Winter Solstice: A Return to Stillness

There comes a moment in every life when the story you have been telling yourself grows tired, not because you have failed, but because you have been living a lie. At first you feel it as exhaustion, a quiet tension, a pressure inside, as if life itself has become too tight for your breath. Eventually there is a collapse, the deep knowing that something cannot continue the way it has. This happens because long ago, very early, you learned the art of becoming someone else in order to be safe, in order to be loved.

In your youth you were taught that your natural being was not enough. So you adjusted. You polished yourself. You performed. You put on masks that were never meant to be permanent. Slowly and almost without noticing, you drifted away from the one who was born whole. You did not forget yourself because you were weak. You forgot yourself because you were trying to survive.

The Winter Solstice arrives as a mirror to this forgetting. It is the longest night, but also the most honest one. In the stillness of the darkness there is nothing to prove and nothing to perform. The ancient ones understood this deeply. They knew this night as a sacred pause, a doorway where the world rests and listens. The sun stands still, and so does the soul. In this pause, you begin to feel the weight of the masks you have been carrying. You notice the distance between your true face and the one you show the world. You begin to see how much of your life has been shaped by fear rather than by love.

When I was studying with a Lakota chief, I remember how deeply the changing of the seasons was honored, especially this one. Winter was never seen as a time to push, strive, or prove anything. It was understood as a season of deep listening and quiet transformation, a time to enter the cocoon and allow what is true to be reshaped within, so that when spring arrived, you were ready to fly. Winter was the storytelling season, when people gathered close around the fire and remembered who they were through the voices of their elders. These stories were medicine passed through generations, keeping the people aligned with their lineage, with the ancestry, and their truth. The fire itself was treated as a living spirit, a steady reminder of the light that remains within even when the sun is far away, holding the community through the longest night until its return.

These days, something essential is missing. The elders are no longer sitting by the fire, no one is there to tell you that your life is not an accident, that your strangeness is not a mistake, that the very path you are walking with all its detours, wounds, and unanswered questions  was chosen by your soul with great intelligence. No one reminds you that your struggles are not random, that they carry a secret meaning, a hidden teaching, a key meant only for you.

We have forgotten what it feels like to be held by the circle, to rest inside a living community where belonging is not earned but assumed. We have forgotten the simple truth that you belong before you do anything, before you become anything. You belong to the earth that carries you, to the trees that breathe with you, to the unseen rhythm moving through all of life. You belong to each other not because you are perfect, but because you are human. And you belong simply because you are here. 

Nothing is wrong with you, nothing has ever been wrong with you. What you have been calling anxiety, overwhelm, anger, numbness, or collapse is the body’s wisdom speaking after being ignored for too long. Your nervous system has simply been carrying more than it was ever meant to hold.

As this Solstice approaches, you are being invited to lay down the heavy costumes you once wore for protection. You are invited to release the old identities that helped you survive but no longer allow you to live. You are invited to stop negotiating your worth with the world and to feel what you have been carrying without judging it.

Let this Solstice be a turning point. Not a resolution and not a goal, but a recognition. You are not late. You are not broken. You are not failing. You are awakening. You are shedding what no longer fits. You are remembering your own intelligence, your own fire, your own voice. As the sun begins its slow return, allow your light to return as well, not as performance, but as truth. Not as who you think you should be, but as who you are.

If you feel the pull to mark this moment in presence, to pause with others, to breathe together, to listen deeply, and to be held in community, I will be offering two Winter Solstice gatherings this year. One will take place in person, and one will be held online via Zoom, so you may join in the way that feels most supportive for you.

Both gatherings offer a held space for breathwork, sound, reflection, sharing, and honest connection. They are an invitation to step out of isolation, soften the inner noise, and allow the body and heart to remember what they have always known - that what you are seeking has never been outside of you, and that sometimes all it takes is a pause to come home to yourself.

Live event:

https://www.eridu.life/event-details-registration/winter-solstice-gathering-the-light-within

Zoom event:

https://www.eridu.life/event-details-registration/winter-solstice-gathering-the-light-within-zoom-event