Solstice greetings. It’s the end of 2023, almost the shortest day of the year and longest night. A time of completions, contemplations, and reflections in the midst of gatherings, celebrations and traditions. The dark time of year, and the quiet time. Nature’s way. As part of nature, we have a rhythm within us as well. We have a wildness that many of us have been conditioned to override and ignore. Yet it’s there, beneath the stories, ‘shoulds’, identities, efforting and overthinking.
I’ve been answering the call of my soul the last few weeks to sit with deep internal questions and unknowns. Who am I? What is my deepest desire? What is joy in a world with so much pain and suffering? What is it the herd really wants to share, and how can I facilitate that?
To be honest, I don’t know. And perhaps that’s just where I need to be in this season of long nights. The unknown. Into the void within I have been, and am very much allowing myself to be.
If there’s anything the herd’s wisdom continues to point me toward, it’s the innate wisdom of our bodies and the allowing of what is. The allowing of ourselves, right here, in this very moment. To feel at peace, be angry, cry, feel overwhelming joy, feel frustrated, or simply feel overwhelmed. To feel what is true. Allowing, with awareness. The horses allow themselves to honor their bodies and their nature. Without judgment! When they are scared, they run. Eat when they are hungry. Claim space or walk away when they want to. Poop when it’s time. Relax in the sun together.
It feels like a radical act of undoing, connecting with the inner unknown, and allowing the rhythm of wildness within. There’s something profoundly beautiful about that to me, even in the discomfort. Self honoring is arising in the emptiness to do what my body wants and needs. Taking baths at odd times, dancing with the dogs, meditating with the horses, sitting in the woods, writing when it feels good, eating when my body is hungry. I’m finding that just like the horses, my body has a nature that is leading me, moment by moment. Our bodies know the path that our soul deeply desires. And that feels more and more like a path than any other answer to my internal questioning.
Allowing ourselves to be in the unknown can be scary. The uncertainty feels overwhelming at times to me. Yet it also feels like a necessary and integral part of creation. I’m finding a beautiful freedom in it.
The trees must release their leaves and remain bare for nearly half the year, letting the nourishment drop to ground, to their roots. They don’t know when the next storm will arrive, what next year holds, or when a great wind will sweep through and knock them down. Although research is showing that actually in their roots deep in the earth’s soils the trees are intimately connected, and know quite a bit more than we ever realized.
And perhaps just like the trees, we can’t push ourselves to always be producing, achieving, getting the outcome. It’s not the way of nature. We don’t know when the next storm will arrive, what next year holds, or when a great wind will sweep through our lives. Yet just maybe, in the depths of the unknown within, we too are intimately connected, and know quite a bit more than we ever realized.
In this season of solstice, and holy days, as we bring light inside our homes to celebrate our cultural and religious traditions, may we also bring the light of our awareness within. May joy, heart connection, and peace be yours. May it be a magical time of undoing as we honor ourselves and our loved ones, allowing an experience of being alive. In all the messiness and truth, the wholeness already is.
With love,
Elizabeth and the herd