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Do you ever feel like you've outgrown your pain, but it still lives in you-shaping your choices, your energy, and the way you see yourself? You move on, yet the weight of the past lingers in your body, your thoughts, and your relationships.

Water Before Coffee helps you break that cycle. Through grounded reflection and practical guidance, you'll learn to recognize what you've been carrying and how to finally release it. You'll uncover how trauma reshapes motivation, self-worth, health, and connection-and discover how to rebuild each part of your life with clarity and intention.

In these pages, you'll learn to steady yourself again, to move beyond survival mode, to rebuild confidence, and to create space for calm that endures. As the noise settles and clarity returns, you'll begin to see yourself with renewed honesty and strength.

Every good cup of coffee begins with clear, pure water. Every new beginning starts with clarity within.

By: Katherine May (Author), Hardcover, 2020

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 

“Katherine May opens up exactly what I and so many need to hear but haven't known how to name.” —Krista Tippett, On Being

“Every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself. . . . This is truly a beautiful book.” —Elizabeth Gilbert  

"Proves that there is grace in letting go, stepping back and giving yourself time to repair in the dark...May is a clear-eyed observer and her language is steady, honest and accurate—capturing the sense, the beauty and the latent power of our resting landscapes." —Wall Street Journal

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, this is an intimate, revelatory exploration of the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.