It's Time to Turn Inwards; 6 Things I'm Thinking About this Solstice.

winter solstice, new years, and the phrases living rent free in my head

Today is Winter Solstice, perhaps my favorite day of the year.

In the northern hemisphere, Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the year — the day of the most darkness. From Summer Solstice in June to Winter Solstice in December, the days get shorter and colder, the nights deeper and longer. It’s a day, traditionally, that we descend into the shadows. It’s the night where we celebrate darkness.

It is also the day that marks a turning point, a movement toward the light. Starting tomorrow, every day gets longer, lighter, warmer, until we hit Summer Solstice in June. I’ve always chosen to see it like that: Winter Solstice marks the beginning of our ascent towards light. Summer Solstice in the same way, marks our descent towards darkness. The two Equinoxes, Spring and Fall, mark our collective moments of balance: the two days a year light and darkness find equilibrium, the moments where day and night are equal.

A Winter Sunrise in Joshua Tree — Moving Towards the Light

Symbolism is nothing — or it is everything. The meaning of anything lies in how we choose to use it, how we engage with the idea and how that engagement sparks a shift in our own lives. If you’re new here, I love symbolism. So I choose to use these things as opportunities for reflection and for a way to mark time.

Winter Solstice marks the beginning of what I consider my ‘new year,’ an 8-week period from Winter Solstice to my birthday (mid February) that I honor as the new year transition. 8 weeks might seem generous, gratuitous even, as a replacement for New Year’s Day. But I find it to be the right pacing for me — we don’t as much turn a corner from one year to another as we engage in a step-by-step transition. At some point we’re here, we keep going, and then we’re there.

Life is a gradient and we would all be better served by an embrace of its medial spaces. My approach here is an invite to myself, and to you as witness, to slow down, reflect, and move intentionally. And so we begin. I find myself today thinking about some phrases that have been particularly resonant — phrases living rent free in my head these days that are indicative of the journey I’ve been on the past calendar year.

I share 6 of them with you below and I hope they spark some sort of reflection for you as well. I think of each of these is a seed of a full essay… I’d love to expand on them all in the new year so would welcome your feedback on which resonates the most. I’d also love to hear what is sticking out for you in your own life, if you’d like to share either in a comment or as a reply to this e-mail.

I wish you a very blessed and beautiful journey as you begin your own ascent into light tomorrow. Thanks for being here, to much more art and writing in 2024. 💖

1) “I’m still out here, with the pills and the dogs.”

As someone oriented towards melancholy, I love a break up song — I love the sadness, the love and the loss, the anger, and occasionally, the gratitude. As I get older, I’m both pleased and mortified to find myself sitting more in gratitude than resentment after my romantic losses. I sometimes find myself craving the rage that used to come post-break-up in my 20s or even more so, the despair. I find myself wanting to lock myself in my room, cry in a pile of bedding, and being shocked that, I just maybe might be, ok?? My therapist of course, loves this for me. But truthfully I miss the drama.

I find myself in a period of loss — and yet, despite my best (worst) efforts, I have been sitting in gratitude which is… interesting. New. Soft. Almost warm. Melancholic, still. Loving, even. I have this song by Noah Kahan, “All My Love,” on repeat, particularly the chorus:

We once sang
Retrograde, we'd shake the frame of your car
Now I know your name, but not who you are
It's all okay
There ain't a drop of bad blood, it's all my love

You got all my love while I'm still out here
With the pills and the dogs, if you need me, dear
I'm the same as I was, it's all okay
There ain't a drop of bad blood, it's all my love
You got all my love

I think it is so sad and yet so beautiful how the people most close to you can become strangers over night. How one might walk away while the other stays, exactly where they are, with the proverbial “pills and dogs.” I think about how people bounce off each other, how that collision might have been needed to shift one’s course into the direction they’re meant to be in. How that direction often leads away from the person they collided with. And how they can have all your love even as you continue on your way, away from them.

2) “I am safe. I have everything I need.”

It took me a long time to get into mantras, but over the past few months I have been using this one a lot. I particularly use it in bed, at night, when I find myself having an anxiety attack. I don’t have anxiety attacks a lot these days, but if I do have them, it’s almost always at night when I am trying to sleep or in the middle of the night when I wake up stressed, almost always, about my art career. And very often, this coincides with a night where I’ve been drinking (which, I have been, more than usual, this fall).

I am not really sure where this mantra came from or how I came to say it, but I’ve been imagining a caring hand petting my head and stroking my hair, while I say over and over again: “I am safe. I have everything I need,” until I can self-soothe and fall asleep. I don’t use specifics and I don’t allow myself to dive into the problems that are causing my anxiety. I don’t allow in any questions of “but…” or “what about…,” I just get to the most core fear: my safety, in all senses of the word, and my fear of lack.

I am safe. I have everything I need.

3) “What if the other shoe doesn’t drop?”

