Tag: winter solstice

Create

Katie2 Comments

Rest assured I am writing when I can but not here. There are only so many words I can compose, and I know my limits, so I don’t prioritize this space like I used to. Today is December 21st, the Winter Solstice. The darkest day of the year. This is the week that we celebrate but also, for me, it is always the week that I put things to rest. I shut off some part of me, as my friend likes to say. The mom brain and the teacher brain and the long to-do list.

In the past ten days, I’ve had a sick child, well, then sick again. Elementary class parties, dress up theme days, gift exchanges, and teacher gifts. Two Nutcracker dress rehearsals with two Nutcracker performances coming up this weekend. Final exams for my own students with piles of grading. And another issue that is weighing enormously heavy on my heart and mind, but I cannot write all of the details here simply because it involves other people. (Nothing mysterious or dramatic or even personal, just part of the million surprises and stresses that compose a life.) It’s been a perfect storm of stress.

I was feeling it heavily on Thursday, and I texted my longtime best friend asking “Is it possible to raise two kids solo and be away from home 6:45am – 4:30 everyday?” I expected soft talk back to encourage me, but she responded with a one word NO in about 2 seconds flat. I feel this sometimes — that I’m doing the impossible and I can’t keep doing it. But look, I am. And a million other women in my situation are doing it, too. I have holidays and spring break and summer break to recalibrate which is more than many people have. I have family 25 minutes down the road when I need help and am in a pinch, and that is more than many have as well. My kids go to Dad’s four days a month, and I get that time to reset and recenter. I get child support payments on time, and many women don’t. I have lots of things that I’m grateful for, sure. But you can be grateful and also exhausted at the same time, and this is me. Raising the white flag right now to say that I’m carrying too many things, and I’m laying it down here with lines on the page.

I haven’t slept soundly in weeks. I’m out like a light every night without a problem, but the worry brain wakes me around 2am, and I have a hard time turning it off. Then the alarm rings at 5:00, and the marathon begins. Rinse repeat. I am using this last stretch of the year to let that tightness subside for me. It takes a while; I know this because I have done it before. But by the end of this week, it will fade, and I will feel human again.

I’m thinking a lot about my word for 2020. The last few years have brought Write, Intention, Trust, and Persist. I persisted in 2019 in ways that astound me in hindsight. I made things happen with sheer will and determination. The things I wanted that felt so impossible — travel with the kids, a new job, and a literary agent — happened because I wouldn’t stop until they did.

But now I am feeling the need to soften it all, to recenter and find again that pulse beneath all the madness. I’m leaning toward Create as my word to begin this new decade. I want to see 2020 as a space where I can create experiences that inspire me, writing that holds true to the promise I’ve made to myself and to others, and even create space in my life where there was none. It feels like so much of my day is a marathon, and there is no room to breathe. But stillness has to be there if I look hard enough. I’m determined to create room to breathe this year somehow.

Earlier this week, I ran across a Joyce Sutphen poem that did that thing poetry can do — harness a feeling you forgot you ever had and make you nostalgic for it.

“Those Hours”

There were moments, hours even,

when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if

a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.

I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself

walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories —

ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,

certain that my simple belief

in the light

would be enough.

 

I miss the light so much this time of year. I wake to darkness, and by the time I am home to stir dinner on the stove, it is back again. I’m ready to see the road again, to harness that simple belief in the light and know that it’s enough. Merry Christmas to you, and if these words are finding you in a dark place, my wish for you is to find the light again in 2020. I’ve passed an entire decade writing in this space. (Which is crazy to reflect on!) So many moments and so many things recorded here. Both darkness and light. A whole landscape revealed itself here for me, and there’s more to be illuminated down the road. Let’s keep going.

 

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one and the same

Katie1 Comment

It’s the Winter Solstice, a day that once upon a time would have passed me by without notice, but somehow these things are on my radar now. Funny how what you notice changes as you get older, as you yourself grow and change.

And maybe it is that what you pay attention to grows idea, but I have heard so many references to the solstice and its meaning this last couple of days — two podcasts, a few Instagram posts, and a vinyasa yoga class this morning where the meditation and the emphasis during the whole class was how to take notice of the dark and shine a little light there. (This is exactly what yoga feels like for my body throughout the whole year actually, shining a light in the dark places.)

Every single piece of me right now wants to slow it down, to go in, to rest, to sleep. But also to prepare for something new around the bend. I guess that is the whole point of wrapping up the year as the solstice arrives. Day by day, a little more light comes and our paths grow wider and longer, but right now nighttime gives us so much space to reflect and to rest and maybe to dream of what is ahead.

I’m not good at winter. The dark hours and the cold temperatures and the days that seem to move too slowly on the calendar after the holidays are over. I’m grateful we have this season to decorate the darkness with a few twinkling lights, and when we pack those up in a couple more weeks, I’m still trying hard to love what is. Light candles and watch movies and read for hours on idle afternoons under a blanket. Loving what is has not been my strong suit when that includes cold and darkness, but I’m sinking into that cocoon a little tonight to welcome what comes this next few weeks. Instead of just looking to brighter and longer days, I’m going to slow it down and give in to what the rest of nature seems to be doing without apology. From two different sources this week, I heard that question – Think about how terrible it feels to sleep with the lights on? To have some false neon light shining in your window in a poorly angled hotel room? We need the dark, it seems. For our own bodies and our own rhythms and our own sanity. I think perhaps the modern world doesn’t give us enough of it.

Every message I have heard this week seems to somehow circle around the same ideas – finding light inside the darkness, relishing the dark, accepting it, seeing things through a lens of integration rather than opposition. I heard a reference to a Khalil Gibran verse about joy and sorrow this week, and I had to look up the full verse to hear it in context. Light in the dark indeed.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain …..When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Sometimes I am not even sure which one is visiting me and which one is asleep on my bed – the joy or the sorrow. They are so interwoven that they just feel like two sides of the same coin to me now. I’ve asked this question before, but is it possible to want something new so desperately but also want things to stay exactly the same? Because that is what life feels like to me lately. Joy and sorrow, one here and one sleeping. One and the same. Light and dark.

I went through my happiness jar today. I wasn’t as regular with it this year as I have been before. But even though it didn’t reflect everyday of my past 12 months, what it revealed did not disappoint. Sorrow and joy, light and dark. Every moment I recorded, when I look a little closer, reflects a little bit of both extremes.

Jan 4 Jude talking to me while I’m in the bath with the curtain pulled shut, water getting cold but he won’t stop talking, and I can’t stop listening. His ideas about God: “I think God just wants us to be free and kind, mom.” — Jan 21 Sunny and near 70 after weeks of freezing temperatures, outside on the patio chair, sun on my face, eyes closed, I hear kids playing. — April 1 Easter Sunday, perfect weather, little cousins running and playing in the yard, Grandmother gone, but I saw a stream of light through the leaves on the big shade tree. Breeze, laughing kids. — April 22 Yoga, class full of women, so much steady rain outside the window. — June 9 He held my hand as we walked across the parking lot in the dark — June 14 Late sunlight, last swim lesson, Norah smiling proudly in the rearview mirror on the drive home. The curvy hills on Pisgah Road, gray clouds rolling in for a storm.

Can you hear that the way I do? The sorrow sleeping on the bed in every one of those joyful moments. Light in the dark and dark in the light. It’s all the same.