I picked up this book thinking that it would be more about dealing with actual winters than metaphorical winters, but it starts off very much in the metaphorical vein and I really wasn’t sure it was going to be my thing at all. I stuck with it, though, and I’m so glad I did. I’m personally trying to reorient my (bad) attitude towards the dark months of the year, and I found a great deal in this book to help me along the way. There are interesting practical tips for “wintering” from people who live in truly cold climates, and there are intriguing accounts of the metaphorical winters we experience when life throws hardships at us, and there’s even a chapter about cold-water swimming—one of my own tactics for counteracting the urge to completely hibernate when the weather turns. It was the right book at the right time for me.

Further reading…