Solstice Burning
I sit in the dark, ready to meet myself
The sunset before the solstice, a stripe of candlelight under a doorframe. I watched the light flicker out as I drove home and felt only the power of the dark embody me, instead of any fear.
In 2012, I stood inside a small stone chamber built thousands of years ago by hands that have dusted away into dirt and earth. The interior room was lit with electric lights so our group could see as we wandered around, murmuring to the stones and to each other, too awed to talk in more than a whisper. This was Newgrange, the ancient Neolithic monument that reigns queen-like on a hill in County Meath in eastern Ireland, guarding the hills and valleys from her throne. The guide gave a signal and the chamber went dark. Everything was still. I could not remember the last time I had been in such blackness. Then a thin sliver of gold shimmered up the corridor, inch by inch, like a ghost, like a messenger. Minute by minute, the light filled the passage, then filled the chamber until we were bathed in it, like the holiest of rituals, drenched in dark then soaked in light, all in absolute silence. Then the light left, crawling back down the passage, slowly, slowly, leaving us once more in the dark, but somehow less alone, less afraid. More powerful. It was May, only a recreation of what the real winter solstice looks like from within the chamber, achieved with electric lights, but the effect was incredibly powerful. I stood there with goosebumps, fighting tears, unwilling to walk back out of the passage and into the bright world.
Let me stay here where I am safe. Where I am powerful. Where I can be anything.
Last year, on the morning of the solstice, our city’s public works department came to take down the beautiful maple tree in our front yard. We knew it had to happen; the tree was sickly and branches were starting to chip off like rotten teeth. But that morning, the sunrise was so electrifying, the air so frosty, I ran outside to take pictures, welcoming the sun as it broke through, not knowing it would be the last time our tree would watch the sunrise with me.
I usually dread the dark and the cold, the long winter nights stretching ahead, but this year is different. For the first time, I feel only comfort and safety in the nighttime hours, in the turning inward the cold requires. I wait in the dark chamber, gathering strength. Learning what it means to feel safe. Learning to trust my voice, that light creeping closer, asking me not to turn away, so I steady myself, ready to meet it when it envelops me. I let the dead branches fall, those rotten logs I can no longer hold up: the fear of what others think of me, the desire to please, the act I’ve played for those who don’t want me to be real, the lies I’ve believed about myself since childhood.
The sun sets, the candle burns low, and I sit in the dark, ready to meet myself, my voice burning to break free.