This week we're talking to Katherine May, author of the tremendous new book WINTERING: THE POWER OF REST AND RETREAT IN DIFFICULT TIMES. Written before the pandemic but perfectly relevant to the moment we're in, WINTERING explores how the natural world prepares for and survives winter, and how we can apply the lessons of actual winters to the metaphorical winters in our lives where, as Katherine puts it, "we feel like the world has pushed us out. We feel isolated, depressed, locked out in the cold, and that the rest of life is drifting away from us." We all go through personal winters. Sometimes they're for terrible reasons (an unexpected death); sometimes they're for happy ones (a newborn who needs to be fed every two hours). Sometimes they're brief and not too unbearable; sometimes no end is in sight. Winter is cyclical, it's part of life, and it can be understood as a time of rest and of waiting, rather than of stillness and death. There is much that winter can teach us, and we loved both this conversation with Katherine and her profound book. You can find WINTERING: THE POWER OF REST AND RETREAT IN DIFFICULT TIMES here or in our Bookshop store: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593189481 You can follow Katherine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katherinemay_/?hl=en and Twitter: https://twitter.com/_katherine_may_?lang=en and you can listen to her podcast THE WINTERING SESSIONS here: https://podnews.net/podcast/1516642192 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices