Katherine May, WINTERING

2021-01-14 · 25:24 · Katherine May · Podcast Audio

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[1:28]Katherine May is the author of Wintering, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.

[1:33]She also runs the Wintering Seasons podcast where she talks to writers and performers about

[1:38]the cold seasons in their lives. Her journalism and essays have appeared in many publications,

[1:43]including The Times, The Observer, and Goodhousekeeping. Katherine works as a literary scout and

[1:47]as a freelance editor for organizations, including Audible. She is the editor of the upcoming

[1:52]anthology, The Best Most Awful Job, which brings together 20 bold and brilliant women writers to

[1:57]speak about motherhood in its raw and heart-wrenching forms, challenging the perceptions of what

[2:01]it means to be a mother. Ooh, I can't wait to read that. I had a great conversation with Katherine,

[2:07]about loss, and love, and marriage, and everything, so I hope you enjoy our talk.

[2:12]Welcome, Katherine. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books.

[2:16]Hi, thanks for having me. The pleasure. I cannot wait to discuss wintering your beautiful

[2:23]new orange-covered book. We've been just discussing where it's going to go on my call.

[2:27]I put in bookshelms, so I had to flag that it was orange and beautiful. Wintering, The Power of Rest

[2:33]and Retreat in Difficult Times, which could not be coming out at a better time. I mean,

[2:39]this winter, difficult times, you like nailed the timing on the public.

[2:44]I would really like to put it out there that I neither planned nor caused this moment in history,

[2:48]but I'm very glad to be landing it. No, did. Okay, I understand.

[2:55]So, Katherine, can you tell listeners please what your book is about and then what inspired you to

[3:00]write this book? Sure, yeah, so wintering is part memoir and part, I don't know, like something

[3:06]entirely different. It's really about the times in life when we fall through the cracks,

[3:11]and that's familiar to all of us. So, I'm trying to draw a line between those experiences of

[3:17]all the awful things that happen to us as human beings. So, that might be illness, it might

[3:21]be mental illness, it might be things like divorce, it might be bereavement, it might be the loss

[3:27]of a job, or it could just be one of those times in life when everything just seems to fall apart.

[3:33]You know, you're ready for a change, but you don't know how to make it. And I explain that by

[3:39]drawing on winter this season. So, I'm a big winter lover. I have to come straight out with

[3:45]that. I'm one of those people that's very uncomfortable in the summer. I love the winter,

[3:50]but I also see winter as a real time of rest and renewal and restoration. And I wanted to show

[3:57]how if we think about winter as a dead time, we completely miss the point. And that actually,

[4:02]when we're wintering, we're massing our energies for the next stage. Hello there, you applied

[4:08]that to everything from how the popular advice is misguided, right? That you should cope,

[4:16]you have to like, buck up and, you know, it's gonna be okay. And instead, by shifting your mindset

[4:22]and expecting winter to come and not hoping that every day of winter is gonna be a summer's day,

[4:28]same thing with any of the trauma, loss, job, any issue. If you have the right framework,

[4:36]make you feel so much better in a difficult time. And that's really like the secrets asked to this

[4:42]book is like, yeah, it's reframing almost, right? It's reframing how to fit a difficult time

[4:49]into the chaos of everyday life, especially when other people are not having a difficult time.

[4:54]No, I mean, and actually this year everyone's having a difficult time out there. I mean,

[4:58]that's the big change. Everyone's wintering at once at the moment in so many different ways.

[5:03]But yeah, I suppose I'm thinking about, there's a problem that we've got with positivity

[5:09]nowadays. You know, we're all busy sharing memes on Facebook and Instagram that we want to be

[5:15]seen to be positive. We want to be those people who are like always on there and always

[5:20]impressive. And obviously that hides a lot of stuff. But the message that we receive from that

[5:25]is that we're not allowed to fall. We're not allowed to mourn, we're not allowed to be ill,

[5:31]without allowed to suffer. We've got to put a brave face on it pretty quickly. And I think

[5:35]that's harming us. I think we've got to the point where we can no longer keep pretending to be

[5:39]perfect. And actually by living through those really painful parts of life, we get a lot from that

[5:48]that's part of being human. And your book is so great because you make yourself instantly

[5:54]relatable and likable when you talk about your vacation when you're playing on the beach with

[5:59]your son, bird, and your husband who you call age. And he starts, your husband starts complaining,

[6:05]a feeling sick. And you're kind of like annoyed by it. You have to find this quote because it made

[6:10]me laugh so much. You said, oh no, I remember saying trying to sound sympathetic. Well,

[6:15]privately thinking, what a nuisance it was. We'd have to cut the day short and head back home.

