Learning to winter
Welcome to the first offering by Seasoned Voices, a shared blogging adventure bringing individual perspectives to common themes! Five women writers, each coming to writing along differing paths. Five women eager to speak the truth about growing older.
Our hope is that our collaboration will feel like a conversation among women of a certain age – gritty and real in some places, lit by reflection in others. Prior to embarking on this first blog post, the five of us met via Zoom to share insights, ideas, and laughter. We hope our cross-pollinated blogging also inspires conversation and reflection for you.
Wednesday morning, my husband got up to let the dog out and make coffee. He called to me from the kitchen to look outside. I wrapped myself in a blanket and crossed the cold hardwood floor to the picture window. A dusting of snow covered the ground. Two hummingbirds huddled at the feeder. Bella, nose to the ground, dug a small tunnel through the snow, sniffing for mice.
My husband handed me my morning oat latte, and I pulled a chair closer to the fireplace. I snuggled in with a clear view of our property, the hot coffee warming my hands. An odd snowflake began to fall. Soon, the landscape transformed as fat, heavy flakes filled the sky, whirling to earth on a gentle breeze.
I have a love-hate relationship with winter. Growing up in Quebec as a child, I have fond memories of skating at the outdoor rink down the road. My free time was filled with cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and sledding down steep hills, my nose running and hair frozen.
Somewhere in my late teens, winter lost its appeal. I remember standing at the bus stop, the bottom of my jeans crusted with snow, my legs cold and wet during class. I still hear the rumble of the snowplow coming down our road, leaving huge piles of dirty, grey sludge. I woke in darkness and returned home from university in darkness, sheltering from frigid winds as I waited for the train to take me home. This was also an extremely lonely, uncertain time in my life. I did not know then that the heaviness I carried had a name. That understanding would not come until my early fifties. Winter felt like Narnia under the White Witch - a time of despair, fear, and sadness.
Then I got married, moved to the West Coast of Canada, had children, worked, and like most of you, lived a life of highs and lows, thankfully mostly highs. The ocean-side village where we lived enjoyed a mild temperate climate and offered a green landscape. Winter became a bit of a nonentity. The occasional snowstorm was welcomed with snow angels, no school, and working from home.
Our first year of retirement, we escaped to the Algarve for the month of November - morning coffee on outdoor patios, beach afternoons, evenings wandering cobblestone streets in the Old Town. The appeal was obvious.
And yet in subsequent years, we have stayed home for the winter. I don’t think that was ever a conscious decision; rather, the season has evolved into a time of rest and retreat. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing life as linear and began to understand it as cyclical.
No longer do I ponder my autumn days, wondering when I will move into the winter years of my life. Instead, I feel closer to nature, aligning with the rhythms of the natural world.
Katherine May, author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, writes -
“The changes that take place in winter are a kind of alchemy, an enchantment performed by ordinary creatures to survive. Dormice laying on fat to hibernate, swallows navigating to South Africa, and trees blazing out the final weeks of autumn. It is all very well to survive the abundant months of spring and summer, but in winter, we witness the full glory of nature’s flourishing in lean times.”
This echoes the way I now approach winter. I rarely make plans; my days are slow and unhurried. Some mornings, I head up to my office while it is still dark, wrapped in a shawl, coffee in hand. I sit by the soft yellow glow of my desk lamp, my head spinning with ideas, and I write until the sun begins to set behind the farm across the road. Other mornings I linger in bed, lost in a mindless mystery or binging BritBox. I bake, quilt, walk along forest trails, eat comfort food, and challenge my husband to cribbage tournaments.
When we grow restless, we head off for a few days - visiting family on the mainland or planning a short trip. Next week we head to Victoria for a concert, dinner out, and a wander through a new museum exhibit.
In her book, Katherine May reminds us that winter is not only a season but also a state of mind - a metaphor for those phases in our life when we feel frozen out or unable to make the next step. It can come at any time, in any season, in any weather.
In recent years, I have learned that in winter, I must pay closer attention to myself, attentive to the first signs that I am slipping into darkness. I expect that gloomy days, coupled with the uncertain times we have been living in, bring with them this sense of foreboding.
Thinking of life as cyclical, knowing a new season is always around the corner, allows me to accept how I am feeling. I feed my soul, calm my body, and nourish my spirit. I take comfort knowing that as the snow falls, the buds on the clematis draping the front of our house are beginning to bloom.
Spring will come. It always does. In the meantime, I winter.
Here are some reflective prompts to think about on your own journey through winter:
How do you approach winter? Do you hibernate, migrate, or slow down?
How does thinking of life as cyclical change how you view aging or transition?
How does knowing “spring will come” change how you endure difficulty?
Think of how a landscape transforms under snowfall. What internal shift mirrors that transformation with you?
Do you fear entering the “winter years” of your life? What do you imagine they will look like?
Meet the other ‘seasoned voices’ joining me on this writing journey. Together we draw inspiration from retirement’s blank canvas, filling it with broad strokes of wonder, truths told a little raw, and the vibrancy of possibilities cracked wide open. Click below on their individual photos to read their perspectives on this theme.
