Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Indian Summer

During May’s 40th birthday celebration, her husband H. falls ill and must be taken to the hospital. His appendix bursts in the ward. May takes time off work to perform an all-hours vigil at his bedside, stopping only to ferry her young son Bert to and from school. While May was keen to celebrate the start of her new decade, she felt that it was inevitable that some sort of life-changing event should strike, as the previous week she gave notice to terminate her job as a university lecturer. She feels that she has fallen through the “gaps in the mesh of the everyday world” and landed in a place she terms as “somewhere else”—a ghostly realm set apart from the activity of everyday life (8).

May feels as though she has entered a metaphorical winter, “a season in the cold […] when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider” (9). Most people go through winters when confronted with personal crises, such as bereavement, humiliation, or life transitions. May argues that wintering is inevitable, despite modern society’s expectation of periods of eternal summer-like abundance.