This achingly beautiful winter piece, custom written by our UK-based guest contributor, Alena Walker (her bio at the end), functions as dream, prayer, and love song to our glorious Mother Earth. Paired with photographer Kate Bellm‘s tropical compositions that drip our internal, humid longings, the images provide luminous portrayals of what humanity yearns on Mothernight, the eve of the darkest day of each year, Yule (or Winter Solstice). Together, may we reflect, give thanks, cast spells, shamanically journey, dance and sing to Gaia, our Mother, Grave, and Womb.
— Mimi xo
Shamanic Practitioner + founder of CEREMONIE
In winter, the thickest feeling of stillness surrounds us. In a single moment we are struck by the abyss that unfurls on the horizon. The whole world is holding its breath. Lessons don’t come only in moments of fertile beauty, in the tingle of sunshine’s sweet kiss or with the adrenal prick of hairs that engulf our flesh when we stand on a cliff edge, faces borne against the wind.
Change comes in moments of solitude, when you bury yourself in the bosom of Mother Earth, relentless in the pursuit of no clear direction. Your every step squelches in the muddy underfoot that glues you to forest floor and ice chaps your lips, freezing your breath and numbing your core.
We drift like ice sheets as we walk under the treetops’ thinning veil, which falls like a tapestry, mottled and merciless to the blowing gales. Leaves may tumble from great heights, but on the ground they become a rolling blanket worn on the shoulders of earth’s frosted floor. Let the sky cry! Let the world overflow in its tears and strip as bare as the branches while you swim in the current.
In these moments we gain clarity and connection; our identity changes at the influx. This is our opportunity for recollection and balance. Only with the darkness can we appreciate the light and only then can we appreciate its beauty.
The finite gives birth to infinite worlds in the bloom and break of growth and rebirth. We are spirits carried by the wind, picked up as soil and seed and carried across the plains in search of ourselves. It’s a change that happened because we chose to move towards it.
When left to its own majesty, Mother Earth offers everything that we need.
The darkness is cabin fever
And we get restless in the night
In this ever-stretching blackness
We swallow our sight
We brace the cold with brittle bones
We gather in the still
Release all that empties us
Sip what makes us full
We shed our skin like crumbled leaves
Spiked umbrellas to the sky
Winter is our secrecy
Seek with smoke-stung eyes
The trees are shaved to skeletons
Our bodies like cocoons
An endless offering of frequencies
Pared of all its bloom
Our breath bellows to the celestial
As we plead and redefine
We are great seeds buried in the brisk
With pockets full of moonshine
Words by Alena Walker, writer, fashion editor, and stylist born in rural Northern Ireland. A cultivator of local and international experiences, nature draws Alena close and allows her to tell stories through photography, paint, poetry, and prose. As a natural roamer and soulful artist, Alena describes her work as inviting consciousness and exceeding boundaries, “…where conscious consumption and environmental activism form the bedrock of my focus. I work only with ethical designers and I’m trying to make an impact on the world by creating consciously.”
We will be offering another story from our guest contributor next month! For more information on plant spirit medicine, shamanic beauty and aura care, and all things shamanic, vibrational, and witchy, connect with us via Instagram or Facebook. Wishing all a joyful Yule filled with ritual, love, insight, and joy.
