Solstice Dreaming

Some soft, slow thoughts for the longest nights of the year

Hi, everyone, and if you are currently on the part of Earth where this applies to you, happy winter solstice.

I’ve always loved this day. When I was a kid, I used to write books of solstice poems, and I’d sometimes force my friends into solstice parties where we’d make gingerbread houses and little cutout snowflakes. In hindsight, I think it was evidence that although I didn’t grow up very religious or spiritual, I always longed for ritual. I knew the seasons held keys to something much deeper, something intrinsic, something that stretched far longer than my own lifespan.

Now, as an adult, I am celebrating the solstice by writing to all of you, which feels right. I am currently in San Francisco, which hangs in its near-perpetual state of grey foggy dreaminess, visiting an old friend at the end of a long journey around the world. It has been a deep and profound internal and external adventure.

I have many more stories to tell, but for now, I just want to reach through the screen to greet you on this longest night of the year, in this sliver of time where the world holds its breath and darkness shows its full face before tipping ever-so-slightly in the direction of the gathering sun.

Solstices are festivals of rebirth. They are passages and portals. The winter solstice — also sometimes called Yule — is a time for reflection, introspection, hibernation, and rest.

This long night calls us to move out of our overstimulated, perpetually well-lit so-called reality, which is really a projection of our inner worlds. It urges us to re-enter the darkness of the cosmic womb, where all life begins and ends.

It asks us to journey away from our imagined lives and back into the cavern of our own skulls. It asks us to observe what pinpricks of light and shadows dancers might be found there.

What constellations might you create on this long night? What figures move on your walls? What are they saying?

If you let them, would they sing?

*

Today, at the heaviest point in my moon cycle, I found myself deep in the arms of another old friend: fatigue.

I have been followed around by fatigue for a long time. My body often yearns deeply for rest, for slowness, for doing-nothing-at-all. I’ve spent many years forcing myself to do things despite immense exhaustion, and skipping out on even more because of it. The fatigue is likely due to a blend of poor sleep, poor nutrition, vitamin D deficiency, an overactive mind, and other factors I both can and can’t control, and working on this is an endeavor I’ll probably be engaged in for quite a while.

Yet the solstice is a natural time for rest. For pulling back. For going inward. For gathering what we love close, and warming ourselves by the hearth of what heals us.

We are not meant to always be going. To always be pushing. To always be yearning for something different or better.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that not all types of “rest” are created equal. I’ve spent a lot of time doing what I believed was “resting” and “doing nothing,” and yet often this hasn’t been restful at all (because I’ve either spent that time scrolling on social media or using technology or generally berating myself and telling myself I should get up or be productive).

The truth is that sometimes we do need to get up. Sometimes, we need to go ahead and push forward and honor our inner callings and step into the fire. It’s possible to go too far in the direction of indulging our fatigue and desire for solitude, as seen in the rather concerning though all-too-understandable bed rotting trend.

But more often, we really do need to drop everything and genuinely rest. As with all things, it’s a balance, something that’s different for everyone.

Most people definitely need a lot more actual rest, especially in cultures that thrives off making us feel inadequate and desperate to change ourselves into different shapes to compete with other illusory ideals. In cultures that devalue workers, and mothers, and the deeper needs of the human spirit.

So today, in the spirit of the solstice and this time of the year, I leaned deep into my fatigue. I sank into the thick and dense soil of it.

Instead of resisting it as I so often do, I tried to ask it what it had to teach me. I completely stopped trying to change it. I let go of any latent voice in my head urging me to just push through and get up.

I thought of a solstice ritual shared by the wonderful Jenna Newell Hiott, and imagined myself walking through a snowy glade. Immediately my mind filled up with visions. A great wide black bird, its wings outstretched. A field of glittering ice that caught the sunlight in its facets. My inner world, or perhaps the rich inner world we all share, became animate.

I thought of Persephone, deep in the underworld, and how I see so much of myself in her perpetual oscillation between the aboveground world and the below-one.

It took about twenty minutes, perhaps. Yet after connecting with some of those guides, where before I’d felt all but entirely washed clean of all my life force, I suddenly felt a burst of energy — faint and delicate as soft winter sunlight, but it was there.

I moved very slowly into the rest of my day after that. I am preparing to travel again, readying myself to head back home and into the great cosmic mystery of the future.

I trust it will realize itself as it is meant to. I look for signs in the darkness, for guideposts on this strange road.

Black birds with luminous silver wings. A tiny bit of light, delicate as a butterfly, half-awake inside my ribs.

Now I ready myself to head out into the rainy night to a solstice-themed gathering where I will sing and play music with other creators from around the world. We will have representatives sharing solstice wisdom from Druidic, Jewish, Polish, Aztec, Persian, West African, and many other traditions.

All across the world, across all of time, people have always understood the importance of slowing down, honoring the cycles of our vast and mysterious planet, gathering loved ones close, looking into the sky, and letting our souls dream on this darkest of nights.

I will leave you with some questions on this theme today:

• How can you truly allow yourself to rest in this last dark part of the year?

• What kinds of rest are genuinely most nourishing for you?

• What truly recharges and re-energizes your spirit?

• When you look into the dark, what do you see?

• What stories is the dark asking you to tell?

May you have a warm and wonderful night.