[6:20]And then he'd probably need to sleep it off. It's so funny, right? Like the loved ones are like

[6:26]sick in front of us. And you're like, oh gosh, now what's Bird going to do the rest of the day

[6:30]when the rest of his friends are at the beach and like having an entertaining. And it's like,

[6:34]I just love that you put such a relatable moment right in the beginning, especially because

[6:38]this became like a horrific situation, right? And he's the humor. Tell me more about Bird and what

[6:44]ended up happening in the hospital and everything. Yeah, I mean, I was absolutely the last person

[6:49]to realize that he was really, really sick. He had a very severe appendicitis, very bad

[6:54]infection from it. And eventually ended up being taken in hospital and then had to wait a very

[6:59]long time for surgery because the hospital was so busy. And it was really terrifying. It was really

[7:05]life or death. And it meant that after he'd had the surgery, he was in hospital for over a week

[7:12]just failing to recover in the way they expected him to. And it was just an absolutely terrifying

[7:16]time. We couldn't work out what was wrong with him. He was just so sick for a long time. And it was

[7:22]just a real, you know, mortality reminder that that comes every now and again. It was,

[7:27]we really felt like we could have easily lost him. And I felt like I had to personally be there

[7:33]advocating for him all the time to make sure he absolutely got the care he needed. So yeah, it was

[7:39]it was a wakeup call for us. I think. And even how you describe as moving back and forth from home to

[7:45]drop offs to having your son stay somewhere else. And then when you would get to a place suddenly

[7:50]feeling like there was nothing that you even could do there, right? Like rushing back to the

[7:54]hospital to sit and wait and have nothing happen. And like twiddling your thumbs and trying to be

[7:59]like, what can I do in this time to help anything? And that sort of feeling of helplessness.

[8:05]Yeah, I think we will come to that time in our lives at some point. And it's that feeling of

[8:14]being completely exhausted, but also totally wired at the same time. You know, you're hyper alert.

[8:19]You're just trying to do the best for the people that you love and trying to balance the

[8:24]responses of your kids against, you know, needing to tend to your husband. I mean, that that's such

[8:29]a hard thing to do. I mean, that was absolutely terrified. He didn't want to see his father. He didn't

[8:34]want to look at him because he was covered in wires and pipes and just didn't look like himself

[8:40]and kept kind of dosing off mid sentence and that kind of thing. And there's just so many,

[8:44]and you know, that's without my own fears, right? That's without all the stuff that's going on

[8:48]in my head. Like what happens? What happens now? It's a terrible time. And I know for some people,

[8:53]you know, we had a week of it and it was awful. Some people that go some for months and years.

[8:58]So very mindful of that. Yeah. And then you move from there to talking about your own physical

[9:05]response. You you tied it to your sort of stress of your job by compared it to a type of like

[9:12]symptoms of bowel cancer, really. So tell me about what happened then?

[9:18]Yeah. I mean, I've been doing the stupid thing that you always hear about other people doing and

[9:23]you think you'll never be the one that does it, which is carefully ignoring all the major symptoms

[9:27]of bowel cancer for about six months. It's amazing how easy that stuff is to push away when you're

[9:32]incredibly busy. And I did. I had a busy stressful job. I was leading a creative writing degree

[9:38]at university. There was a lot going on. I was a mother, obviously. And I was writing books in

[9:44]my spare time. And I'd been coping for so long, but I couldn't hear the messages. My body was

[9:53]sending me. I knew I was massively stressed. And I knew I was becoming unwell. But it was only

[10:00]I was sitting in the hospital by my husband that I began to realize how much pain I was in

