Y’all, there are 7 days left of Blogmas. How?! I truly cannot believe that the Winter Solstice and Christmas… are next week. Plus, we are also closing in on the end of 2021. And I’m only going to be writing to you for a few more days. My mind is absolutely blown. So, to try to wrap my head around it all, I thought I’d try to get a little control by figuring out how I am going to close out this last week of Blogmas. I did a little meditating, thinking, and researching all morning long – and I think I have come up with a few plans for what I want to share with you as I wind up Blogmas this year. (Hmmm… I wonder if I wrote “this year” because I secretly want to make this an annual tradition?!).
First of all, let me prepare you: after my last Blogmas post on the 22nd (next Wednesday), I will not be posting for the rest of the year. I have decided to take the time to refill my soul and be present in the moment. Sometimes I need to remember to not always photograph and write about life, but to also live it. So, over the next week, I have to try to cram in posts about the last full moon of 2021, the Winter Solstice (and I am cooking up something special for that!), Christmas, the beginning of a new season on my rhythm of the year wheel, and whatever end-or-the-year posts I want to do. And I just feel that there is so much deep, rich magic to drop into. And 7 days is not very much time!
With that said, I am simply focusing on being totally, purely, wholly present this week.
Especially as I sit at home in my own self-imposed quarantine, it is as if I have fully aligned my life with the pace of nature. My roots are way down in the earth. Even I feel as if I am in a cave, or simply deeply burrowed, safe + warm under the surface of the earth. And I feel completely settled here. Content. Slow. With blankets, candlelight, and hot drinks. I am deep in my thoughts and feelings.
These are the absolutely darkest 7 days of the entire year. How can that not be magical? How can I not mark these days with my undivided attention?
So, with no plans except to write to you each day, to take care of simple daily chores + tasks, and to prepare for our upcoming trip to the States, I intend to fill the rest of my time with soul-seeking moments of introspection, reflection, and rest.
It is right now, you see, when it is the darkest, that it seems as if nothing is happening. That all is lost. That life is pointless and that there is no hope. That nothing will ever be ok; or if it will be, it’s so far off, there’s practically no way to hold on. That everything is simply too hard.
But, deep beneath the surface, life continues. There is action. But, it is silent, quiet, restorative action. Way down in my cave, in my cozy burrow beneath the earth, just because I am not “doing” anything, doesn’t mean I’m not doing anything. This is the deepest, most important, anchoring work that there is. This is the work that makes spring possible, that makes life possible, that is the beginning of hope.
These dark, quiet, confusing, solitary 7 days are the foundation of the year to come. I’ll be here soaking them up, one moment at a time. Waiting to see what magic, wisdom, and medicine rise up from within my soul. Listening to the messages of the dark. Simply being here. Letting the darkest 7 days of the year heal, inspire, and restore me.
Join me as we enter this last week of Blogmas. Find a way, just a short amount of time each day perhaps, to remember that these 7 days, under the midwinter moon, are the silent portal to the return of light + life. But, let’s not hurry our way through the portal, ok? Let’s just curl up, slow our breath, and trust the process of the dark winter days.
xoxo. liz.
