"Wintering" wisdom from my favorite newsletter writers
How to embrace a cold, dark, slow season.
I recently finished the book Wintering by Katherine May for the second time. I reached for it again because I am having quite the winter — grieving the death of my older brother, feeling the weight of rampant chaos and hate in my nation — and I am trying my very best to lean into it rather than push it away.
I had an extremely quiet and somber January, which is not new. What is new is the blanket of sadness that kept me company. I spent much of January in bed, both while sleeping and awake. It was the fastest and easiest Dry January of my life. I did my work, went to the gym, and got my outside walks in, and asked nothing else of myself. I read a lot, and soaked in May’s lessons of throwing yourself bravely into a winter season, whether you’re aligning with the actual season, a personal hard time, or both.
From the first chapter of Wintering:
We're not raised to recognize wintering or to acknowledge its inevitability. Instead, we tend to see it as a humiliation, something that should be hidden from view lest we shock the world too greatly. We put on a brave public face and grieve privately; we pretend not to see other people’s pain. We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we've made a secret of an entirely ordinary process and have thereby given those who endure it a pariah status, forcing them to drop out of everyday life in order to conceal their failure.
Yet we do this at a great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.
In our relentlessly busy contemporary world, we are forever trying to defer the onset of winter. We don't ever dare to feel its full bite, and we don't dare to show the way that it ravages us. An occasional sharp wintering would do us good. We must stop believing that these times in our lives are somehow silly, a failure of nerve, a lack of willpower. We must stop trying to ignore them or dispose of them. They are real, and they are asking something of us. We must learn to invite the winter in. We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.
On March 1, a frenetic travel schedule that lasts through mid-May begins for me. I want to savor the stillness of February, my remaining winter, while I still can. I want to grieve intentionally. I want to stay slow, even while the rest of the world seems to be returning to life’s more normal, feverish pace. (Honestly, I’ve stayed slow since 2020, and I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.)
So I asked some of my favorite newsletter writers to share their “wintering” tips — intentional practices, what’s worked and what hasn’t, anything that’s really helped along the way.
Here’s what they had to say:
, author of and CSBC podcast guest
For years, winter was something I endured — an endless stretch of gray that dragged me into seasonal affective disorder (SAD), something I slogged through for the last two decades of my life, the only reprieve being the return of the light in March. But my version of wintering now embraces something we tend to think of only in summer: the sun.
Last year, I began a circadian-aligned practice, somehow decided that doing this in the depths of winter darkness made perfect sense. I began watching sunrise every morning; took walks in the powerful morning light; made sure to step outside for regular light breaks throughout the day; and protected my circadian rhythm at night by wearing blue-blocking glasses and staying in a low-lit environment. I was as surprised as anybody else when I realized that this completely eradicated my SAD. My mood returned to stable, even joyful, in the coldest of months; my energy flowed back; and I decided that these practices were now non-negotiables for me, year-round.
Winter invites stillness, but that stillness doesn’t have to mean darkness. The sun continues its quiet work even in the coldest months, rising every day as a reminder that warmth, clarity, and renewal are still available to us. I embrace the dark of the winter, but also what light it still has to offer us.
, author of
What wintering looks like for me in this season of my life is stealing a nap whenever I possibly can and letting that be good enough for now.
, author of
Last winter found me in full retreat. I have always suffered from seasonal affective disorder, which can be pretty debilitating. But SAD was, as of January 2024, the very least of my sad concerns: Within the span of a few weeks, I'd lost my only grandparent, my third consecutive pregnancy, and my general sense of faith and safety in the world. My therapist encouraged me to "become a houseplant," or pare my days to the essentials of food, water and rest. That helped staunch the bleeding, so to speak, but I wanted to feel like a person again.
Ironically, that took getting away from people. My husband and I had already planned to rent a trailer in North Georgia for a couple weeks that winter; we're fortunate in that we both work more or less from home. After everything went down, we packed up our Camry, winter-proofed our real house and extended the trip to a full two months.