[10:05]and I assumed it because it's the first time I'd slowed down for a long time and even that didn't

[10:09]feel very slow but I was sitting still and I thought that it was probably sympathetic almost

[10:16]my pain wasn't exactly the same place that his appendicitis was and so I left it again of course

[10:23]but then within a couple of weeks I ended up doubled up over my desk at work on the phone to

[10:29]my doctor saying I don't know what's going on but I feel like I'm in labor and yeah I mean it took a

[10:37]little while but it turned out that I had multiple problems luckily not cancer but I did go away

[10:43]with a very thorough ticking off at a warning but I had the the intestines of a particularly

[10:49]self-negligence 75 year old and I I was sitting there going but you know what I I eat my vegetables

[10:55]like I'm a vegetable fat I'm really careful about my diet I take exercise and then I had to just

[11:02]sit down and think yeah but you have lived with enormous stress for years and years and years

[11:08]and that will do it it doesn't matter how many you know portions of cabbage you eat the stress will

[11:14]get you in the end and it did that's a very sobering message yeah sorry everyone I know no it's

[11:23]no it is so important and good to hear but it's just you know it makes me want to take a deep

[11:28]deep sigh you know it's so easy to ignore the stresses or say like this is what we have we have

[11:33]to do this and there's no choice yet you know there's only so much mind over matter can help with

[11:39]your body so much pushing through yeah you can't keep pushing through you have to listen to those

[11:44]signals that we know we should listen to but wow I was so good at ignoring them I was impressive

[11:51]if we could give medals for ignoring your body and being a self-care negligent

[11:57]congratulations that's not the middle I have wanted to win but we'll tell me about the decision

[12:05]to write this book and I know you're you're creative writing professor you are a brilliant

[12:10]beautiful writer from the first sentence on through and it's a the way you use metaphor all the time

[12:17]and the way you can like cut through and use language sparsely and yet so beautifully I mean it's

[12:24]very captivating I have to say I mean and I mean it's it's really amazing perhaps this is what

[12:29]you teach your students in which case I want to like take your class filming about the writing of

[12:34]this book and even your writing style how it all sort of evolved and developed yeah well I suppose

[12:40]when I started first started writing I did start writing poetry and I think that's such a great

[12:45]kind of school for economy and finding that exact image and just that image that's that's necessary

[12:52]but also I think the writing style comes from my really deep engagement with winter I just wanted

[12:57]to write about all the lovely things about winter you know like one of the first lines I wrote

[13:02]was about the pavements sparkling and winter and I you know there were so many things I just

[13:07]wanted to say and I'd been pursuing it all my life you know going on holiday in Iceland and Norway

[13:12]instead of Spain and Greece I mean that's that's the guy that's what my family has to put up

[13:17]with from me but the idea for wintering the book came really if I mean before that whole crisis

[13:26]happened weirdly when I realized that I was a kind of expert in living through those times of life

[13:32]that I recognize them really well and I actually had a technique for them and not that I enjoyed

[13:39]but that I could see the value of them and I'd learnt to borrow into them and I realized I had

[13:45]something to share I wanted to write a book that told other people how to do it but I thought I

[13:51]was going to be writing it from the sunny uplands you know when everything was fine I thought I

[13:56]could look back over wintering periods in my life and wisely give advice to people and that's how

[14:02]the book was pitched but then everything happened at once during it and first of all I really

[14:10]resisted writing about them because it's like this is not my book this is not fair this was not

[14:13]supposed to happen and then I realized I just I had to crack it open and let people into the

[14:19]process that I was going through at the time so yeah that and I think that that changed the book

[14:25]for the better because I think it brings that kind of immediacy to walking alongside me as

[14:31]going through the process with me and I that then became my kind of mission that I wanted to

[14:37]take people through day by day those feelings and I think I wouldn't have thought of

[14:42]loads of them if I hadn't have been living them at the time and where like what was your writing

[14:46]process like when you wrote it? Was it at this desk with these beautiful curtains behind you or

[14:50]where did you like to do your writing and how long did the whole book take? Yeah I'm quite

[14:56]random in my approach to writing at the best of times so I've always been someone that would

