December 21, 2018
I’m sitting here in gratitude reflecting on this last year around the sun and what winter solstice means to me. I cried many tears tonight. Some tears were infused with joy, some sorrow, some laughter, some heartache…but they were all tears of aliveness which makes them truly beautiful. The winter solstice, being the shortest day of the year, represents death, metaphorically and literally. Death can literally be witnessed all around us in nature with leaves falling from the trees leaving them barren skeletons vulnerable to the elements. Everything that decays to the earth is nourishing and preparing the soil for new life to emerge in the spring.
Contrary to the unnatural busyness and outward exerted energy that society conditions us to engage in at this time of year, there is a natural drive to retreat from the world and turn inward for self-reflection. This is a time to turn awareness to what needs to be released from our lives to create space for new energy to flow in abundantly. What attachments, beliefs, and illusions need to be let go of to allow something new to grow in its place? Death must precede birth. And birth must precede life. In order to really experience the quality of aliveness, we must allow death and rebirth to cycle in our lives. We should always be cycling through birth, life, and death for the natural order of things to flow. So really, winter solstice is as much about birth and life as it is about death because they are all three so intricately connected. We live in a death phobic society. Our culture has an aversion to talking about death in a wholehearted, authentic, and vulnerable way. My Scorpio Moon-Pluto conjunction finds this so strange. We are often left unguided in how to process and relate to death and desperately try to avoid dealing with it. This culturally conditioned aversion to death so often translates to a difficulty in processing symbolic deaths within our lives. We really cannot avoid it though. What we push out of our conscious awareness into our shadow will start to bubble up in those moments we least want it to as it is lovingly reminding us that it is still there to be processed, even though it may not register as loving. The winter solstice is a beautiful time to consciously engage what we need to release from our lives to naturally allow birth and life to spring forth as daylight starts to grow in length.
When I reflect on this year, I see cycles within cycles of death, rebirth, and life dancing and blending with each other creating beautiful tapestries of experience. This year was full of challenges, heartbreak, and disappointment along with learning, success, adventure, and love. It was my Saturn Return. I had felt the energy of the Saturn Return a few years prior and started rearranging my life accordingly to accept the call to adventure for this chapter of my Hero’s Journey. But this year, I received two exact transiting Saturn conjunctions on my natal Saturn. The first was in January of this year, and the second was when Saturn retrograded right back to my natal Saturn placement and stationed there before going direct. With his station right on my natal Saturn, I felt all the forward momentum in my life that had picked up since the first Saturn transit come to a complete halt, only temporarily of course. Saturn required me to reassess and change my approach because he knew there was more room for expansion which was ultimately a blessing. The person I dated most of this year (Aquarius Sun, Capricorn Moon) was a projection of Saturn there to teach me Saturn lessons as I navigated my Saturn Return. He embodied the Saturn qualities I needed to cultivate within myself. This was a year where I had to face some of my biggest fears dead on in the eyes. This was a year where I took some huge life risks. This was a year where I held my head high in my failures and continued to show up for life each day. This was a year where I grew and turned my failures into successes because I chose to face them. This was a year where I started to really discover who I am. This was a year where I truly lived. The lessons Saturn taught me made me stronger, disciplined, and more resilient than ever. Saturn brought me to my astrology path a few years ago as I was trying to make sense of what was happening in my life and for that I am forever grateful to Saturn.
So create some space for a retreat and time for self-reflection. Listen to your inner voice. For it might be the darkest day of the year, but it is also the longest night of the year where the nurturing moon and the wondrous stars are watching over us in the night sky. They remind us of where we come from and how magical it truly is to even exist and witness the Cosmos.
Wishing you all a beautiful winter solstice!
Love,
Jaime