To Dream, to Feel, to Listen

Your animal body is deeply affected
by the season that swirls around you.
Be gentle, for in these darkening times your animal body
needs to rest more, sleep more, and be still.
It needs to dream, to feel.
To listen to what is held beneath.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

The winter solstice of 2021 occurs today, marking the official beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It's an event that brings good news as, from tomorrow on, days will start getting longer again, taking us out of winter darkness as we slowly move towards spring.

In marking this year’s winter solstice I share words of beauty and wisdom by ecotherapist and writer Brigit Anna McNeill. The two writings of McNeill that I share offer suggestions on how to most deeply respond to the darkness and cold of the winter season.

Things you can do in these colder darker days when away from the busyness, the hubbub and the crowds. Things that may be able to feed your wilder winter need for solace, rest, nourishment and connection.

• Be alone with yourself, finding caring ways in which to learn to love the company you keep in the alone moments. Let yourself taste who you are, let yourself hear the voice within.

• Sit, wrapped in jumpers and blankets, under a tree and watch, listen and discover.

• Draw yourself into your heart, let your heart call you home, let it catch you with threads of kindness and care, reminding you of the safety held within.

• Journal, let your unconscious mind spill across the page in inks of red, black and gold, without judgement or criticism.

• Make herbal teas made up of the green allies from the garden. Rosemary, thyme, mint, dandelion. Let them strengthen, nourish and enliven you, let them tell you stories of wild medicine that is threaded through and across the land.

• Light candles and fires.

• Sing, sing to the night and the moon, sing to the river and the trees. Sing to the seeds taking shape in the dark, sing to the roots strengthening, sing to the insects and fungi that compost down the leaves, creating life from death, sing to your own unbecoming and becoming.

• Rest, sleep early, dream.

• Mull apple juice with cinnamon and nutmeg, make chilly cacao.

• Warm oil with herbs and rub onto your body, showing your skin your love, whispering spells of boundaries, belonging and protection into your nerves, your muscles.

• Leave gifts of gratitude in the woods for deer, bird, squirrel and your other more than human family members. Whisper a prayer of their long life into the moving shifting winter air.

• Feast on foods that feed your bones, your flesh, your organs. Feed on food that reminds you of the care you receive at your own hands and the hands of the earth.

• Wonder and wander through forest, riverside and meadow, let the sound of crow, robin and squirrel call you home.

– Brigit Anna McNeill

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Brigit Anna McNeill on the Meaning of Winter Solstice Time
• Brigit Anna McNeill on “Winter’s Way”
• Wolfish
• God Rest Us
• Winter Solstice Blessing
• Beneanth the Solstice Sun
• Reclaiming the “Hour of God”
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• Christmastide Approaches

Related Off-site Links:
Winter Solstice 2021: Where Modern Science and Pagan Traditions Meet – Forrest Brown (CNN, December 21, 2021).
It’s the Shortest Day of the Year. Things Can Only Get Brighter From Here – Rachel Treisman (NPR News, December 21, 2021).
Yule and the Winter Solstice – Justin Coutts (In Search of a New Eden, December 19, 2021).
Winter Solstice: A Time of Preparation and Learning – Amanda Takes War Bonnett (Lakota Times, December 23, 2021).
Magic of Newgrange at Winter Solstice Never Fails to Astound – Kate Hickey (Irish Central, December 20, 2021).
There’s a Light at the End of This Dark Year – Margaret Renkl (The New York Times, December 20, 2021).
Here’s to the Lost Art of Lying Down – Bernd Brunner (Aeon, December 21, 2016).

UPDATE: Winter Solstice 2021 Celebrations – in Pictures – Jim Hedge (The Guardian, December 21, 2021).

Image: Michael J. Bayly.