The Winter Solstice marks a new solar cycle for the light of the sun as we welcome in winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are experiencing the longest and darkest nights of the year and the shortest days.
Winter Solstice is the great stillness before the sun builds its strength and the days grow longer. One of the most powerful points of the year, Winter Solstice is a time of pause as the Earth’s axis shifts and moves in the opposite direction.
We also have an opportunity to pause and shift in a new direction. This is a wonderful time to build upon this energy! What do you desire?
Give yourself permission to pause, rest and reflect so you can get the answers to what new direction you would like to move towards.
In winter, there is a sacred sense of stillness as our energies are naturally directed inward. We snuggle inside to stay warm, or we bundle up in many layers to be outside as we are forced to experience the cold and the darkness.
This can be a challenging time, too, as the cold and dark can weigh heavy on us. The shadows fall upon us in many forms: when we lose jobs, marriages fall apart, when children struggle, when we experience poor health or lose a loved one.
The darkness is not something we need to fear or cut ourselves off from. It is a part of our life’s journey. It exists to offer contrast to what is light, so we know what light is!
One cannot exist without the other. As different as they are, light and dark serve the wholeness of who we are.
Being able to sit with our darker emotions such as sadness and grief is important. They will come knocking on our door and want to sit at our table for some time as we get to know them.
To allow for the experience of feeling our darker feels and accepting them for who they are does not mean we have to live with them forever.
But it helps to realize they’re always going to occasionally come knocking and we may as well learn something from them while they’re sitting across from us at the dinner table.
“To be human is to live by sunlight and moonlight, with anxiety and delight, admitting limits and transcending them, falling down and rising up. To want a life with only half of these things in it is to want half a life, shutting the other half away where it will not interfere with one’s bright fantasies of the way things ought to be.”
–Barbara Brown Taylor: Learning to Walk in the Dark.
On this Winter Solstice, I invite you to pause, take a deep breath or 5, give yourself permission to rest and allow for whatever feelings to rise and fall.
May the light of your own being shine ever so brightly and be the beacon to guide you home again, and again and again.
Let us celebrate the return of the light!✨ Happy Winter Solstice!
Mucho love and Light,
Xx Kristin