting conversation with a homeless woman who immediately pegged me as a writer.