Happy Winter Solstice!

Happy Solstice from The Rooted Refuge!   We’ve performed 311 treatments since opening just over two months ago, and we are so grateful to the Ridgewood community for such a warm welcome.  It must have seemed so strange for our little storefront space to pop up in mid-October during such a difficult and arduous year.  For us, it made perfect sense to come back to our own community to serve and soothe the folx that make it the wonderful neighborhood that it is.  So onward we go toward the light that will return little by little from this day forward.  

Every year I see similar things happening around winter solstice.  I hear patients tell me of waning energy and a greater need to sleep longer hours.  I hear of food cravings changing.  Root vegetables take the place of young tender greens and salads give way to soups.  This is the rhythm that we have all come to expect with each trip around the sun.  Many of us welcome the reminder that these short days and long nights will naturally send messages to our corporal bodies to go inward and rest more, move less.  Sleep more, expend less energy.  There is a reason for our lethargy, and it will cycle through as it does every year.  

This year, however,  it all seems to feel a little more devastating.  Let’s face it, we’ve spent quite enough time “going inward”.  Where else were we supposed to go?  Nature’s call means more of the same seclusion and seems to have taken a toll on the most optimistic of us.  Even in the years past, I’ve found it extremely helpful to keep in mind that this is the longest night we will face until next year at this time.  With each day we will climb back towards the light, little by little until the day reaches its longest length at summer solstice.   January and February can feel so desperately long and cold but make no mistake, the light is returning slowly and very surely.   

I find it to be a reassuring metaphor for the state of our world.  While we may see darkness in the coming weeks, the light will return and is poised to do so.  While we are sitting in this time, I find comfort in knowing that our expansiveness will reign again just as fervently as our inwardness has reigned during the past year.  

I hold onto something a patient told me.  She said “You know what came after the 1918 pandemic?”  I said “No, what?”.   “The roaring 20’s!” she replied.  After darkness will come the dawn, and it will be brilliant.  

Happy Solstice, friends.  While the light is returning, please know we are here to support you if the dark becomes too consuming.  

With love and gratitude, 

Dr. Christopher Peacock