For years, I have written some meditative and inspiring pieces about the transitioning energy of the Winter Solstice. How to guide yourself through the darkness, to see it as a metaphorical womb for the rise of new art and possibilities, to use it as a time to reflect and replenish.
Y’all, I’m just not feeling it this year.
You could blame the tire fire that was 2016, but that’s not quite it. Sure, it was a horrible mess of a year for the country and for many folks I know. Heck, I started the year off with a non-consensual full-body cleansing (flu or food poisoning), and am finishing it off with the cold that stuck around for 4 weeks. And I have a great deal of anxiety for what’s to come socially, politically, nationally, and globally. But professionally for me, it was a year marked with success and achievement. I made and sold a lot of art, I finished my first book, got a contract for the second one, and grew my career. I’m pretty good at finding the bright spot in the darkness.
I even solved the problem of holiday lights. I love tiny lights, especially outdoors, but our house doesn’t offer any easy or safe way to power them outside. Then I looked up LED solar lights, and ordered some. They came the other day finally, and the boxes are still sitting in my studio. It’s been cold, and I wasn’t feeling the drive to put them up. I also considered the amount of sun the front yard gets here in Seattle in winter and pondered the success of solar lights.
I put a wreath of greens on the front door, but the decorations don’t extend inside. Mainly because of this face here. Sam is essentially a goat in the body of an extremely agile cat. There’s nothing he can’t scale, try to eat, or destroy. And I love him dearly. I also sold off or gave away nearly all of my yuletide decorations when I moved to Seattle from Providence over 4 years ago. Minus the owl ornaments. But look at that face. That’s a face that would gladly take down ALL THE OWLS.
But my lack of engagement with the holidays isn’t Sam’s fault either. (And if I could, I’d hang those owls all year round…)
I think the root of it hit me the other night. Christmas is my Grandmother’s birthday. Nearly 4 decades of equating Christmas with Grandmom. And now she’s gone. Not just far away in physical miles or the distance being trapped in dementia creates anymore, but gone from this world. Truly, it was a relief when she did finally pass this summer, and it warms my heart to think of her reunited with Grandpop. Yet this time of year has been intricately wrapped with her existence for my entire life. I think that’s going to take a fair bit of unpacking to sort out.
The other tricky thing is that right after Christmas last year, while I was half the world away on a family trip, I received a phone call from an old friend. She shared the news that my ex-husband had died. I wasn’t surprised, even though I hadn’t spoken with him in 3 years. I had spent pretty much all 15 years of our marriage expecting it. He was both physically and mentally unwell. Both of those conditions made for a barely-behind-doors existence of near-constant verbal and emotional abuse. I felt sadness because it had sounded like maybe he had finally started to figure out how to be happy. But I was mainly overcome with relief and a release of anxiety I didn’t even realize I still had in me. That I would never run into him again, on this plane at least. Still a whole lot of overhead baggage to deal with though. But is it a root or a bramble? How many times can you set it on fire?
Fire is a thing you must work gently and respectfully with. I simultaneously want to light candles to honor the memory of Grandmom and I want a bonfire to burn down and purify the past. I want to celebrate the returning of the light and there are some things I want to bury deep in the dark, where the light will never touch it. But nothing remains buried. It becomes the soil and the seeds, it forms roots and pushes above ground. It takes in the light and changes it, taking on new forms.
I’m standing in the Garden of Winter, feeling the frost-covered earth under my feet. It’s dark here, and the roots to be chosen for the year to come need the darkness. They need to be selected without the benefit of light. They need to be touched, their rough surfaces untangled by searching hands. The roots need to sorted out from old branches with thorns, masquerading as roots. Everything needs to be felt and recognized. Old growth we don’t need anymore, that won’t grow anything else in this form. It needs to be burned and returned to the earth.
But first, time must be spent in a dark garden, making choices with inner sight.
I guess I wrote a Solstice piece after all.
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