Wintering

Wintering offers a radical reorientation toward hardship. Rather than framing difficult periods as interruptions to real life, Katherine May invites readers to see them as life itself—an essential phase with its own logic and value.

The book’s central message is not about overcoming adversity quickly or transforming pain into productivity. It is about learning how to live when progress stalls, when energy disappears, and when identity unravels. Winter requires different skills: patience instead of ambition, care instead of effort, presence instead of planning.

By drawing on nature, culture, ritual, and personal experience, May constructs a language for suffering that is neither sentimental nor dismissive. She affirms that winter is real, unavoidable, and meaningful. It asks something of us—not achievement, but attention.

Ultimately, Wintering teaches that flourishing does not happen despite winter, but because of it. Growth is cyclical. Rest is productive in its own way. And survival, quietly achieved, is a profound form of success.

Katherine May is a British author, journalist, and podcaster based in Whitstable, England. She is best known for Wintering: How I Learned to Flourish When Life Became Frozen, which became an international bestseller and resonated widely for its compassionate exploration of hardship and renewal. In addition to her memoirs, May has written novels, edited anthologies, and contributed essays to major publications. Her work frequently explores themes of mental health, personal transformation, nature, and seasonal living. She also hosts The Wintering Sessions podcast, where she continues conversations about resilience, creativity, and surviving life’s quieter seasons.