Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age

Description

'Our sense of enchantment is not only triggered by grand things. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. The magic is of our own conjuring...' After years of pandemic life - parenting while working, battling anxiety about things beyond her control, feeling overwhelmed by the news-cycle and increasingly isolated - Katherine May feels bone-tired, on edge and depleted. Could there be another way to live? One that would allow her to feel more connected, more rested and at ease, even as seismic changes unfold on the planet? Craving a different path, May begins to explore the restorative properties of the natural world - from a pebble in the hand to the humbling effects of the sea, the pleasure of the ground beneath her bare feet to the magic of a moon shadow. Through deliberate attention and ritual, she finds nourishment in the quiet reconnection with her environment. Blending lyricism and storytelling, sensitivity and empathy, Enchantment invites each of us to open the door to human experience in all its sensual complexity, and to find the beauty waiting for us there. 'A beautiful, gentle exploration of the dark season of life and the light of spring that eventually follows.' - Raynor Winn, on WINTERING'A book for the soul.' - Caitlin Moran, on WINTERING

Katherine May is an internationally bestselling author and podcaster living in Whitstable, UK. Her hybrid memoir Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times became a New York Times, Sunday Times and Der Spiegel bestseller, and was adapted as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of a midlife autism diagnosis, is currently being adapted as an audio drama by Audible. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including the New York Times, Observer and Aeon, and she is the host of The Wintering Sessions podcast.