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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

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Katherine May

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“But if happiness is a skill than sadness is too. Pephaps through all those years at school or perhaps through other terrors we are taught to ignore it, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. as adults we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can.”

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“I have cut out sugar, I make sure I get plenty of alone time, I go on long walks and I’ve stopped saying yes to everybody. I’ve cut down my working hours. All of these things make a buffer and I say I like to keep my buffer broad. Sometimes problems come up that narrow my buffer and then I have to make sure I build it up again. Keeping well is almost a full-time job but I have a wonderful life.”

Wintering
Book:Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
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“As I walk, I remind myself of the words of Alan Watts: “To hold your breath is to lose your breath”. In the wisdom of insecurity what makes a case that always convinces me but which I always seem to forget that life is by nature uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalise our comfort and security somehow and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless unpredictable change. That is the very essence of this life.”

Wintering
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“Sometimes the best response to our house of anguish is the honest one: we need friends who winter along with our pain, who tolerate our gloom and who allow us to be weak for a while while we’re finding our feet again. We need people to acknowledge that we can’t always hang on in there. That sometimes everything breaks.”

Wintering
Book:Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
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