In Georgia, our patterns changed: I started taking as many as three long walks a day in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. I spent a lot of time just observing my surroundings, recognizing that I still saw beauty in them. I very gradually arrived at this almost holy, overwhelming sense of awe and gratitude — I think the Blue Ridge Mountains have that effect?? — that allowed me first to make peace with the things I had lost, and then to come back to myself. Now, I think I'll always turn to nature in fallow seasons. Because you know they'll come again!! That's life, right? And that's also what I had to come to terms with.
FWIW, I've written more about this experience for The National Forest Foundation; I also recommend Wintering by Katherine May, and Barbara Kingsolver's entire oeuvre. I reread several of her novels in Georgia, and they helped me reconsider my relationship to the natural world (and thus the world in general).
, author of and CSBC podcast guest
I think the seasons can be a powerful reminder that everything that surrounds us is in a state of ebb and flow, transience, and change. In my book, I Didn’t Do the Thing Today, I liken this oscillation we find internally to being like a sponge: there is the absorbing and the squeezing. Sometimes you need to do nothing except absorb inspiration, knowledge or find rest. Other times, we need the doing, the action, the outpouring of ideas.
What has brought me solace during various life difficulties or creative ruts, is to recognize what phase I'm in and what that particular season requires, rather than trying to fix something or get through it faster. Reflecting on previous hardships and what you learned from those can buoy you in the present.
More reading from Dore: Things on input and output years
, co-author of
My main — only, really — form of exercise is walking. I try to walk six to eight miles per day, which is easy in Boston’s gorgeous spring, fall, and summer, and much more challenging in the winter. In past years, I’ve pushed through regardless: buying a walking treadmill and taking all my calls on it, until my downstairs neighbor complained of migraines; trudging through the dirty snow in eight-degree temps until my lips were so numb I couldn’t talk. This year, I’ve tried to be at peace with walking when I can and curling into some blankets when I can’t. I might be getting less movement in, but I feel calmer and more settled.
, author of
I finally started keeping Morning Pages. I’ve stubbornly pushed back against the idea of journaling for years — why would I want to add even more writing to my life when I write for a living? — but, wow, everyone was right that Morning Pages are magic.
The simple practice of waking up and dumping out my thoughts via three, stream-of-consciousness handwritten pages has been transformative. It’s been especially powerful this winter. Writing before the sun comes up and before my family is up feels so incredibly intentional.
This is a choice I’m making: to wake up early and start writing. To grab my journal and not my phone. To start my day with a grounding practice instead of opening my inbox or the news and letting outside horrors affect my mood. It’s like clearing a mental runway for the day, allowing me to approach everything with (a bit!) more clarity and calm.
, author of
First of all: thank you, Jillian, for this concept. I am so tired of "move fast and break things." At the moment I want to move slowly and heal everything, and somehow I don't think I'm alone in this.
The first step for my wintering has been to heal my attention span, because attention is a form of love, and I've been giving it away indiscriminately — diamonds tossed out the passenger side window. My attention has the power to transform my relationships and create art, so I deleted Instagram off my phone. That was step one; Temu ads don't need any more of my attention.
Step two has been to read books (An Honest Woman by Charlotte Shane was a recent fave) because, even while wintering, I'm always working on my writing craft from afar — cataloguing interesting ideas, turns of phrase, unique syntax rhythm. (Plus, I just love reading.)
Step three was going to sound baths. I'm not sure why I've fallen in love with these, but I very deeply have.
Step four has been hanging out with friends and partners and reorganizing my life around my relationships instead of work. Yes, I need to make a certain amount of money to live, but I crave time-wealth more than money-wealth. So I let go of one of my part-time jobs and whittled it down to one paying gig that is not full-time at all, but is ongoing, steady, and allows me to work with people I adore. The extra time allows me to make more friend dates, partner dates, and family dates.
My father died on January 11, 2025. It was the most devastating chapter of my life, watching him go, but it also taught me magical lessons. The biggest one being: life is about relationships, the rest is just details. This season of wintering has given me space to actualize that philosophy, and now I feel like I'm tending a sweet little garden with only my favorite plants.
What an expansive and soulful collection! Thank you for including me in such fine company ❤️
Thank you for including me in this lovely round-up! What a great group of women and practices!