This is part of ARTIFACT MOTHERHOOD – a project shared with other female artists who are documenting our journeys as mothers and creating memories for our children through our photographs and words.

I ordered myself a book recently, a sadly rare indulgence for me. I had been so moved by a podcast interviewing the author that I felt pulled to read her work. It is called Wintering by Katherine May and it’s not a volume meant to be inhaled over a weekend, like I tend to do with novels, so I’m taking my time and embracing a slow journey through her insights and lovely language. I have trouble, especially lately, finding words of my own to open up with but I can hope my photographs say the things I see and hold dear these days. So I am borrowing some quotes to frame my images for this post.

We spent a weekend at our rustic cabin in the snowy woods early in January. This is how we do our wintering and time spent there deeply nourishes our souls.

“When it’s really cold, the snow makes a lovely noise underfoot, and it’s like the air is full of stars.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

We surprisingly said hello to this little guy just before Christmas. This was his first trip to the cabin, which was one of our old dog’s favorite places.

“Snow creates that quality of awe in the face of a power greater than ours. It epitomises the aesthetic notion of the sublime, in which greatness and beauty couple to overcome you—a small, frail human—entirely.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

“To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical.” –Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

The moments I treasure are the small quiet ones like this, a freshly cleaned kitchen and time for hot tea.

Thank you for reading through and please continue the Artifact Motherhood blog circle with a lovely post from Kirsty Larmour.

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