[15:01]do a little bit on the kitchen table a little bit on the sofa a bit and a cafe but actually

[15:07]towards the end of the period when I knew I was going to have to deliver the book and as I

[15:12]document in the story I had to pull my son out of school because he had stopped coping and that

[15:18]meant that most of the book actually got written in the cafes of soft place centers and on benches

[15:24]playgrounds I have a favorite playground in my hometown of Wixtable that actually has a table

[15:29]and a bench which means that I can put my laptop in it if it's not raining. Yeah so it was

[15:34]really really piece together in tiny snatches and getting up very early like 4 30 in the morning

[15:40]to get a couple of good hours in before but woke up so it was it felt very against the wire actually

[15:48]I didn't get the time on it that I wanted and I really did submit it in total terror that

[15:55]my editor would say what is this you know go back and rewrite it and I thought well at least that

[16:00]buys me some time if she says that that's the best I can do but no she she loved it luckily I

[16:06]got I think I got away with her. It's beautiful and it's also something that's nice to return

[16:13]too because you have something for each month no I know like I read it all in one sitting right

[16:19]like because we were talking but now that I have this it's like okay it's November like I can go

[16:26]back and read the November chapter and maybe that'll put me in the right mindset and like

[16:30]usually you you know you always talk about going north right you're like always venturing

[16:35]into new lands that's not my like go to but even just like getting to relive your moments in each

[16:43]mind then and not letting sort of the depressing darkness feel that but feel uplifting in a way

[16:51]at someone's level or so yeah maybe I can convert you yeah and there are some people who are

[16:57]reading it month by month so they go very slowly through it which I love I really I wanted to

[17:02]track the year because I winter isn't just one monotonous space it's actually full of really

[17:08]distinct moments and they are the going into winter that midwinter period where everything feels

[17:16]sort of quite heavy and bleak but that's actually the moment when we've arranged loads of

[17:20]celebration so maybe midwinter pass is quite easily and it's then the time after winter that kind

[17:26]of January February time when everything feels very heavy and you think the sun's never going to come

[17:31]back again and all hope is lost everything's very dreary I wanted to track right through to that and

[17:37]then into the the first signals of hope in the in the new spring that are coming when the

[17:43]world flowers come out and things like that I really enjoyed that part of it actually I learned a

[17:47]lot about how winter progresses it made me engage more with that season and really notice the changes

[17:54]that take place that had been you know invisible to me before as they are so many of us so do you

[17:59]have any advice on periods of wintering that don't have have to happen during the winter season so

[18:06]what you started out by talking about all these different things that you can be going through

[18:11]if somebody is going through a wintering season in their own life yeah then what advice do you have

[18:19]because you know the advice that you reference on instagram and you say like this is not good

[18:25]advice this is not friendship this is not how you cope so so tell me like what give give me the

[18:31]okay so the first thing I'd say is that you can't avoid winter your it's coming you know

[18:37]obviously game of thrones was more insightful than we even realized winter is coming but if you

[18:42]if you know that a downturn is coming in your life then actually there comes the point when you

[18:47]have to stop pushing it back you can defer it for a while but actually it gets worse and my advice

[18:53]always is to engage with it to walk alongside it to make some space for it to be in that

[19:00]sadness or that grief or that fear whatever those emotions are to actually spend some time with

[19:08]them and to be with them because they're always asking us something and it's usually a change

[19:15]and I often think that a wintering is the process of accepting a change that's coming anyway

[19:23]but that is the painful bit if change wasn't painful then we would adapt to all sorts of things

[19:29]that happened to us in our lives instantly and it wouldn't be a problem we can't we have to

[19:35]very very slowly adapt and I think I don't think I'm alone in this experience that when a major

[19:41]thing has happened to me it takes a few months for it to enter my dreamscape at night I don't

[19:45]know if that's true for you but I think there's a sign there that that's the moment when we've

[19:51]begun to integrate whatever it is that's that's coming to our life it takes that that length of time

[20:00]And I know that there's that year cycle in which everything is so hard that first year,

[20:08]and you're still grieving after the first year, but it takes that full year to really absorb

