A Winter Solstice Invitation
Audio Version:
Today marks the Winter Solstice, the longest night, the deepest exhale of darkness before the light begins its slow return. I’ve been sitting with this threshold all week, feeling into what it means to stand at this pivot point where the year quite literally turns on its axis.
There’s something both humbling and empowering about this moment. The solstice will happen whether we mark it or not. The earth continues her ancient dance around the sun, indifferent to our calendars and celebrations. And yet, when we choose to pause and honor this turning, lighting candles, gathering with loved ones, speaking our intentions into the dark, we participate in something profound. We’re not controlling the seasons, but we’re claiming agency over how we meet them. We’re saying: I choose to be awake for this. I choose to make meaning from this darkness.
This year, I’m working with a simple mantra that feels like medicine: “We have turned the year.”
Not I-but we. Because none of us makes this journey alone. We turn together, held by the same spinning earth, breathing under the same stars. There’s comfort in that collective turning, isn’t there? In knowing that your darkness is my darkness, and the returning light belongs to us all.
Recently, I’ve felt this “we” in such a literal way. In the past month, I’ve stood under very different skies, watching the soft gold sun slip behind the rooftops of Paris, tracing its shy appearance through London’s winter clouds, and meeting its low, otherworldly arc across Iceland’s snowy horizon. In each place, I felt disoriented and exhilarated in that particular way travel brings, and yet the sky kept finding me. The same moon that rose over the Thames was the one I’d watched from my corner of the sea at home. The same sun that painted Iceland’s steam and snow in a thin band of light is the sun that rises for you, wherever you are. It keeps reminding me: no matter where we roam, we share the same light and the same darkness. We are already connected, Paris, London, Iceland, your living room, my seaside, all stitched together under one sun, one moon, one turning year.
Here’s something I’ve been exploring that feels revolutionary in its simplicity: reclaiming the twelve days between Winter Solstice (December 21st) and New Year’s Day as a sacred container for transition.
Our ancestors knew something we’ve forgotten-that transformation doesn’t happen in a single midnight moment. It needs time to unfold, to root, to become real in our bones. These twelve days offer us that spaciousness.
Katherine May writes about how ritual gives us the “fleeting impression” of control. But I think she’s pointing to something even more beautiful—ritual doesn’t give us control over life’s seasons, but it allows us to feel like co-creators in how we dance with them. We become partners with time rather than victims of it.
This Solstice, I’m not trying to control the darkness or hurry the light. I’m simply saying yes to being present for the turning. To marking it with my whole heart. To trusting that even in the deepest night, something in us knows how to turn toward dawn.
We have turned the year, dear ones. We’ve made it to this threshold once again. And tomorrow, when the light begins its return so slowly we won’t even notice at first, we’ll be here for it. Awake. Aware. Together. Under one sky, sharing one sun and one moon, each in our own place and yet somehow side by side.
From my corner of the sea to wherever you are reading this, I’m sending you Solstice blessings. May your rituals, however simple, remind you of your own agency. May the twelve days ahead offer you exactly the bridge you need. And may the returning light find you ready, not perfect, just wonderfully, bravely present.
With love and winter magic,
Sarah
P.S. If you feel called to share your Solstice rituals (here are some ways you can celebrate the Winter Solstice), I’d love to hear from you. Sometimes the most powerful magic happens when we witness each other’s practices.
