Winter Solstice Blessings
Winter Solstice arrives quietly. It slips in beneath the noise of the season, beneath the expectations and obligations, beneath the rush we’ve been conditioned to believe is normal. And yet its presence is unmistakable to anyone who is willing to slow down long enough to feel it.
This is the darkest night of the year… the moment the Earth reaches the peak of her descent and folds entirely into herself. There is a silence in this darkness, like the world right after freshly fallen snow. A stillness most of us have never given ourselves permission to feel. But there is a part of us, maybe buried incredibly deep, that recognizes it.
Darkness has never been the enemy. It is where every beginning takes shape. Before there is light, there is the void. Before birth, there is the womb. Before clarity, there is the descent. The Solstice reflects this truth back to us with an honesty that feels almost startling once you finally let yourself notice it. This is the feminine principle embodied through the rhythm of the Earth herself… a time of gestation, intuition, surrender, and deep inner listening. It is the season where creation is conceived long before it ever becomes visible.
Last winter was when this truth really landed in my body. Living in the mountains, I began to deeply appreciate the dramatic seasons as a living mirror. The shorter days, the snow, the silence… they reflected an internal movement I’d spent years overriding. It became clear that the seasons outside aren’t separate from us, they are an external outpicturing of what is also happening within.
But we are a culture that fears the dark. We’re taught to avoid the quiet places within ourselves, to bypass discomfort, to stay in motion, to stay productive, to smile through the hollowness, and to pretend we are fine. And so, every December, when our bodies begin to slow, when our emotions rise closer to the surface, when the weight of the year presses into us, we assume something is wrong. We blame the holidays, the stress, the family dynamics, the obligations. We tell ourselves to push through. We override the signals. We numb the discomfort. We silence the inner voice asking us to pause.
But the darkness of winter is not the problem. It’s the mirror. It’s the season that reveals what we’ve been carrying. It brings forward the emotions we’ve avoided. It surfaces the shadows we haven’t yet faced. It presses gently, or sometimes forcefully, into the places we’ve abandoned within ourselves. Not to punish, but to free. Winter invites us into deeper honesty. It draws us inward to meet the grief we’ve tucked away, the truths we’ve ignored, the patterns we’ve outgrown but still cling to out of familiarity.
In a world that celebrates perpetual summer… constant output, constant brightness, constant doing… I invite you to remember to allow an internal winter. A season to step back, to soften the pace, to nourish what’s been depleted, and to spend more time with your inner landscape. The suffering doesn’t come from the season or the darkness or the feeling. It comes from the disconnect between what your system is asking for and what you believe you should be able to push through.
If you’re feeling heavy, emotional, tender, or exhausted during this time of year, consider this an invitation to turn toward it rather than away. Winter doesn’t ask us to bypass what’s surfacing or distract ourselves from it—it asks us to feel it. What rises now is often what has been waiting a long time to be acknowledged, felt, and finally released. This is how winter clears what no longer needs to be carried.
On this Winter Solstice, may you give yourself permission to rest, to descend, to listen, and to trust what is quietly forming beneath the surface. May your inner winter be honored. May your roots grow deep. And may the light return in its own perfect time.
Wishing you a beautiful, gentle Solstice 🤍
