Solstice Reflection

For as long as I can remember, I've felt a deep connection with the meaning behind the Winter Solstice. Today, on the shortest day of the year, I find myself a little melancholy but also expectant. As each day passes, the light will return...

It is possible that my connection to the Winter Solstice has much more to do with my roots. Growing up in Wisconsin, in those long, dark, cold, windy winters, I remember how it felt to long for warmth and sunlight. My Swedish cousins have numerous traditions on this day, as their geographic location is greatly affected by the season and the tilt of the earth. The Winter Solstice can certainly have great meaning depending on where your warm home is located.

This is a holiday to contemplate the year and rejoice in the light that will be returning.

At the beginning of 2022, I clearly laid out my hopes and plans for the new year. After closing the chapter on my cancer treatment in late 2021, I knew that my 2022 goals would need to be meaningful. I always pick a word or phrase to use as a mantra in the new year. Healing was my word for 2022- mental, emotional, and physical healing. In the spring, I hiked beautiful mountains in Utah with my new found breast cancer iRise friends. The trip was beyond cathartic, and words can't describe how important the trip was to my overall healing. In the summer, I went back to the Swedish "motherland" with my beautiful family to soak up time with my Swedish cousins and culture during their beautiful long, warm, light filled summer days. In the fall I was connected with a friend of a friend that needed cancer support, advice, love and connection. We talked for hours and hours on the phone and FaceTime until fate stepped in and allowed us to meet in October. In the winter, I found that a loved one was losing her long fought battle with cancer. And this last part of 2022 has been particularly hard... Witnessing someone so young come to terms with their own mortality is so scary and humbling.

Death is a sentence that no one escapes.

And this is what I think the winter solstice is all about. It is a still point. "The place of caught breath." A place to contemplate.

I don't know if I have any real words of wisdom, only my simple thoughts and the need to share that I am really really struggling on this Winter Solstice with my feelings on life, death, and what comes next.

May the new found light bring us comfort, joy, and the reminder that a new season is coming.

Namaste.

Grebbestad, Sweden - Summer 2022