The Sun is Born on the Longest Night

Joyful Practice for Dark Times

The wood stove and the dark night.

The moment of winter’s darkest edge has passed, but it's hard to imagine the return of the light. The wet-gray of a Pacific Northwest winter is a weight we carry on top of the usual heaviness of making it through each day.

This week, it's been tempting to slip into the blues. My bed calls, but I’m too busy. Rather, I make myself too busy. I told Yme I wanted a day of doing nothing, of sitting by the woodstove with a book, but when faced with the open space of an empty day, I feel overwhelmed. So I bake. I make plans with friends. Prep classes for the winter. I try to ignore the achy Chron’s feeling that makes me think I must have Covid, but no, it's just the way my body responds to grief, stress, change, allergies, illness– the inflammation leads to exhaustion, and the exhaustion is as much a part of my daily routine as brushing my teeth and eating breakfast.

The blues was close to winning when, last night, on the way to bed, I caught sight of the woodstove, a furious blur of orange and red in the nothingness of the dark room. And I was reminded of a text I’d received earlier in the day. An old neighbor and friend asked me to send her the winter solstice songs we used to sing together during the dark of the longest night. She wants to teach them to her niece.

Getting ready for bed, I hummed the song I sang with my kids when they were little, the song I sang for decades, every winter solstice, with different communities of women. The singing part of our annual ritual for releasing and calling in.

The sun was born again today

We greet the sun’s first morning rays

We sing and celebrate the light

The sun’s born on the longest night*

The neighborhood cherry trees, confused.

I told Yme I’m still shedding. So much to let go of during this year’s season of hibernation. But it's coming, the sun. In the midst of all the darkness, our bodies know the sun is returning. So do the trees and all the creatures we run into on our walks. This morning we passed by our favorite row of cherry trees. Their moss covered branches sprouting tiny blossoms. Look at that, Yme said, they must be confused. Imagine them in three months, I said. And as I said it, three months didn’t seem so long.

Which brings me to the exciting new thing Jenn and I have been brewing during these dark days, a thing we’ve created because it is the thing we both need. Starting in February, we will offer a weekly virtual writing workshop: Joyful Practice for Dark Times. We’ll come together to feel and express the hard things—grief, fear, despair—and in doing so to make room for what can heal us: delight, intuition, and connection to a shared spark.

This is a generative workshop, and each session will lead you through a progression of exercises designed to tap into the collective unconscious, share inspiration, and connect to what you need to express. There will be time to share work, discuss creative process, and learn from each other.

We want this workshop to a playful and restorative part of the week. We will post more details, including registration information, in the next couple of weeks. We hope you will join us!

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* “The Sun is Born” was written by Diane Baker