Solstice Simmerings: The Summer of Dwelling
Making June Magic: A mid-year check-in, review, ritual, and reflection
This post extends the Making December Magic series.
Dearly beloved Enchantable readers,
We are halfway through the year. Can you believe it?
How is the mid-year unfolding for you?
It feels like not so long ago we were making December magic. The year has been turning and cycling, and here we are in June.
Today’s offering is an invitation to review.
To celebrate and honor.
And to re-affirm and re-commit to our paths.
Feel the warmth of the sun radiating from each cell in your body,
The warmth of your body coming from the sun, through its rays, through the food you eat.
Without the sun, we couldn’t exist. The sun gives us life.
Feel yourself on this spinning planet, just the right distance from the sun for the conditions of life to flourish.
Look around you and see all that is possible from the energy of the sun.
Gratitude to the sun.
If you were with me in December (thank you for being with me! :), I offered the Making December Magic series which worked with the energy of the winter solstice1 and the end of the calendar year. For me, honoring the solstices and equinoxes is an important way I honor and stay attuned with the rhythms of life, a moment to recognize how our own internal rhythms are connected with and part of these much bigger cosmic rhythms. Honoring theses cycles connects me to my ancestors who were more connected with the land and these cosmic turnings.
We are now at the midway point, the summer solstice, halfway around the sun. We planted seeds on the darkest day, and now it is time to return to them to see what has grown.
What has taken root.
What is bearing fruit.
What didn’t grow that wants a second chance.
What didn’t grow that is ready to be let go of to compost.
So today, I offer this little slice of solstice magic reflection-action for you. This is nonlinear, though I do encourage reflection and release early in the process, to make space for what you want to call in. As always, do as much or little as you want, and make it your own. If you do, let me know how it goes for you!
The moment of the solstice is 2:50pm Costa Rica time (4:50pm eastern/1:50pm Pacific) on July 20th (the day this will reach your inbox), but these rituals can be done anytime around this day, and don’t need to be done in one moment (they can be stretched out over a few days).
Make a solstice altar
You could do this at any point during the process, or consider it preparation. Altar-making is a creative act of honoring and reflecting and celebrating the solar energies and calling them in (I’ve written a lot about altars, such as here, and you can search the word on my substack and find lots about them).
To honor the sun, you could include a candle (safely lit and always attended), a yellow cloth, flowers, and anything else you have that symbolizes solar energies. I made mine with Daphne (highly recommend this activity with children! It is so fun to do together), and she created some models out of clay and drew a picture for it. I added words from my wishes below (joy, delight, dwell, slow, peace. And my word of the year, EXPAND - I added my vision board to the altar, which usually sits on my regular altar space). If you have written your spell out, you could place a copy on the altar (on nice paper and with your favorite pen, even better!). Since it is also a full moon in Capricorn, you could also add items that honor the moon (such as selenite stone) and Capricorn (the great celestial goat).
Review and Reflect
If you cast a solstice spell or did an end-of-year process (mine or your own), review it. Read it again. See how it’s going. (If you didn’t, you can simply reflect on your life since the end of December).
As you read it, note: what still resonates? What have you already achieved or made manifest?
Take some time to freewrite (or think) about the following questions:
What are the themes that have been present in your life these past 6 months? What themes are alive right now? (I will share my own reflections on this below).
What have you accomplished, achieved? What has been going well?
What has come to fruition? What feels like it is reaching its climax or apex? What seeds that you planted have taken root?
For the things that haven’t yet come to pass:
What do you still want to work on and carry forth? Replant and reaffirm? How can you make this a priority in the next six months?
What feels like it is no longer a dream and is ready to be let go of?
Looking forward, what do you want to prioritize in the next six months of your life?
The solstice (especially coupled with a full moon) marks a big energetic shift. What is the energy you want to bring into the second half of your year?
We change, and our dreams change, too. It is perfectly fine, normal, natural, and appropriate to have yearned for something six months ago that no longer feels like a desire, that no longer fits. See if anything in your spell or list fits that description, and feel free to let it go. Don’t feel like you need to keep working on it just because you declared it then.
Revise, recite, or recast your spell
If you have changes to make to your spell, consider editing it or writing a new one (for additional guidance, revisit the winter solstice post). As for me, my spell still resonates, and I have just been re-reading it this week to sink the intentions deeper into my being.
Celebrate!
The solstice is a time of celebration of culminations. Celebrate the first half of the year, the turning of this wheel. Acknowledge how far you have come these past 6 months, and what you have received and achieved. The day of the solstice, which happens to be a full moon this year (the first of two full moons in Capricorn we receive this month), is a beautiful time to gather with beloveds, dress up, dance, howl, sing, and otherwise be merry. It’s a beautiful day to make offerings to the earth, to pay it forward in some way, to express gratitude and abundance in material ways through sharing our bounty.
Take action
The unseen world loves it when we are serious about our dreams. We can show how serious we are by taking action, however small. Think of something material you can do towards the things you are committing to.
My mid-year reflections
The solstice coincides with the end of the academic year here (though classes ended a few weeks ago, I just submitted final grades and am slowly coming up from the pile of work that has accumulated at the end of year). Some themes that have been up for me this year include:
Boundaries: so much around boundaries. “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously,” says the great Prentis Hemphill (who has a new book and podcast out, both of which you should check out). The past six months challenged me to put some firm boundaries down in various aspects of my life, and while it was really hard work, I am also really glad I did. Boundaries are love.
