Why I honor the solstice
and an invitation to join me
Dear beloved Enchantable readers,
If you have been around here a while, you have heard me talk about the solstices and equinoxes a lot. Friday, June 20th, marks the solstice - summer in the northern hemisphere, winter in the southern.
You might be reading this and thinking that celebrating the solstice is a bit woo (whatever that means). It’s not not true.
But.
It is also so much more than that.
So.
Last year I shared about some ways that I practice honoring the summer solstice. Today I wanted to share a few reasons why I love to honor the solstices and equinoxes, why this is a liberatory and healing practice, and an invitation to join me.
I started honoring the winter solstice by making december magic some years ago, and once you start honoring one point of the wheel of the year, it only makes sense to honor the others (this happens with the moon, too - once you honor one part of the cycle, like the full moon, it leads eventually to honoring the full cycle). One part of the cycle is a gateway to the rest of the cycle. It has become a core practice in my life.
As my dear friend, peace educator, and restorative justice practitioner Amanda Munroe talks about1, there is a particular beauty in celebrating circular time. So many of our celebrations in modern culture are about peaks and valleys (and mostly peaks, at that): births and deaths; graduations, marriages (the celebrations lean heavily towards the peaks - I think we could benefit by celebrating the valleys better, like becoming newly single, our failures, etc.). Honoring the solstices and equinoxes is about honoring the cycle, the circle - and coming back to it, again and again. It breaks us out of the linear time of modernity.
Honoring the wheel of the year, for me, has become a practice of ancestral reclamation. My ancestors - mostly from present-day Ireland, Scotland, England, and Germany - arrived as settlers to the United States, mostly in the second half of the 1800s, with Protestant roots. But somewhere down the line, when they were connected with the lands they came from, they would have honored the wheel of the year and other natural cycles. Honoring and celebrating the solstices and equinoxes is a way of connecting with these ancestral practices even though they weren’t passed down directly to me, and I don’t know exactly how they practiced. I can know that at some point down the lineage, they would have honored the earth, and honoring these natural cycles, which are felt across the planet, would have been a part of their practice.
Honoring the sun’s cycle throughout the year is also a way of deepening my connection to the earth wherever I am. Here in Costa Rica, we are close to the equator, and the shifts in light are minimal, barely perceptible. We have a balance of daylight throughout the year, with an hour or so of variation. And yet, there are seasons, and the longer you stay, the more you can feel into these shifts. Honoring the solstice is a way of honoring the earth, the sun, and the entire cosmos.
Honoring the earth’s cycles is a practice of connection and makes me feel more connected to our global human family. I absolutely love that the equinoxes are this day of balance felt equally everywhere; and I love that we feel the solstices no matter where we are, albeit differently in the north and south. It is powerful to remember that we share a planetary home and we feel these shifts in light and darkness together.
As political “leaders” seem to be doubling-down on their delusion of separation daily, hellbent on destroying each other and our planetary home, practices of connection becomes healing and liberatory. This honoring and reconnection is counter to the dominant culture’s urge to destroy. Perhaps most importantly, these practices help us remember - we remember our common home, our tiny place on this beautiful pale blue dot floating through space, and from this remembering, may we care, and may we act with greater love.
These are some reasons I honor the solstice. Want to join me?
On Friday’s call, we will share how the season is showing up in the places where we live, we will reflect back on the last two seasons, we’ll consider what we might not want to carry forward, and we will celebrate the joys in our lives. We will look ahead at the season to come, and consider what we want to live into - the questions, the feelings, the sensations, the gifts, the experiences. We will compost, and we will plant. It is a potent portal.
If you are here, I know you, too, yearn and dream and act towards a more loving world and we will plant seeds together for it. This call is a gift from the heart, an offering to our community of readers and dreamers. This is the third one this year, and the other two (for the winter solstice and spring equinox) have been incredibly powerful for all who joined. We welcome you to join us!
With love and infinite care, and hope to see you there :)
Stephanie
P.S. I am taking inspiration from last year’s summer solstice post, which you can find here!
I will link to her upcoming article in which she talks about this when it is published!