Solstice Reflections 2011 is an online gathering of reflections by seven lovely women on the spirit of winter and the migration from darkness to light. My hope is that they may offer you a momentary respite from a sometimes hectic season, allowing you to sit with your own reflections as you enter your personal winter. Click here for all posts to date.
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Winter Solstice is my True North holiday. Every year my family creates a fire outside in the firepit and writes what we're releasing on little slips of paper and when the fire is nice and hot, and it has become very dark, we toss in our scraps of paper and say goodbye to the darkness, the year that has past, and our old ways. I have loved hearing my six year old prepare for what he wants to release, which this year includes fear of new experiences and anxiety about living in a new town.
photo by Elke May Glendenning
In celebration of letting go of the old, I designed a ritual called The Mother of All Releasings Ceremony. When the idea came to me, I envisioned a critical mass of people, who had never done a ritual such as the one my family does on Winter Solstice, releasing individual and collective fear and pain, and so I shared the idea with my blog readership and a movement toward this was born. In working with women in SouLodge, my online e-course, I've heard that so many of us are carrying thoughts, fears and feelings that are no longer useful to them. When forward movement is desired, these old voices and modes of being appear as resistance to change, and obstacles to growth. I created a recipe for them to make a releasing bundle to throw into the fire on Solstice, and that can be found right here.
photo by Stacy de la Rosa
I am a communal, village-loving woman. I love to chatter and harvest the ripest berries with those around me. Winter Solstice is a time of quiet reflection for me, during the season when the light is slowly making it's way back-back into the northern hemisphere, back into my consciousness, back into the collective. For just a short while, it's a time to stop the chatter and the business of planting and harvesting, to sit in gratitude and the wisdom of lessons learned during the year, to let go of all that has become dark, and step cleanly into the light and the new creative year.
2012 is a powerful year to let the old ways go and step fully into creative self-expression and abundant support for our dreams from All That Is. It is a time for visionaries to create reality.
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Pixie Campbell is a mixed-media artist, traditional crafter, workshop leader and mama who is passionately dedicated to shedding old skins and helping others do the same.
www.pixiecampbell.com
www.soulodge.com