The harm of conflict avoidance; the gift of conflict transformation: So much harm is done when we let conflicts linger or don’t address them directly and constructively. They will inevitably explode if we don’t. Dealing with conflict is challenging, but when we don’t deal with it and hope it will just go away, it will just continue to fester. At the same time, when we step into addressing conflicts constructively and directly, it can be so life-giving and life-affirming. All of this might sound obvious for someone who teaches peace and conflict studies to say, but it bears repeating and is not the norm in many settings or communities.
The harm of gossip; the healing power of clear and open communication: Related to the above point, so much harm can be done when communication is not clear (or just doesn’t happen) Here I am mainly referring to organizations and institutions, although this certainly applies to other relationships and groups of people. Lack of clear and open communication creates a culture of gossip, which also tends to create a culture of fear and misinformation. Freely flowing open lines of communication is the antidote, and helps create a much healthier culture.
Some things I am thinking about personally for the second half of the year:
One thing that is on my list that I haven’t made happen yet is a writing retreat or residency. This is still a deep yearning, so I renew my commitment to carving out the space for this. In the process of writing this post, in the spirit of taking action, I started searching, and found a writing retreat center located right up the road from me in Costa Rica! I have reached out to them to see what their schedule looks like for the rest of the year (this is what I mean by small steps to take action).
I have also realized recently that I need to get better and clearer about talking about what I do and what I offer. This is so hard! An Enchantable reader request: if you were going to describe what I do and what I offer in a sentence or a few, what would you say? Often others can see our gifts better than we can, and I bet you can name this better than I can. If something comes to you, drop me a line (reply to this email or leave a comment). I will probably be writing about it at some point this summer, so there will be other opportunties to share.
Energetically, the academic year ended on a hard and heavy note on many levels and for many reasons (see previous posts from the past several months for more about this). It was also so hectic and full, overly so. So I am using the solstice as a chance to be intentional about how I want this energy to shift and how I want to feel.
I am shedding heaviness, dropping what isn’t mine to carry.
I am protecting myself from panic and stress and urgency that are not mine.
I am calling in joy and delight in the small things, like the rain on my roof on a rainy season afternoon, a clean house (thank you, Yensi!), and beautiful flowers outside my kitchen window.
I am asking the rain to help clear, to wash away what needs to go.
I am calling in peace in my steps, reminding myself that despite all the challenges, it is possible and necessary to cultivate peace in every step, as my dear teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has taught me. I come back to my steps.
I come back to a slower pace. I welcome it. I celebrate it. I make space for it. I dwell in it. May this be the summer of dwelling. I am coming back to the dharma name I was given when I ordained, True Earth Dwelling2. Dwelling is healing.
I resist the urge to fill the spaciousness beyond classes and grades, and make some space just to sit and be. I protect this space, knowing others will try to fill it for me.
This feels like enough. It is enough and I am enough. You are, too!
How I am celebrating this week:
I am having an astrology reading with my beloved Katina Castillo of Celestial Revelations! I can’t recommend having your birth chart read, and Katina is so gifted and intuitive in this work. Her calendar is open and you can book a session here (I have a dream of having her as a guest on Enchantable to talk about the revolutionary power of astrology for peace, justice, and social change! One of the seeds I am planting for second half of 2024 - stay tuned :)
I am getting a massage and some energy work - essential for end-of-academic-year composting and letting go, and refreshing my energy to aprovechar and disfrutar3 the “summer”4 months :)
Sending Juneteenth micro-reparations: if you are white and from the US, it is a good week to engage in micro-reparations in honor of the Juneteenth holiday (though every day is a good day for this, too). Send micro-reparations to Black friends, support Black businesses and organizations, support Black authors - there are many ways to engage.
I celebrated submitting my final round of grades for the 2023-24 academic year with a frappe, chocolate cake, and reading an article that had been sitting on my desk for a few weeks that I hadn’t had the time or space to read.
I encourage you to give yourself the gift of self-love this week and celebrate in the ways that would feel most nourishing to you! And find ways to share any abundance you are experiencing in your life - share material resources, move funds, share food, make donations. The solstice is a time for celebrating abundance, and sharing it is one of the best ways we can celebrate, honor it, and keep it flowing.
Sending you solstice blessings,
Steph5
P.S. Celebrate with music! Here’s a favorite song about the sun, Laugh as the Sun by Rusted Root, and obviously Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. What are some of yours? I feel a playlist coming on…
I am writing from the perspective of the northern hemisphere. If you are in the southern hemisphere, you’ll be working with the winter solstice now.
Definitely forthcoming post about this.
Aprovechar is loosely in English “to take advantage of” but I don’t love that translation. We don’t really have an English equivalent which is why I love the word so much. To take advantage of something sounds kind of sleazy; aprovechando is in a much different spirit. Disfrutar is to enjoy or have fun, but again, I feel like the word is just better in Spanish :)
“Summer” because there are no classes but it is not summer weather and we are in full-on rainy season here and everything is weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet and humid and moldy already :)
Someone recently asked me if I like to be called Steph (I was so grateful for the question!). Yes, I actually love to be called Steph! The people who love me who have known me the longest only call me Steph. So if you are here, dear reader, that invitation extends to you, too! I almost always introduce myself as Stephanie but I really, really love to be called Steph. Fun fact!