[20:14]the change that's happened. And I think at the other end of the scale, it takes a full year to

[20:19]absorb having your first child, perhaps, that massive, massive change. And we've lost the ability

[20:28]to talk about change as slow, and that that slowness is necessary and useful. We want to rush

[20:36]everything. We want to short-circuit everything. We want to find the book that gives us 10 easy steps

[20:41]to get through it in a month instead of a year. And I think we have to radically abandon the

[20:46]idea that that's even possible, and learn to know that we've almost evolved to accept things

[20:55]slowly. And that's how it works for us. So it's not an easily packageable idea. It's not,

[21:03]it's really, it's the hard, it's the hard, hard truth of being a human that actually we can live

[21:11]through those moments at a very slow pace, but that great work is being done. And back to that

[21:17]first year of having a child, you wrote about actually losing your voice, which as I hear

[21:23]it was absolutely beautiful, but that you literally lost your voice when you had your child

[21:29]had to sort of re-teach yourself to sing and all this stuff, and how it was like you were

[21:34]walking metaphor for like your voice in there. And tell me a little bit about that.

[21:40]Yeah, so I was teaching at the time as well. And like when I was a teenager, I'd always been a

[21:46]chorister. So I'd always really value my singing voice. I love singing. I might not sing professionally,

[21:51]but it's something that I do to release energy and tension. And first of all, my voice just

[21:57]began to crackle. And then I experienced it cutting out fully mid-sentence. It would just go.

[22:02]And I had various investigations. I didn't have polyps or anything like that. But I ended up going

[22:09]to a singing teacher after months and months of really struggling. And it became very uncomfortable

[22:15]too. It was really tickly. And so I'd start talking about a cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough.

[22:20]And I felt like I was being silenced. I was in this point in my life when I suddenly felt really

[22:27]invisible and really irrelevant to the outside world and really overtaken with mother work.

[22:32]And like I was just clinging on by my fingertips onto the career that I wanted to have.

[22:37]And I didn't know what to do until a friend who's a professional singer said, look,

[22:41]I know this really brilliant singing teacher. Professional singers have trouble with their voices

[22:46]all the time. I bet he can help. And I thought, well, you know what, if nothing else, I might

[22:50]quite enjoy it. I might quite enjoy spending some time singing. I didn't think I could possibly hit a

[22:55]note. And there was one particular note I couldn't hit, which ironically is middle C, which when you,

[23:01]I don't know if you've ever done singing training, but you always start a middle C and sing upwards

[23:05]in your scales. So the first note, I just didn't have it. It wasn't there in my voice.

[23:10]And we retrained my middle C back in, but we had to do that by bouncing onto it from other notes.

[23:17]And that retrained my whole voice. I essentially kind of, they can remap your vocal chords

[23:24]so that you're using different parts of it. And it was, the process was remarkably quick. It took

[23:30]a few weeks when I was talking again, but he also taught me how to read from Undermill Wood by

[23:38]Dylan Thomas as a way of learning how to retrain my speaking voice as well, so that I was almost singing.

[23:44]And I think my voice is probably different now to what it was then, but I've got used to talking

[23:49]that way. It's much easier. All right. Last question. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

[23:56]Just right. Just right. I hear so many people giving so much advice. And I don't think there's

[24:03]any one system you can follow. I don't think there is any practice that's better than other,

[24:11]but if you can sit down and write as much as you can on whatever subject you want to, whatever

[24:16]really moves you and makes you want to talk, then that's the best start you can possibly have.

[24:22]It's beguiling you simple, isn't it?

[24:27]Look at Adrian. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing wintering for your beautiful book.

[24:31]So I'm going to wave my coffee back at you.

[24:36]Thank you so much having me. It's been really lovely to talk.

[24:39]You too. All right. Have a great day. Take care. Bye bye.

[24:44]Thanks again to Tim Tebow and his book Bronco and Friends, a party to remember for sponsoring

[24:49]today's episode. Go check it out at Tim Tebow.com slash Bronco and Friends. Thanks for listening

[24:55]to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram

[25:00]at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at

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[25:10]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to

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