Mohini Kundu

Despite spending the last five winters on the East Coast, I am and always will be a California girl. It wasn’t perpetual metaphorical sunshine while I grew up there or when I lived there in my 20s, but when I think of California I see red woods, feel the sun on my face, and imagine home. Needless to say, it took time for me to make friends with anything resembling a real winter. Going to college in Chicago was something of an icy trial by fire. White Christmases still don’t hold much charm for me, especially now that I live in New York where it’s more like dark grey winter — both above among the heavy clouds and below wading through muddy sidewalks.

A few years ago, my discomfort during wintertime hit a peak. In December of 2022, I found myself in the comedown of several big life events: the pandemic, losing my childhood dog of 18 years, a cross-country move, and finally, planning a massive wedding and getting married. None of the stress seemed to impact me much — until it did.

At the end of that year, I was smacked in the face with what felt like a lifetime’s worth of pent-up anxiety. I would be fine one moment until I stood too suddenly and the room started to spin. For months on end I felt like I couldn’t take a full breath, and the more I tried the shallower my breathing became. Health anxiety had been creeping up on me, as I’m sure it did for many in the wake of Covid. I would work myself up into bouts of claustrophobia and panic attacks, likely compounded by seasonal sadness. Taking the subway or going through a tunnel were abruptly terrifying. Tall buildings and cloudy skies felt like literal weights that could close in and trap me under them. Not ideal for living in Manhattan during the winter. I remember marking off each day that passed as a step towards spring, sun, and hopefully a breath of fresh air at long last.

So I went to therapy. I started to unravel a web of unaddressed stressors, starting with the most recent and going all the way back to my childhood. Ironically I discovered things that stressed me out even more, but slowly I learned to face them and live calmly in their midst. More on that another day.

Along this journey I found a book that seemed like it was sent to me by the universe: Wintering by Katherine May. I stumbled upon it in a book shop and read it by a pool in Miami. (I tagged along on my husband’s business trip to escape the cold weather for a few days.) My cloudy disposition didn’t abate with the shift closer to the equator, but May’s story was an infusion of light and clarity. She writes:

“Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.”

In the book May recounts her own dark winter: her husband’s failing health, her son’s struggles, and a lasting bout of depression that disrupted her career and sense of self. Though our individual circumstances differed, we both found ourselves stuck in a storm of difficult feelings, terrified to discover that there is no way out but through. However, she goes on to say that wintering is not just a period of difficulty and sadness; it is a designated interval for rest and quiet growth. She helped me realize that there are seasons for everything in life, including struggle and un-productivity, for lack of a better word. We can’t be forever in bloom, and winters — even when they seem stagnant or more like an onslaught — are what enable us to eventually blossom again.

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”

Most importantly, May helped me remember that winters end. They are momentary spells of painful evolution, shedding of leaves and skin and former selves. I found so much comfort in knowing that what I was feeling wouldn’t last forever. I was simply transforming, performing my own extraordinary act of metamorphosis. It made the experiences I had precious in a way, both fleeting and leaving something better behind.

Inexorably, time marches on. In the winter of 2023, I was scrolling through Pet Finder as we finally felt ready to welcome a new fur baby into our family. Lo and behold, I came across a beautiful, fluffy 6-month-old Shiba Inu. Her name was Winter, and she was perfect. I write this now on the coldest morning we’ve had this season. It’s one of those days without a cloud in the sky to trap a speck of warmth, so the air is icy, but the sun shines impossibly bright, entirely unobstructed. Winter and I went out to greet the day just as the sun was rising. I now appreciate how refreshing the air is on a morning like this, how clean and sharp it feels in my lungs, how the red sun looks adorned by naked branches, almost like a bony crown.

I will probably never look forward to a snowy day the way I do an afternoon in summer sunshine, but I see so much beauty in them both now. The truth is I am a winter child. I was born in January, often the coldest month of the year. I was made for days like this.