Here comes the sun!
The bestest holiday is coming, y'all.
Do you have a favorite holiday? For me, it’s the Winter Solstice. There’s something so potent about the longest night, knowing that the darkness has reached its utmost and then must inevitably, inexorably, retreat.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need that reminder.
This isn’t to suggest the darkness is somehow bad or something to be avoided or conquered. Not for me, anyway. Some of the most powerful moments of my adult life have been found in the deepest dark of the longest night. Like in 2012, the year that my marriage was first crumbling.
I was alone in our farmhouse, without my kids because their dad had taken them to his parents’ house for an early Christmas celebration without me. I remember that I lit a fire in our woodstove, turned out all the lights in the house, and then curled up under a blanket on the couch to hold vigil. Eventually, when my anxious heart quieted and the silence within and without felt more like peace than absence, I cast into the flames my wedding bouquet, which I had carefully dried a decade before, intending to keep it forever.
At the exact moment when the last papery, purple flowers crumbled into flame and ash, my phone rang. It was my husband. For the first time in months, he asked me how I was as if he cared. So, I told him. I was shocked and sad. Earth-shatteringly heartbroken. His most recent assertion, that I had never loved him, fixated and boggled me, having no relationship to any reality I recognized.
“I’ve loved you with everything I have.” I insisted, through deep, wracking sobs. “And I worked so hard to make it work. I never, ever wanted any of this. You’re doing it. It’s all you. You’ve torn apart our family and I don’t understand how you could do that.”
Through his own tears, he responded, “You’re right. This is all on me. And I’m so, so sorry.”
That was the entirety of any apology or acknowledgment I ever got from him, and within weeks he would have sworn on every Bible in the world that he’d never said it. But, he did.
What mattered for me, though, wasn’t that he owned responsibility for all of it because he couldn’t. Not really. It was that in that dark stillness I found firm ground to stand on, where I knew I had done everything I was capable of and so could let him go.
These days my life is nowhere near that dark, and welcoming in the power of the longest night feels more metaphorically potent than an act of survival. This frees me up to enjoy the thrill of the light’s return.
Last year, I was walking to work through the cold streets at the exact moment the sun returned. I’d set a timer on my phone, and still I feared I’d missed it because the sky was already lightening by then. But just when I thought maybe, despite my planning, I’d actually been faked out by the world, the sun crested the horizon, shining between the trees, and the most exhilarating feeling of LIFE leapt up in me.
Reflexively, I CLAPPED. Like the sun was a lamp plugged into a clapper and I could turn it up with my own two hands. I just walked along the street and CLAPPED— clap, clap...clap, clap...clap, clap.
My feet keeping time, my hips swaying, for multiple blocks I proceeded like a one woman parade— clap, clap... clap, clap...clap, clap— the light growing as if in response.
And I realized as I marched along, that clapper cadence is exactly that of a heartbeat—clap, clap…clap, clap…clap, clap.
So, there we were, me and the world, our hearts beating together and me grinning like a fool.
This year, the longest night is Saturday. I’m not going to sit up all night to hold vigil with the darkness, but I will set my alarm so I can go out and welcome the sun back in the morning. Sunday, indeed.
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes!
Then, I’m going to take off the next two Fridays, being with my family for Christmas and celebrating my birthday. I’ll be back here on Saturday, January 4th, our FOURTH ANNIVERSARY.
My Solstice wish for you in this next two weeks is that you allow the deep stillness to fill you with peace, and then feel the inexorable return of the light leap up in you and overcome you with joy.
Thank you for your company through this amazing, tumultuous, transformative year.
Much love to each and every one of you.
XO,
Asha
Last year, my Solstice musings struck a chord, making the following post one of the most viewed of the year. So, in case you missed it…
I plan to be awake for the sun tomorrow, and I will think of your clapping to meet it. Happy solstice. <3
Asha Sanaker: These are some of the most powerful words in a relationship that I have encountered:
"At the exact moment when the last papery, purple flowers crumbled into flame and ash, my phone rang. It was my husband. For the first time in months, he asked me how I was as if he cared. So, I told him. I was shocked and sad. Earth-shatteringly heartbroken. His most recent assertion, that I had never loved him, fixated and boggled me, having no relationship to any reality I recognized.
“I’ve loved you with everything I have.” I insisted, through deep, wracking sobs. “And I worked so hard to make it work. I never, ever wanted any of this. You’re doing it. It’s all you. You’ve torn apart our family and I don’t understand how you could do that.”
"Through his own tears, he responded, “You’re right. This is all on me. And I’m so, so sorry.”
"That was the entirety of any apology or acknowledgment I ever got from him, and within weeks he would have sworn on every Bible in the world that he’d never said it. But, he did.
"What mattered for me, though, wasn’t that he owned responsibility for all of it because he couldn’t. Not really. It was that in that dark stillness I found firm ground to stand on, where I knew I had done everything I was capable of and so could let him go."
. . .
That story is powerful.
Whew!
Thank you so very much for sharing!