solstice blessings ✸

I had planned on writing about my process in preparing for The Mother of All Releasing Ceremonies ...

How Cowgirl got the ball rolling on releasing the night before when she lost her other front tooth ...








How I had been keeping a list for a month now of what I wanted to shed in order to step into the New Year ...








How that list kept growing and growing ... and then how I sat with it on the night before my private ceremony and realized my "baggage" could be honed down to some key obstacles: doubt, fear, resistance, denial, regret and my life-long companion, perfectionism ...









I planned on sharing my thoughts on this whole idea of releasing and why I don't necessarily believe we then need to open or bring in anything else because once we shed these layers or false beliefs we are in a sense clearing the lens to perceive the truth of who we already are: Love, Beauty, Wisdom, Compassion, Truthfulness ...

I was going to write about how we don't need to change so much as we need to let go ...









But the real story begins the morning of the Solstice when I drove to a nearby park to burn my bundle in one of the grills. It had snowed the night before and it was cold and windy (although I was in denial about all that) but I was just going to pop in for a quick little burn before heading into work ...

But the grills were in the open and I couldn't get my bundle to stay lit ...









So I moved inside a shelter and tried burning it on the concrete floor ...









And instead of a satisfying, mighty flame to purge all that I was ready to release what happened was a slow, erratic smoldering/smoking ...









Which I feared would alert a park ranger to what may or may not have been legal activity ... so I moved back to a grill and proceeded to develop a blood blister on my thumb from repeated use of the lighter ...

And did I mention the cold and the wind? And my impatience with the whole thing (and my knowledge that impatience was one of my slips of paper inside that very bundle) ...

So what was to be a fire ceremony turned into a hour and a half long smudging ceremony ...

And I knew somewhere Coyote was laughing her ass off knowing I was receiving the first lesson of the new season which was all about surrender and the folly of expectations and releasing attachment to how I want things to happen and the time frame in which I believe my journey ought to move ...










All the while (in that very long hour and a half) geese were circling around the nearby lake and as I heaped some lavender and sage over my still smouldering bundle (because by then I had given in to this being a Process unto itself and outside of my deluded notion of timeliness) a flock broke off and flew directly overhead and I could hear the flapping of their wings and I tried to take a picture but by then my hands were so numb, my fingers could not get the lens cap off ...

But I knew in that moment this coming year would be a time for Clarity and Surrender. And feeling completely exhausted, emptied and inspired I got into my warm car and headed into work.








Only two hours late ... but for the first time in a long while, I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be. I felt like I was exactly how I was supposed to be: tingly alive, exhilarated, smokey and satisfied.









So what I want to share is that while releasing can be frustrating and challenging and exhausting it does offer the possibility of a clear and fresh perspective and a sense of beginning anew.

Blessings of the new season to you. In gratitude for all my sisters. Aho!