Self
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This time, I was determined to go consciously into this fallow
period. To look it in the eye, greet it, and willingly follow its
process of uncertainty and acceptance. I let life slow down
as it needed to and didn’t frustrate myself by fighting it. I felt
enormous grief for the life I was leaving behind, and wondered
many times whether I should ask for my old job back just to
make my world feel stable again. But experience has taught me
that this was part of honouring the process. I needed to find a
way to sit with those feelings without acting on them too soon.
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. To keep my hands
busy, I buried myself deep into the pleasures
of quietness and solitude. I learned that
distracting myself with small attainable
victories tamed the anxiety for a while.
I got outside as much as I could, and began
to notice nature changing around me: trees
shedding leaves and coming into bud; the phases of the moon.
They pointed to a life that renews itself, even after the darkest
periods. I discovered wintering is about noticing what’s going
on, and living it. That’s what the natural world does: it carries
on surviving. Sometimes it flourishes and sometimes it pares
back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. It
doesn’t do this once, resentfully assuming that one day it willget things right and everything will smooth out. It winters in
cycles, again and again, for ever and ever. For plants and animals,
winter is part of the job. The same should be true for humans.
I also let my bodily rhythms shift, sleeping when I needed to
rather than counting the hours on my fitness band. I discovered
that, until houses had electric light, it was common to have a first
and a second sleep, with a period of wakefulness in the middle
of the night. This used to be valued as a time for reading,
meditating or writing letters. So instead of fighting insomnia,
I embraced this time. It gave me a chance to reflect in a way
that I didn’t in the daytime. Most of all, I let this time out of
life change me. I stopped straining against the transformationthat was happening because it was beyond my control.
Instead, I waited to see how I would adapt.
I may have endured my changes in the coldest months, but we
have all learned periods of wintering can happen in the sun, too.
I don’t believe we should ever diminish the pain of these massive
unwanted transitions, but I also think they’re the site of huge
personal growth. If we allow it, this time is the active acceptance
of sadness. It’s the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it
as a need. It’s the courage to stare down the worst parts of
our experience, and to commit to healing them the best we
can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs
felt keenly as a knife. They’re a fundamental part of
being human, and they fine-tune our wisdom, empathy
and appreciation for the vibrant textures of the everyday.
The life I’ve returned to is a changed one. My husband
recovered quickly enough, but I took far longer. After
a barrage of tests, I learned that I have a long list of
gut disorders, which were probably exacerbated by my
stressful life. I’ll always have to manage them carefully
with diet and rest, but somehow that feels better than
rushing headlong into oblivion. I live far more quietly
now and yet strangely I’m more content. I see that I was
remade in those painful months when life spiralled out
of my control. I’m calmer, wiser and more resilient. I’ve
learned to be kinder to myself, and to respect my own
limitations and boundaries. This sounds like a loss, but it
isn’t. When I’m not pushing myself past all endurance,
I can work on what matters most with more focus and
passion. But it’s important to remember that the seeds
sown during this time are small and slow-growing.
Now is not the moment to be pressurising ourselves into
emerging from this in superhuman form. It’s enough
for now to survive. But I do believe that this will change
us all, in big ways and small. And that one day we
will look back and be astonished by how we’ve grown.‘NATURE RENEWS ITSELF, EVEN
AFTER THE DARKEST PERIODS’
Wintering: How I learned To Flourish When Life
Became Frozen (Rider) by Katherine May is out now