The last time I saw Gretchen was six years ago when I flew out to the Oregon coast to celebrate her. It was 2017 this time of year. For a while earlier this month I kept seeing it there, the side of the road on the Oregon coast.

Eventually I just had to get still and sit with it, sorta feel the power of the image hanging in my mind. It was a melancholy tug of the place and it was pulling me to it. An actual hush then ache when I sat a bit and felt it. There was the steel green sea, the road, the Pacific coast up north where it’s really cold. There was Gretchen in red, more so in my mind then probably what was realistic but in red all the same, laughing. There the ache. Eventually I wound up searching for the picture, bc I was sure I had snapped one. On the way to Gretchen’s birthday party, the long moment I took before I got there, parked on the side of the 101 acknowledging an end I knew was coming but couldn’t quite see.

It occurs to me now, as I take the time to write this that around when this image was coming up a lot in early December I had also started using the metaphor “rear-view”. And that using that phrase was probably connected to what finally made me pull out the photo. 

I remember being there on the 101 in 2017. Parking and getting out of the rental, taking the pic of the north perspective, while the car, stopped, was directed towards and ready to travel south. The pic woulda been a rear-view shot.

Here now, Solstice. Longest night, most dark of the year. Here at the rearview, acknowledging. What’s behind me.

What is. What’s yet to come~ 

The bend I’ll round ahead of me brings me to year seven since Gretchen left this world. I’ve walked an earth bound, wheel of the year walk for like 3 decades and somewhere along that loose but real spiral walk I learned to trust in the cycle of 7. 

Here looking back from the start of year seven I acknowledge the handful of unique and significant life passings for me these last six years. This has really been a month for me about the pause. Entering the last part of the calendar year acknowledging. The death of the patriarch of my mom’s family, the immediate end from his loss and from Covid of over 40 years of consistent traditions at my grandparents in the Pa hills. The change that it, that Covid was for me. Emerging with a baby, having become a full-time mom of a blended family, and buying a house and grounding my work in wild land I feel has called me for 20 plus years now.  

The mega adjustments of all of this! 

A calling on, the words emerge from deep in or beyond me, even as I write…and calling for~

The pause. Gretchen, wild mystery, I hear you~

Acknowledging. 

And so it Solstice. Sol-sis. Soul stice. A soul stop.

A calling then on the wildness, the women who walk along its edge especially. The blues that only women sing. Ahhh, calling forth~

trusting source, trusting it to sing~

The pause is for rest, to acknowledge and

also for the

eventual: to begin~

I drive to Assateague it is December, dear Gretchen, nod at the bench where I went the night you died, where occasionally through it all the feeling of you can remain for me. Assateague, how you’ve always been..

Here for me

These ways of being I have grown in and the communities I have gotten held by, or of which I get to say I am a part.

Solstice, acknowledging, the pause. Solstice, entryway, underworld, winter, season of dark. Sitting still with

silence the long silent, holy night

pause. Thinking about,

acknowledging these

women on the periphery, who taught me the skillset I needed to grow into a me I could be proud to be and know and love and trust. The women of the Pac Northwest. The women. Of the PacNW.

The PacNW.  The woman, a hub, a center, Gretchen, whose good looks in her finest features could make me think of my own mom, whose zany big Alpha energy and heart full of good luck always made me think of my dad.

The women on the periphery, related to me by my dad. The women on the periphery of my mom raising me through sisterhood of my mom. How I am not me without that. How literally without them, women, what do I have? Land

Acknowledgement,

women who made me.

And Solstice, leaning in to the dark, the quiet. Again. Where rest and nourishment, in deep, sleepy womb darkness, in sleepy womb silence can occur. This I need, this need for all, this that Is, this I call in. For my health and the heart of all I hold. And let go of, again.

How important the pause. Taking time to honor as need and take seriously. Sacred. Pause. 

In order to keep moving forward and trusting the flow we need to stop sometimes, and rest.

OH sleep. May we have much more of that! May we replenish our love of a good, hardy deep night sleep. May we know many of them.

And so welcome winter, the blues of light and rest and love I call back, the blues of sorrow I nod to and celebrate, too~

:

There’s no need (now)(wel-come in, yr 7) to be sad~

This is Gretchen my long time mentor in life. In all spiritual and faith-based matters especially, which we'd have a good hard laugh remembering how practically-based that really is in idiotic plain ol human messing up and living through it. I miss you and am thankful for you every day. Also Mandee grew up good how cool it is 
I get to know her now 🙂 Love ya!