It is the season of stillness, when the Earth folds into herself, blanketed in dormancy, resting until the first whispers of spring. The cold arrives like a stern teacher, unyielding and clear, reminding all that to live in alignment with the rhythms of nature is to prepare, to tend, to honor the cycles. Without foresight, one might fall to hunger, to frost, to illness. The days grow brief, shadows stretching endlessly, and the world seems as though it has forgotten the warmth of the Sun.

Yet, even in the depths of this long, dark night—this Winter Solstice—there hums a quiet truth: the Sun will return. The Earth knows this. Our ancestors knew this. The light will once again tiptoe into the world, stretching its fingers into the soil, awakening seeds and spirits alike.

How, then, do we ready ourselves for this return of light? What offerings do we place upon our altars of becoming? How do we prepare the soil of our lives to welcome the sprouting of what we long to grow, even as the weight of unfinished stories and old regrets lingers in the shadows?

Our ancestors understood that in order to receive, we must first release. They marked this time with ceremony, visioning, and sacred transitions—rites that guided one from the fullness of life as Mother to the reflective wisdom of Crone, from the striving of spiritual adulthood into the deep-rooted stillness of elderhood.

In winter’s embrace, when food stores run low and the world asks us to move closer to the hearth, we are taught to live sparingly, wisely, attuned to what truly sustains us. It is a time of composting—letting die what no longer serves so that fertile ground may emerge beneath the frost. It is a season of dreaming, of honoring the sparseness so that new life can one day take hold.

The Solstice invites us to track our own Becoming, to listen for the cracking and turning of the seeds within the Earth’s belly and our own. What whispers in winter’s dreams? What waits to be born with the thaw? This, to me, is the heart of ritual tending—the tending of both release and renewal, the liminal space where the soul stretches toward awareness, connection, and a deeper relationship with the more-than-human world.

Together, at The Twilight Lodge, we’ll step into the rich darkness of this threshold, welcoming the light as both a guide and a promise. This is a time to allow ourselves to be transformed—drawn closer to the Earth, to each other, and to the wisdom of the cycles that cradle us.