Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

I used to think that these were wasted days, but I now realise that’s the point.

I am often taut with worry and sometimes feel as though we’re only a footstep away from chaos. But I have to hold my nerve, for fear of passing on my chronic sense of unbelonging in this world.

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.

had to adapt. I had to surrender. The only thing breaking me was pretending to be like everyone else.

This, then, is how I turned my year: not in a single high-stakes moment, but in a series of gestures that gently acknowledge the change taking place but that mark the continuities as well.

This is where we are now, endlessly cheerleading ourselves into positivity while erasing the dirty underside of real life.

After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that something is going wrong. If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.

I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important.

The only difference—the only reason I have finished this—is experience. I recognised winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye.