Holding Winter Gently: Aging and the Quiet Confidence of My Own Company
Savouring Winter, Holding the Metaphor Loosely
As part of Seasoned Voices, five bloggers curious about aging, identity, and the shape of later life chose a quote to sit with and respond to together.
Each of our interpretations is different, which I find so very interesting! We knew we wouldn’t unanimously agree, and we’re happy to share what each of us noticed. Here you’ll find MY reaction to the quote, and at the end of this article, I’ll link to each of their reactions.
The following quote from May Sarton surfaced when we searched for a prompt on aging and the later seasons of life.
“With age, I am able to savor the winter of my life – the quiet, the depth, the slow burning light of my own company.”
We didn’t choose the quote because we necessarily agree with it. We chose it because it sparked a reaction.
A Seasoned Voices Reflection
When the Metaphor Doesn’t Quite Fit
When I first read the quote, my response surprised me. I didn’t read it and nod in agreement.
Instead, I read it and felt myself lean in, then pull back a little.
I pulled back not from rejection, but from curiosity. And maybe, if I’m honest, a bit of a non-conformist instinct.
I like what May Sarton is pointing toward, and her words are warm, cozy, rich, and content. But the words suggest that the winter of my life is the final season…the wrap-up…the final act. I’m not sure I believe that winter is the final season of life in this way. But I don’t know! My hesitation nudged me to look more closely at the metaphor itself.
Questioning A Linear Story of Aging
The phrase winter of my life carries weight. It suggests finality. It conjures images of slowing down, of darkness, of dwindling energy, of a season we settle into for good. I understand the seasonal metaphor for life: spring is birth, summer is growth, fall is decline, and it all ends in winter. But I don’t fully recognize myself in that narrative. And maybe I don’t want to. What I’m reaching for instead feels closer to embracing aging that allows for movement, growth, and change, not decline.
I am in my mid-50s, and while my energy has changed and my bones are a bit more creaky, my curiosity has not faded. My life does not feel like it is narrowing toward stillness or declining toward an end. It feels more like active aging with a reorganization of priorities and a shift in emphasis. I’m younger than the other Seasoned Voices writers, so I have much to learn from their experiences, too.
Perhaps I am entering the final stretch and am simply in denial!
Active Aging as a Spiral, Not a Straight Line
What if my problem isn’t the metaphoric idea of winter itself, but how we imagine moving through it? Much like travel, aging rarely follows a single route. What if aging is not a straight line through the seasons, but rather a spiral?
What if winter — the metaphor, like the season — returns again and again, each time asking something slightly different of us?
I feel the actual winter season at 55 in ways I did not at 35 or 45. Perhaps as we repeat each season, we experience them differently as we age. Pockets of spring. Sudden summers of energy and expansion. Quiet autumns of letting go. Winters of transitional endings, held alongside the hope for another spring.
I recognize that I want to hold Sarton’s idea loosely. To let it be one way of seeing, not the way.
The Quiet Gift of Winter in Midlife
What I do resonate with deeply in Sarton’s words is the gift of savouring the colder, quieter pace of winter. It has become a season I no longer fight. This rang true for many of the women in Seasoned Voices. There was a time when winter felt inconvenient. Something to push through so real life could resume. Dark mornings felt like resistance. Grey days felt heavy. Everything was an effort.
Now, winter feels less like a limit and more like permission. I see it now as permission to slow down and permission to savour. Winter, at my age, is still teaching me the value of moving slowly, the way intentional travel does and discovering awe in quieter ways. But it is still about moving rather than settling.
Learning to Savour a Slower Season
The first bulbs that push through cold soil.
The almost imperceptible lengthening of days. The way sunlight, when it does appear, feels precious rather than expected.
Dark mornings invite me to linger in bed with a cup of coffee, without the sun pulling me outside.
I read differently in winter. Curled up. Unrushed. Not as something squeezed in between other activities.
Warm baths feel luxurious in a way they don’t in summer. They wrap me in their warmth.
On my winter walks, I marvel at the soft edges shaped by fog and mud. I notice dew crystallized on a dormant garden. I notice how quiet the forest feels when everything is conserving energy.
Some of the things I now savour are seasonal, some of them the gift of age. There is less pressure in my life now than during the years of juggling a career, raising children, and doing more in less time. I have little to prove now, and less to push against. That absence of pressure creates space. Space sharpens noticing, and the more I notice, the more I savour. A virtuous cycle!
The Slow-Burning Light of My Own Company
I love May Sarton’s reference to the “slow-burning light of my own company.” It feels like a confidence and a companionship with oneself that is earned rather than assumed. I appreciate that this slow-burning light took time, my whole life in fact, to develop. It’s a kind of steadiness that comes from living, experience, and experimentation.
I have always enjoyed my own company. I am an introvert, comfortable with quiet, with my thoughts, with unstructured time. Solitude has never been the challenge. But enjoyment wasn’t the whole story.
Trust was.
Trust, Solitude, and Solo Travel
I can pinpoint when that trust deepened. It happened to be spring (literally and perhaps figuratively), just a few years ago, alongside a growing curiosity about solo travel and the quieter, less visible benefits of travelling alone. For most of my life, solo travel was simply not something I considered. Travel was shared, planned around others, and shaped by companionship.
When the opportunity to go on a solo adventure finally surfaced, it wasn’t met as an epiphany. It was a question: I wonder if I could.
I chose to explore my own company in this new way, not to prove anything, but to see what it felt like to rely on myself more fully. In many ways, solo travel for a woman at midlife felt less about bravery and more about trust - without a safety net and without an audience.
Approaching that question thoughtfully mirrored larger shifts already happening in my life. A willingness to trust my pace, honour preparation, take small steps, and let myself be enough.
Over time, the light of my own company has deepened and now includes regular solo travel experiences. It’s become a way of practicing attentiveness and self-reliance. Perhaps this, too, is part of winter. Not something cold or withering, but an arrival. A season where we are still forming new relationships, including a deeper, more trusting one with myself.
Holding Winter Gently, Without Finality
I am still figuring out what May Sarton’s words mean to me. I may always.
Right now, winter does feel quieter, deeper, and definitely slower. But not dimmer. It feels like a season that asks me to pay attention. To notice what is here rather than rush toward what is next. To trust that cycles continue.
So I am letting myself savour winter. Winter, like travel, thrives with presence rather than speed. Not because it is the last season, but because it is the current season. And because every day now, I notice the light returning.
Seasoned Voices brings together five women writers, each responding to shared themes through the lens of her own life and lived experience.
We begin with the same quote, question, or idea, and then follow where it leads us individually. The result is a set of reflections that speak to aging, identity, and possibility from different angles.
Below, you’ll find links to the other Seasoned Voices essays inspired by this same quote. I invite you to move between them, noticing where our reflections echo as women, where they diverge, and what they stir in you.
