Pause

Hello sweet friends, it’s very nearly the end of the year and this will be my last post of 2024. If you’ve been reading my posts this year then please know how much I appreciate every message and every conversation. The reason I write is to connect to people, and I love that this newsletter has become a way to keep in touch with far-flung friends, and to make new ones.

So, one last post at the end of a very busy year, and then — a pause.

This week marked the solstice, the longest night and the point in the year where the sun reaches its most southerly point in relation to the earth. Something remarkable happens: the sun, which, since June has been sinking lower and lower across our skies, appears to pause for three days. Then, it begins to climb back up towards longer days, spring and summer.

Every year, at solstice, I have a ritual. I write down on a piece of paper something I want to leave behind and something I want to call in. I burn the piece of paper, and scatter the ashes to the wilderness that is Hackney Downs. I don’t know if it’s a mark of stasis or persistence that very often the things I write down that I want to let go are remarkably similar, but I’m feeling generous so let’s call it the latter. What I want to call in is similar, too: a feeling of boldness and expansion, of warmth, of generosity to other people and myself.

But what I really like about this ritual is that it makes me feel connected to something so much bigger than myself. It’s a feeling that is hard to access in this era of chronic anxiety and self-absorption, but the act of sitting and conjuring that image, of the sun appearing suspended in the sky, and the earth, turning on its tilt around her, is a ritual jolts me out of myself and into orbit. From here, the earth is small, I am so much smaller, and this is a gift. This smallness is what connects me to the ground I’m sitting on, to the air I breathe, to people and beings and all of nature. In the scale of things we are so small, and we are so entirely dependent on each other.

And with it, this dizzying shift in perspective, is the reminder of how short and precious this pause is, in the depth of winter. This is a time that can too solitary for people who live alone, all too crowded for people who share their space. But it’s short-lived, and at this point in the year, the sun is already beginning to climb. There will soon be the anticipation of longer days, sun on our faces again, of green buds and birdsong. Although the earth is wet and cold, and perhaps nothing seems to be moving or changing or growing, this is a necessary pause at the end of what feels, in the middle of winter, like a very long sigh — one that is making room for a bigger, fuller and deeper in-breath.

So, with that said. A pause. I’ll be back in January.

Sending you much love for the holidays and a very happy new year,

Rosie xxx