It’s Winter Solstice AND new moon in Capricorn AND Hanukkah AND Christmas … all rolled into one week.
It’s a time for loss. My grandfather died 16 years ago around this time. This year, we lost my Uncle Tom (the other one) AND Uncle Harry (after losing my Aunt Marion a few months back) in November too.
It’s also a time for facing those losses. For speaking them aloud. For voicing our regrets and casting them into the wind and the fire.
I’m at a beachside resort with myriad fire pits, so I got to do a little fire magic last night over this starfish-shaped wonder.
I threw physical sickness and financial uncertainty into these flames.
One of my witchy online guides said this week that everyone needs to “Be who you came here to become.”
I about drove into oncoming traffic at the magnanimity of that phrase.
Be who you came here to become.
I notice myself slowing down. Backing away from people who repel me. Flailing at the growing pile of unfinished projects that require me to interact with people who bruise my soul.
Now, this doesn’t mean I came here to be a hermit. I’m meant to interact with and learn from people. I just see no point in giving my energy to most of them.
My problem is knowing what I want to do and seeing no way to do it. I don’t mean reading tarot cards or writing blogs or hosting ghost tours as a living. I like money too much.
I just see the girl in Walmart with her earnest little boy and want a better life for them. And I want to figure out how to give it to them. To all of us.
Like, writing New York Times bestsellers or publishing the most successful newsletters in the biz and donating the proceeds.
I don’t actually want to do the hard work of building the programs and rallying the troops anymore.
Let me do the giving and the saying “I got this” and making sure they don’t have to digest themselves like I’m about to when I get this credit card statement from the resort.
I don’t know what any of this has to do with Solstice other than this is a time for honoring the lessons learned and the losses endured.
It’s also the last chance to sleep, really sleep. The shortest day is upon us. The darkness is supposed to restore us if we choose to rest during it.
Rest as resistance, as they say. It’s radical. Try it sometime.
This is supposed to be a working vacation, however. Yet my laptop slaps shut with the same force that my broken trunk does, even though I’m constantly THINKING.
I’m trying to figure out when I felt like I wasn’t entitled to rest. Or joy, for that matter. Like, why is it conditional.
I could have rested if I finished projects last week. But the impossible task robbed me of joy and sleep. And I wasn’t the slightest bit functional in the remaining time between working, cleaning, trying to get the trunk fixed and Honda fucking up something else in the process, as ever.
I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get restored, emotionally and physically.
I was hoping it would be achieved by staring at water. But I didn’t count on it being BUCKETFULS OF RAIN.
Oh well. Tomorrow is a new day. One with sunshine promised, at least by the local weather team.
Thank God there’s a tiki bar 30 yards away from my lanai. Maybe another few rounds of champagne and spicy margs will quiet the “you can’t enjoy this till you …” voices.
Here’s hoping that I came here to be a permanent vacationer with a frozen key lime colada in my hand as I stare at beachside fire pits.