Tag: solstice

A Christmas with No Bells or Whistles

By Dana Stovern
Christmas Day 2021
Rogers Mesa, North Fork of the Gunnison

I feared Christmas this year because I knew the holiday was totally stripped down for me. I’d have no family or gathering to be with because of the divorce and the Omicron variant of COVID, limiting connection. There was no room to decorate a tree in my tiny space. I was also feeling the blah-humbug of the formality of gifting, which wasn’t a requirement for me this year. And trying to formulate how I’d cook for myself for Christmas, a special meal? Hmm. It felt like I was living in an involuntary boycott of Christmas, which did give me a certain kind of relief, even while a hollow feeling settled in the center of me.

The hollowness eventually developed into a wad of fear that rolled around inside of me like a wild pool ball having no edges to keep it caged on a table. I did not know how I’d walk through this landscape and negotiate with the layers of emotions that the holiday always brings. Alone.

The closer the holiday weekend came, the more I realized, “Dana, walk your talk with this. Do for yourself what you encourage others to do. Just be present and breathe through it. Don’t ignore, avoid, fight, or hide. Just stay with it.” And that’s what I’ve been doing – breathing through and being with where things “should” be but aren’t. Grieving when I need to and, of all the surprising holy holies, finding redemption, independence and freedom where I’d always had to lean into the yoked harness of the holidays.

And it was this morning, as I cooked scrambled eggs, topping them with a bit of a mess of raspberry sauce while enjoying a side of a chocolate-filled croissant, that Scott Simon’s NPR voice took me to a place I hadn’t expected.

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Toning for Solstice

By Dana Stovern
December 29, 2017
Paonia, Colorado

It was springtime on the high rolling prairie south of the Weminuche Wilderness in Colorado’s southwest. It was that time of year when the Colorado blue sky could not be bluer. The white of the snow-capped mountains with triangular jags that met the blue could not cut the sky any sharper. The slate bluish-gray of the mountains below the white could not have given way more beautifully to the soft bud of green on the prairie — which could not be richer with the promise of summer, of growth ahead. The air, so cuttingly fresh without the bite of winter, gave life to this memory that I now write to you.

I was driving my red Chevy truck from our cabin on Florida Mesa, above the Animas River Valley, over the high rolling prairie to Ignacio, Colorado, the home of the Southern Ute Native American Indian Tribe. It was one of the richest, most brilliant springs I’ve ever experienced, and it was on the first-year anniversary of my near-death and the loss of our son. Maybe that’s why the pungent air moved through me and left such a memory because I was beginning to resurface from the numbness, the shock, and the forced movement of life one lives through during thick grief. The drive across the high rolling prairie that morning felt more like a promise and love of life than a forced burden of living after death and endings, of having to carry promises heartbreakingly unfulfilled.

I was on my way to meet with a fellow practitioner in Ignacio who was interested in selling her reiki table to me. At the time, I think I was interested in purchasing the table from her, but I wasn’t sure. The continued journey of my non-traditional career was unexpected, especially in the midst of the disaster of my life. It moved me like the subtle force of a wandering river, from psychic reader to spiritual coach and now to the unfathomable energy worker and potential healer.

It was something like a dandelion forcing itself between the cracks of rubble and taking root, leafing out, and singing its yellow goodness to the sun — not giving a care to anything else.

That’s what was happening inside of me. The will of whatever the flow of gift that wanted to come through me, at a most inopportune time, was merely taking its course of action — taking no notice of what I thought or felt. The impulses of the Universe did not care about my opinion. I was along for the ride. Literally.

I pulled my truck into a parking spot at the gleaming new casino that the Southern Ute Tribe had rebuilt in the last several years. My friend Mary Alyce and her business partner, Lisa, had a studio in the casino spa, housed just off the magnificent entryway of lodgepole columns, a bronze statue, a modern hotel, and the flashing lights of the casino. In stark contrast, on the other side of the parking lot was the also recently built Native American Indian Southern Ute Museum, housing an incredible iconic collection of tribal historical pieces.

Although I always felt the mystery and honor of driving into Ignacio, even that day, I had no way of knowing how the incredible gifts and spirit of the Southern Ute legacy would play in my life in the coming months and now years. I sense that what I write to you now is only a thread of a larger weave of fabric that I am helping to create. (And yes, I was given spiritual guidance and permission to share this sacred information that normally, I would keep in private protection.)

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