What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Simone had coached young athletes and adults through career transitions for over a decade, and she prided herself on always having something useful to offer. After a string of difficult client sessions and a personal loss she had not fully processed, she noticed herself running out of the patience she normally brought to the room. She kept scheduling sessions anyway, reasoning that her clients needed her steady presence more than she needed a break. A fellow coach, sensing something was off, recommended a book about wintering during a supervision call. Reading it that weekend, Simone recognized the exact thing she coached clients through, treating a hard season as something to move through with support, and realized she had stopped applying it to herself.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Naming your own hard season, not just your clients'
Wintering's central move, naming a hard season honestly rather than hiding it, applies to a coach who spends most working hours helping others do exactly that. Telling a supervisor or trusted peer that this has been a genuinely hard season is not a failure of the coaching persona; it is the honesty a coach would encourage in any client.
When a coach's business model depends on projecting constant calm and capacity to prospective clients.
Tell one peer coach or supervisor, plainly, that this season has been hard for you too.
Scaling back client load without treating it as abandonment
The book treats withdrawing energy from ordinary demands as active recovery, not neglect, which a coach can apply by reducing caseload or pausing new intake during a genuinely hard personal season. This protects the quality of attention existing clients receive, rather than spreading a depleted coach thin until the work quietly suffers for everyone.
When income depends directly on caseload, making any reduction feel financially risky no matter how depleted a coach feels.
Pause new client intake for a defined short period this month, even briefly.
Being supported, not just the one who supports
May describes cold-climate communities that build gathering and lower expectations into their darkest months, offered as her own respectful account of specific traditions, not a script every practice must adopt. A coach can take the idea that hard seasons go better shared, seeking supervision or peer consultation rather than assuming the role only runs one direction.
Peer consultation groups can be scarce or expensive, especially for independent coaches without an institutional home.
Book one supervision or peer consultation session this month specifically for yourself.
Winter as metaphor, not a mark against your practice
The book leans on winter and hibernation as a metaphor for hardship, not a scientific claim about why energy dips at particular times of year. Any mention connecting mood to daylight is one area of ongoing, evolving interest, not settled fact. What holds regardless of the calendar is the point underneath: a hard season passes, and does not define a coach's actual skill.
These ideas pull against each other in a real coaching practice. Naming a hard season honestly can feel risky when the business depends on projecting steadiness, making scaling back feel doubly exposing. Seeking supervision takes time and money a coach already stretched thin may not have to spare. Most coaches manage a partial version of each, honest with one trusted peer, reducing load where they can, while still showing up for clients whose sessions cannot be paused.
Name one thing, honestly
- What would it look like to name your own hard season to a peer, the way you would encourage a client to? - Where could you scale back your caseload this month without treating it as abandoning your clients? - Who supports you, and when did you last actually let them?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Book one supervision or peer consultation session this month specifically for yourself.