Dear Starlight,
Yesterday was Imbolc—the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox—learning this gave me relief. January was a bitter collection of days. These calendar markers may appear arbitrary, but sharing them as a framework provides a way of naming a season, a history, and a rhythm of time—one that connects us with ancestral knowledge. Our ancestors recognized sky patterns that suggested expectations for both external collective weather and personal temperaments. I am definitely a woman characterized as Pisces sun, Gemini rising, and Cancer moon!
Beginning January with the flu, a do-or-die grant proposal and an impactful rejection cast a cold shadow over the weeks that followed. I watched the ice form on the river as the air became unbearably frigid. One morning, I made a treacherous mistake—walking to the river without my phone, not realizing it was sixteen below. Luckily, I was close enough to my house that my limbs did not freeze and break off, but I had trouble speaking for a few days after. The air burned my throat as if I'd swallowed fire and ice at once, searing my lungs as I ran home on numb calves.
Along the river, I've watched the ice break and be tugged along by the tides beneath its hardened surface. I've seen the Coast Guard motor through the thick deluge of frozen slush, moving slowly but advancing its mission nonetheless.
The days of January felt congested with fear, sickness, and darkness, and my efforts felt like the tiny Coast Guard boat—pushing forward through resistance with uneasy progress.
One thing that has pulled me through this challenging period has been a ritualized small community gathering I created: Sunday Sauna.
A charming, rustic community sauna was built over the hills and up the road from my home. It's a small pine building, a dollhouse for six, with a window overlooking a pond and willow tree and inside a piping hot woodstove covered in fieldstone. Outside, a steel feeding trough brims with ice water for cold plunges, squeals, and heart restarts.
I gathered a small circle of brilliant women and invited them to join me in this weekly ritual. A tether through winter. A pact of warmth and resilience. Something to look forward to that anchors us these unmoored days.
Each Sunday, I count down the hours. Sunday—almost here, a hearth to return to. I pack my bag with the sauna hats I stitched for our group, salt scrubs I concocted in my kitchen, juicy oranges, and dark chocolate. For two hours, we languidly sit together—almost naked, sweating against the blustery gray backdrop. We sip cold water. We toss eucalyptus on the burning rocks, letting the steam fill our lungs, forcing out what does not belong. We laugh, we confess, and we let the world remain locked outside as we sink into our steaming queenly sanctuary.
Yesterday, I wrote my morning light blessing; The river moves left today, fast with the gusty wind. Large chops of blocks and splintered ice pass each other along the way. Islands of lumps out there. The sky is cloudy. Lavender gray with a horizon of peach folded into the gesture. It’s cold. Today my will feels like a flame in a fireplace. Keep going, keep tending, soon the cauldron will be ready to share.
After scribbling this jibber jabber in my little notebook I scrambled home and opened an email that taught me about Imbolc, and the pagan goddess and later Christian saint Brigit who symbolizes this cross seasonal day of awakening. One aspect of Brigit is a prophetess, a guardian of fire, inspiration, and poetry. Her second self, a goddess of healing and medicine. Her third, a guardian of smith-craft and metallurgy, symbolized by fire in the hearth. Reading about her, I felt an immediate and synchronistic kinship with the season.
There are seasons in our lives that demand we stretch beyond our comfort. Trouble is inescapable. Community is medicine. Ritual is resistance to despondency.
This past year, I've been incubating new ways to offer my Creativity + Courage work. This past month affirmed what I know: gathering isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. In March, I'll be opening opportunities for you to join me—because resilience isn't built alone. This moment insists we develop our creativity and courage together.
I want to build a sauna*! (*in reality, i asked my husband if he would be willing to build it cause he’s the one with that kind of know-how in this house.) I have started some things in motion and now for the doing. Not the sauna- that is still in fun fantasy land. The other things- they are in the keep-showing up part. The boring part. The tedium. The part that feels especially unappealing when my only real desire is for sweatpants, blankets, hot showers (in the absence of fires and saunas). Who decided the presidential term starts in Jan? Who decided this was the time of “new” year? But then nothing is really new, only rearranged or brought to light. I’ll spend the 2nd half of winter tending tiny flames.