Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Below.
It’s the Winter Solstice, which literally translates “sun stoppage.” For most people, they think of this time in relation to birth—the birth of God, of the Year King, of a new year—but for me, it’s often been about the death of something, too.
There is this Winter Solstice when the death is my dad’s. But it’s also the death of an old way of thinking and the passing away of many old limitations I’ve put on myself. Winter Solstice is one of those points where I assess the time since the last such event. I am becoming unstuck, especially in this past turn of the wheel of the year. Other Winter Solstices have been just as disjointed, though I’ve celebrated them for only the past decade or less.
There was the one Winter Solstice when I tried to share a public celebration in Pensacola with my atheist ex, but when he realized there were religious overtones versus strictly scientific ones, he became upset and we didn’t go. It was the death of a dream that I’d ever be able to share that part of myself with him or be able to be myself fully with him as my mate.
There was the one Winter Solstice when I came home from work to find a “non-select” notice, meaning I didn’t get the promotion I’d really wanted and that my boss had alluded to as mine if I did certain work. He’d waited until the last day before Christmas holidays—nearly a month—to tell me, so that I’d be “over it” by the time he saw me again in January. It was the death of a dream for my career, even though I did get promoted later by a different boss. A lot of my enjoyment and hope for my career field died that night, but my girls climbed into the hammock in the back yard and lay close to me, comforting me that evening as we looked at the moon.
There was the one Winter Solstice when our little Westie died. She’d been a part of the family for a long time. The girls and I sat in the back yard and talked and cried for a long time. I was the one who had to sign the papers to have her euthanized. Before then and after, I never heard my ex cry more for anything than he did for our Lindsay when she died. She touched a place in him that I never could, and had it not been for her, I probably wouldn’t have known it existed in him. Her death made for a very somber holiday for us all.
There was the one Winter Solstice when I knew my marriage was over but I refused to let go. Even though I couldn’t acknowledge it yet, I knew in my heart that it was the death of a dream of a life with a partner who understood me and could open himself to me. I had always loved the winter holiday season and had decorated with gusto—often putting lights on the house alone and once giving myself a bad case of Achilles’ tendonitis by climbing up ladders in freezing weather. That year, I didn’t decorate. I didn’t feel like celebrating and I was tired of being responsible for all the festivity, so I just… stopped…and let family members ask me when I was going to decorate and why not and what was wrong with me. The girls put up the lights that year.
There was the one Winter Solstice two years ago, when I was newly divorced and acknowledging the death of an old way of life and looking forward to rebirthing into a new life. I’d made a valiant start, even having a little Winter Solstice cookout and inviting friends over. Everything held so much promise at that time, but it all became…stuck…when I least expected it to. Stopped. A stoppage of the sun. We were all so stuck in our old pain and wanting to shed it but not being able to move on.
Last Winter Solstice, things certainly felt stuck. Nothing seemed to be moving, and in fact, it only became further pinned down. The thing I wished for with the passing of that Solstice was change, change for the better, for things to become unstuck and get moving again as they had been around right after my divorce was final and a whole new world seemed to be waiting. Last year, I vowed to risk everything and focused on the word manifest.
I will definitely admit that things have changed for the better. Not the way I would have wanted it. Not at all. Some of the things holding me back were things I really loved. There was a lot of turmoil and hurt. I have a better understanding of it now, in light of the Law of Attraction.
It took years, but I attracted some major changes into my life, ones that would provide the results I wanted— the freedom to be myself and for people to love me for who I am, the freedom to have a mate in my life who would really “get” me on every level, the freedom to see my dreams come to fruition, the freedom to be happy without being responsible for other people’s happiness 24/7. Those changes were major upheavals, and I have a few more changes left before I’m done. So yes, I attracted change into my life.
I was also, coming out of a long marriage where I’d been wrong about so many things, feeling insecure about my intuition and my decision-making skills. I needed a lot of validation, verification, confirmation, support. I attracted that, too.
Lots of it. Not always in a good way.
The same people who were great about giving support during my last years of marriage were used to giving me advice—and lots of it—when it wasn’t necessarily the level or type I really needed anymore. No one talks about how the Law of Attraction can mean no longer “vibrating” at the same frequency as the people around you and how they don’t understand the changes in you and don’t want you to change and how some people will do things they shouldn’t to keep everything status quo.
Every time I’ve made a major change in my life over the past few years, I’ve had to leave behind people I once thought would always be part of my life because I was attracting something different into my life. I may be bringing new and different people and experiences into my life, but it’s still sad to say goodbye to the old.
Somehow I see the butterfly emerging and flying away, not sticking around where it used to be a wingless worm.
So this past year, when I so wanted to clear away all impediments to the future I have wanted, it’s happened. Painfully. And a new way of thinking is settling in. Before the next Winter Solstice, there’ll be a lot of change in my life, this time brought forward by return of love into my life and the joy I’ve been manifesting.
This year, this Winter Solstice, things are not stopped.
The light is returning, and I’ve become unstuck.
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