This is a damn strange time to make plans for renewal.
Today there is scarcely
a dwelling-place I could recognize;
what was in flood
is all ebbing.
‘Tis the season to read ninth century Gaelic poems.
Oh, wait, is that just me?
Well, I always told my mother I would never be popular because I could never be like the other girls.
That’s what I said thirty years ago as a middle schooler with (undiagnosed) depression. Now, I’m the mother of a middle schooler, and we’re wiser about what depression is and we’re watching for its signs in ourselves and in loved ones as 2021 fades into 2022.
This year, I am aware of a heaviness in the air that seems to mute the lights on the tree and makes my old favorite songs sound a little off-key. I’ve been trying to push it away and stay busy, to keep smiling and keep planning so that mom’s optimism can carry my spiritually eclectic family through our sacred cluster of holidays: the Winter Solstice, Christmas, the College Bowl games, the New Year, and the Feast of the Epiphany.
And, of course, as an entrepreneur who offers what has become an annual event to reflect on the passing year and envision the year to come, I really need to find the joy and possibility and turn on my megawatt grin in the midst of the “bleak midwinter.”
But really… do I? And honestly, can I?
Are We Ready for the Return of the Light?
This December, the tears are closer to the surface than they have been in memory. (You may be feeling the same, even if the gratitude and the hope are right there at the surface, too.)
It’s the usual grief and longing that comes with the holiday memories. In our house, this is the first Christmas my husband and I will have with both of our moms gone.
And, of course, it’s the news of the new variant and how ill-equipped our nation and our global community are in the face of it. It’s the deepening divisions as public health becomes a matter of personal belief, rather than devotion to collective well-being. It’s the long weekend I spent in bed after my Covid booster, feverish and achy. It’s the call that family members were exposed and cannot be here on Christmas Eve.
And, it’s this time of year when we are all ready to celebrate the return of the light.
The question is, are we just that jazzed up about the lengthening days or are we just yearning for relief from a darkness that has become too long, too dense, too real?
To make our celebration of the returning light into something meaningful, we need to be willing to see the reality all around us. We need to acknowledge the darkness and reckon with the fact that none of this is just a story about the color of the sky.
Because really, what’s the big deal about a few more minutes of daylight in an already well-lit room?
At the time of the Winter Solstice, we’re supposed to be feeling the hollowness, and even the sorrow and the uncertainty at this time of year. (And this is when we remember we live in a great big world, and our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are having a distinctly different and yet utterly related experience right now.)
Here, where nights are long and days are preoccupied with last minute work and preparations for holiday cheer, the difficult feelings are more accessible than ever.
And yes, we need to give ourselves a chance to acknowledge and speak them aloud, even when we’re more afraid than ever before that the hollowness of sorrow and uncertainty will take over if we dare stop smiling.
A Different Way to Look at the Solstice In What’s Another Very Different Year
The business as usual, festivities as expected, planning as proscribed model just doesn’t seem to work any more.
This isn’t admitting defeat or refusing to try to put on a brave face.
Taking a moment (or more) to pause and be with the reality of our current darkness feels utterly necessary right now. It’s the only way to be in integrity. It’s the only way to make way for magic and renewal in the new year.
Here, for those of us in the midst of the darkest point in the year, this is the time to sit with the weight of the shadows and in the presence of our fears.
For me, that looks like pouring an extra cup of tea and revisiting an ancient poem by an Irish woman from West Cork who went by the name of Digde. This is a time to listen to the sad song of a woman who declares, “I have had my day with kings, drinking mead and wine; now I drink whey-and-water among shriveled old hags.”
This is the voice of the Cailleach, the goddess of the Celtic world who danced through centuries of youth before she sat upon a great stone by the sea to contemplate the painful mysteries of aging. She’s worn out after having done all that work, shaping the mountains with stones from her apron, and playing Sovereignty Goddess and sacred consort to so many kings. Worn out, but still longing for those days when she sat in the center of the light.
This is a deeply human look at the Sacred Hag. She doesn’t always feel like an intimate friend, but at the Winter Solstice, she’s holding up a divine mirror and allowing us all to pause and be with our own laments and our longings. She holds space for us as we mourn what has ebbed away, even as she still holds space for the memories of the “flood” of energy and possibility that used to fill her life.
A creature who has seen so many seasons, the Cailleach reminds us that all of that light, energy, and possibility, of course, will fill our skies once again. And yet, also being the ultimate elder who is reaching the close of her long life, she also reminds us that even the greatest parties eventually end.
This is a time of great contradiction, when light is so scarce here in the Northern Hemisphere but when holiday abundance (and excess) are even more obvious than the sun in the sky.
We Can Welcome the Light When We Also Make Space for the Lingering Darkness
The wise folk I’m talking to all tend to agree: it’s hard to trust someone who just wants to play the “good vibes only” game and ride their eggnog buzz right into the “best year ever” on January 1.
There is unfathomable hope, light, and possibility in 2022, but the days are still short, the night is still long, and there’s a staggering amount of uncertainty wrapped in the years to come.
It’s in that spirit of hope for the light and awareness of the darkness that I offer my end-of-year online retreat, A Sovereign Way.
I couldn’t believe in any visioning for the future practice that wasn’t grounded in our both our power and our pain, and I don’t think you could either.
When we gather together to imagine the year to come, we’ll begin by grounding into who we are now and who we have been throughout 2021 and through all the years before. We ask the sparks of “the world as it is” to light the new blaze of “the world as it could be.”
And we’re going to call on the Cailleach, the wise, ever-changing, earth-shaping Cailleach to be our guide.
Would you like to join us?
The half-day event is happening at noon ET on Wednesday, December 29.
