An Ode to Winter Solstice
I didn’t mean to get existential, but here we are.
I’ve never understood why so many people look at Spring as the time for new beginnings. To me it feels more the end of the beginning.
It’s December 21, 2025 as I write this. Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. For me, this is the start of my new beginning. The trees and the grasses have fallen asleep, birds are migrating, animals are hibernating. I sit in my bedroom, my small sanctuary, and I untangle every root that has grown and twisted since January 1st.
I stay up late, to the detriment of my sleep schedule, and I sort through what I want to hold onto and what I don’t. Some things will come with me into the new year, and some will not.
I’m not the same person I was this time last year, and it’s the best I can do to hope that this is a good thing and not a bad one.
I’ve been worried lately about my lack of motivation to write. It’s not that I have nothing to say, in fact the complete opposite is true. It’s that I have too much to say and so my heart and my mind have been getting overwhelmed when this is the time of year that everything inside of me slows down, rests, and tries to decide what is necessary to bring into the future.
Lately I’ve been finding old wounds, roses that contained thorns too small for me to notice until I picked it up and started bleeding.
My heart screams often, like the wind blowing, “why are we picking apart the things that tried to destroy us” whether they happened this year or ten years ago, and my mind takes a deep breath and replies, “this is how we understand our survival and decide if the methods will serve us as well later if needed.”
Maybe I’m being melodramatic, but this is what winter feels like to me. A quiet renewal. The calm before the storm, like the last few moments before a new soul is birthed and brought earth-side.
From now until Spring I will burrow inside myself, take a personal inventory, and hopefully come out with even more things to write about once my own hibernation is over.
xo grace
This is really beautiful and grounded, especially the way you frame winter as reflection instead of loss.
Do you feel like the quiet you’re in right now is less about a lack of motivation, and more about something new slowly taking shape beneath the surface?
I love the idea of using winter hibernation as a time for reflection. It took me a long time to learn that optimal performance has rest built in. And that it's OK to step back and reflect on where we're putting our energy and what might be holding us back.