I was talking to my dear friend Ali the other week about waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Of waiting for “the catch” when good things happen to me.

In the past two months, I’ve booked 3 (!) solo shows for 2024. I had my first solo show ever this past September and things have been flying since. I opened another solo on December 1st as the debut show at Joshua Tree Trading Post. On December 7th, I was the featured artist at Life House Hotels for Art Basel in Miami. On December 13th, I showed my work for the first time in New York City as part of a group show at the High Line Nine Galleries in Chelsea. On top of that, I’ve had the most magical personal developments in my life.

Why is this all happening? What did I do to deserve this? And when is it all going to come crashing down?

Dreaming my Way Through This Transition - Photo From Art Basel in Miami

I’ve been told I present as a very positive person, but historically, I don’t trend optimistic. My therapist likes to call this, “my kink,” the belief that good ONLY occurs with bad. Good and bad obviously are necessary parts of life, but moving through the world feeling like there is a “catch” to everything and everyone is a guaranteed path to constant disappointment. It’s hard to be present for anything good when you are holding your breath for something bad. Needless to say, I’ve been on a multi-year (multi-life?) journey to allow myself to embrace the good.

I mentioned this to Ali and she passed on a question she was asked about the same belief: “What if the other shoe doesn’t drop?” What if it already dropped? What if the good happening is a result of the hard work you put in? What if you deserve this? What if it is just happening, can you embrace it? Can you sit in gratitude and be present with it, without constantly looking around the corner?

What if you just sat with joy, let it wash over you, and let yourself keep going?

4) “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”

I don’t have much to say about this, other than that I am *maybe* finally learning it. 😂 If someone tells you what their priorities are, believe them. If someone behaves in a certain way repeatedly, believe them. If YOU continually prioritize one thing over another, believe yourself. If someone constantly shows up for you, believe them. This is true of friendships, romantic relationships, business partnerships… Most people are not lying about who they are. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. If people behave in a certain way, positive or negative, over and over again, believe them!

It’s important to believe in another’s potential but also important to make decisions based on what they show you, day in and day out. This is a subtweet for many relationships I’ve had this year — most importantly, at the one I have with myself.

5) “Who are you without your resentment?”

In April, I spent 10 days on an ayahuasca and bobinzana dieta, deep in the jungles of Peru. I haven’t written much if anything about this, but this was the turning point in my year. In fact, I believe the above abundance was a direct result of this experience.

It was also the hardest 10 days of my life — physically painful, emotionally exhausting, spiritually difficult. I cannot express how dark this experience was for me and also how beautiful. My experience was all around integrity — how to have it, walk in it, and what was holding me back from it , which was ultimately, my resentment. A lot more on this later, but the question I was asked over and over was, “Who are you without your resentment?” I did not experience myself as a particularly resentful person, but that is the thing with shadow work, isn’t it? You are often blind to what you most need to see. During the 10 days, I relieved innumerable moments of my life where I felt resentment. Vividly, intensely. Things I remembered and things I didn’t. I was showed, over and over again, resentment I was still holding in my heart. How heavy it was and how painful and how much it was holding me back from the light.

“Who are you without your resentment?” the medicine asked me. What a painful question. I’ve offered this to my yoga students over the course of classes this year, and it is a very painful and deep reflection question. One that I am still sitting with and one that I hope to write more about in 2024.

6) “Did we save the daylight?”

Not to be dramatic, but the sun setting at 4p every day has ruined my life. 😂 Daylight savings this year marked a turning point for me — in many ways, my personal life fell apart and then was built back up. My professional life flourished, but in the craziest of ways. And I did my best to be present with all of it: climbing mountains, painting almost 30 paintings, listening as best I could to the shift in the wind.

I still can’t get enough of this silly tweet above — this idea of saving light. This idea of saving ourselves from darkness. The sadness in it, the seed of hope. It had me thinking about solstice and wintering, cocooning and the dark night of the soul. Cocooning especially, how caterpillars literally turn into goop in the darkness of their cocoons before they emerge, in a new form, as butterflies. How growth demands a sacrifice; how we must destroy an old version of ourselves to make room for the new one.

I found myself painting really dark paintings for the first time. My dear friend Rachel suggested I paint at night, something I’ve never done. I dove back into it with my favorite color, Payne’s Grey, a deep dark blue. I was fearless in my mark making. I searched for light despite the darkness, wondering if I could save it, wondering if it was still there. Wondering if I could save myself.

The phrase has become the title of my upcoming debut solo show in LA, “did we save the daylight?” which will be held at Dorado 806 Projects in Santa Monica 1/26/24 — 2/7/24. To say I am excited about this show is an understatement. I believe this is my strongest work to date, imbued with so much passion and questioning and belief and fearlessness. I’m excited to share more in the new year, flyer below.

The opening reception will be Saturday 1/27 from 6-9p and I hope you will join me for it. Please RSVP to RSVP@dorado806.com. 💙 In the meantime, be well. Talk to you soon.