It’s the Solstice. Does anyone care? - #192
The day the sun stands still.
As a woman of delight and whimsy, you will not be surprised to hear I like astrology. Similar to Tarot, I find its messaging like sermons: sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn’t. But 2026 is landing. 2026 keeps popping up in the charts and the readings as one of those rare years—an “alignment year,” a year where multiple long cycles shift, a year that tastes like clarity and building and expansion. And why wouldn’t I want to believe that? After everything? After this year that felt like a long hallway with no windows, just doors I was too tired to open?
But before I speed ahead—before I start pinning my faith on the idea of a better year—there’s this hinge of a day. The Winter Solstice. The oldest holiday on earth.
Anthropologists estimate that tens of billions of humans across millennia have marked this day in some form. Billions of feet have stood where we stand now—on soil, on stone, on ice—watching the same lowest, weakest sun. Billions of people who lived entire lives, raised children, buried their elders, worked, worshipped, argued about whose turn it was to get water. And every single year, the solstice came for them too. Some of them built monoliths, tombs, and calendars of stone. Some lit fires. Some fasted. Some feasted. Most aren’t even memories now—so dead in the ground they once stood on that there’s nothing left—yet the solstice still turns like a gear, same as ever.
And now?
Most people treat it like any other day. We’re busy finishing emails, ordering gifts, wiping noses, refreshing tracking numbers, stumbling toward a finish line that feels like it’s been moving away from us all month. We forget that this day was once considered the start of the year. The cosmic reset. The moment the light begins its long return.
But I’d bet you still feel the shift. A slowing, maybe a smallness. For it feels like a need to name what I’m carrying into the next turn of the wheel.
Honoring the solstice doesn’t require a stone circle or a robe or a chant or a bonfire (though all of that sounds lovely). It doesn’t even require belief. Only participation.
A Tiny Solstice Practice for Today (takes 2 minutes):
On this shortest day, do one small thing in recognition—not for magic, not for manifestation, but to place yourself back inside the lineage of the billions who have recognized this turning.
Pick one:
Light a single candle and watch it for a full breath cycle: four in, six out. Whisper the sentence, “I welcome the light back.”
Stand at a window and look at the sky—clouded or clear. Name one thing you survived this year.
Turn off the big lights in your house tonight in honor of the dark. Light some candles. Only use one small lamp. Let your home glow.
These are just gestures, but they’re enough to say “I was here for this.” I noticed.
If 2026 truly is the bright, expansive year astrologers keep promising, then today is the doorframe. We are in the threshold, our hand on the lightswitch anticipating the quiet click before the room lights up.
We honor what we want more of.
We acknowledge what we’re moving through.
We give ourselves permission to hope again.
Happy Solstice. May your light return gently.
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You will not be surprised to learn that I woke up at 4am to light a black candle, chant, and say goodbye to this fuckery that has been 2025. LET'S GO 2026. This is really going to be the year, I feel it.
I very much care, and use this day as a kind of touchstone to find others who do too. Newgrange at dawn, a tarot spread, and candles now as the light fades - touching in to old rhythms feeling like medicine and therapy and soul-retrieval all in one.