The light has reached its lowest point.
Tonight, the dark lingers a little longer, stretching itself across the land like a thick wool blanket. And instead of resisting it, I’m learning how to rest inside it. To trust it. To let it hold me.
Winter solstice always feels like a quiet remembering. A pause carved into the wheel of the year. Not an ending exactly—more like a still point. A sacred inhale before the light begins its slow return.
This season asks very little of us, and yet it asks everything.
It asks us to soften.
To slow our pace until it matches the earth’s.
To tend the inner hearth when the outer world feels cold and dim.
I notice how my body wants warmth—thicker sweaters, heavier soups, more time near the fire. How my hands crave making… knitting, baking, mending. How my spirit wants silence more than stimulation. Candlelight over overhead light. Ritual over routine. Presence over productivity.
Yule reminds me that darkness is not something to fear. It is fertile. Protective. Alchemical. Seeds need the dark to become anything at all.
I think about how much of my own becoming has happened here—below the surface, unseen. How many versions of myself have been composted in winters past. How much wisdom has come from the quiet, from the waiting, from learning not to rush the thaw.
The animals know this.
The trees know this.
The moon, waxing and waning, knows this too.
Everything alive changes with the seasons—or it does not survive them.
So tonight, I let myself change.
I release what no longer needs to be carried into the light ahead. Old stories. Old pressures. Old expectations of who I thought I needed to be. I honor the grief and the growth that live side by side in this season. I thank them both.
I light a candle—not to banish the dark, but to befriend it. To sit with it. To remind myself that even the smallest flame matters. Especially now.
Because tomorrow, almost imperceptibly, the days will begin to lengthen again. The light will return the way it always does—slowly, patiently, on its own time.
And so will I.
For now, I rest.
I listen.
I tend what is tender.
Rooted in rhythm.
Nourished by nature.
Blessed Yule, and welcome back, sweet light.
