Completely satisfied Winter Solstice to you all! I wish to thanks for one more yr of caring concerning the work I do, of being on this article record, of studying what I write and collaborating in workshops and different packages I provide, and of giving me the present of service to you all. After a really rocky yr and a half of destabilzing uprooting from the house I’ve raised my daughter in for 17 years, after 9 months of residing briefly within the great city of Forestville, California, close to the Russian River, Jeff and I’ve lastly landed in our new dwelling close to Bodega Bay, in West Sonoma County, and my daughter is dwelling with us for the primary vacation season after her first semester at Pratt Institute in NYC.
So I’m completely satisfied. This transition has been one of many hardest transitions of my life, proper up there with dropping my father after which my mom. With my daughter flying into her lovely individuated life, with my housemate of 15 years shifting again to the East Coast to be nearer to her household, and with my dwelling now all the way down to the studs, getting gutted to be become a company retreat heart for my landlord’s enterprise, and with no different place to stay out there in my beloved Muir Seashore, I’ve felt deeply displaced, unsettled, ripped from the Muir Seashore land that has been my longest intimate relationship.
I didn’t understand how “positioned” I had felt till I felt dis-placed. Feeling positioned snuck up on me slowly. Through the years, I realized each plant that grows in Muir Seashore, ever blossom and when it peeks its head by means of the earth- each daffodil and the place they develop each season, each lupine, each area of California poppies, each bare girl together with her naked brown stems that come up months after her greenery photosynthesizes. I knew each animal, the place the fox dens stay and after they have little cunning infants, each deer mama and coyote papa, each bobcat and whale that blows because it passes north and south alongside our shores.
I knew the place all of the edible vegetation on the land develop, and through the lockdown of the pandemic, we spent weeks consuming almost simply that. I knew when to reap what and which tree the owl sleeps in earlier than looking at nightfall. It occurred to me at one level throughout my journey to being “positioned” that this was a really Indigenous factor, one thing I had by no means had in my life or totally understood till it was ripped away from me so instantly and in opposition to my will.
I knew Mount Tamalpais as my sacred mountain father, who I woke as much as each morning out my window. I knew the Muir Seashore and Stinson Seashore ocean as my mom. I knew the bones of the animals who had deceased in Muir Seashore across the bone circle within the eucalyptus grove as my ancestors, together with the bones of my pets and the ashes of my dad and mom that I sprinkled in my yard alongside the labyrinth there. I knew this land because the place the place I used to be a mom and watched my little one develop from a toddler of three to an almost 20-year-old now, come January 6.
In spite of everything of my analysis into Indigenous healers for my ebook Sacred Medication, I got here to appreciate that this sense of being “positioned” may be very Indigenous. Most of us have misplaced that medication, however I’ve been fortunate to search out it, despite the fact that Muir Seashore is on the unceded land of the Coastal Miwok, and it doesn’t belong to my ancestors or me. My ancestral land is international to me, however this land has been dwelling, despite the fact that it was constructed upon the tragedy of colonization.
All of that historical past has modified for me now. My grieving the lack of my Muir Seashore dwelling and its individuals and land and the shifting on into grownup lifetime of my daughter has been as laborious because the grief of a dying. It has hit me in waves that contract my coronary heart like I’m laboring. Grieving all this similtaneously I’m grieving the lack of democracy in my nation has taken my breath away. Simply as one should breathe after which push throughout labor, I’ve struggled to breathe when the contractions hit me, however I’ve been dedicated to pushing in my activism, however, as a result of now shouldn’t be the time to surrender the resistance of fascism and authoritarianism, irrespective of how a lot my private grief may take my breath away.
However little bits of sunshine are on their manner because the solstice approaches for these of us within the Northern Hemisphere, because the darkest days come in direction of us, with the promise of on daily basis being only a bit longer after the solstice. I at all times discover that promise hopeful, even through the darkest instances.
I really feel the emergence of lightness of being coming into me, too. We simply completed unpacking the packing containers, shifting 17 years’ value of issues we tried to downsize, whereas additionally incorporating Jeff’s possessions. That is the primary dwelling Jeff and I’ve moved into that isn’t mine, nor his, however ours. We’re attending to play home collectively, to treasure hunt at consignment retailers and property gross sales, to search out our personal adorning style for the 1870s renovated barn we are actually calling dwelling. It’s beginning to really feel like a house, with all of mine and my daughter’s artwork held on the partitions, and all of our previous and new belongings gracing the hayloft and high-ceilinged essential rooms that also have hoof prints on the baseboards.
However it’s unusual right here too. I really feel shy on this new land in West Sonoma. Like a brand new lover who doesn’t know the curves of somebody’s contemporary physique, I really feel awkward and unfamiliar in my new place. Though the land is just like Muir Seashore, being 1 ½ hours north on Freeway One. I acknowledge the vegetation and animals, the tidal flats that stream out and in all day. In Forestville, I used to be within the forest. I couldn’t see the sky, and I used to be removed from the ocean, so I misplaced monitor of the moon cycles and the tidal schedules. However now, I’m so removed from San Francisco that I can see the Milky Method from my new yard sizzling tub, and I do know precisely the place the moon is in its cycle and when low tide is at Dillon Seashore, the place my canine can run off leash among the many sand dunes round Tomales Bay.
I’m studying the place the tide swimming pools are through the very low tides, the place the colourful starfish get uncovered, and the urchins seize my finger with their sticky tentacles once I attain all the way down to caress them. Like I realized to reap oysters when Jeff and I lived in Cape Cod, I’ll learn to harvest mussels and kelp right here and possibly even get a fishing rod so I can be a part of the boys who catch Dungeness crabs with their hookless poles from the seaside. I get to know the tule fog that blanketed us for the previous month and simply lifted, permitting the temperatures to heat only a bit.
Changing into “Positioned”
This winter solstice, I invite you to verify into how positioned or displaced you’re feeling. In case you are displaced, possibly it’s time to go on a couple of dates with the land that helps and holds you. Listed below are a couple of light methods to do this—provided not as prescriptions, however as invites.
You may begin just by noticing how your physique feels the place you reside. Do you exhale once you arrive dwelling? Do your shoulders drop once you step exterior? Or do you stay braced, vigilant, unmoored? The nervous system typically is aware of lengthy earlier than the thoughts does whether or not it feels held by a spot.
You may start to study the names of what lives round you, in addition to the names of the individuals who initially inhabited your land. Not in a performative or romanticized manner, however in a relational one. What timber share your block? What tribe tended this land? What birds sing at daybreak the place you reside? What weeds insist on rising by means of cracks within the sidewalk? What’s the title of the bay you reside close to, or the lake you swim in, or the mountain out your window? Naming is a type of respect. It says, I see you. I’m keen to know you.
You may mark time by one thing aside from the clock or your calendar. Discover when the sunshine shifts in your kitchen in late afternoon. When the fog rolls in—or lifts. When the primary rain adjustments the odor of the soil. When the moon makes it more durable or simpler to sleep. These are methods the land speaks, quietly, always.
In case you are grieving a land you really liked—or a house that held you thru an vital chapter—know that this grief is professional. In our tradition, we don’t typically acknowledge place-based grief, however your coronary heart does. You’re allowed to mourn a mountain, a shoreline, a yard, a view. You’re allowed to overlook a spot the best way you miss an individual.
And should you really feel deeply displaced—by shifting, by local weather change, by financial strain, by colonization’s lengthy shadow—be light with your self. Displacement shouldn’t be a private failure. It’s a collective wound. One many people are carrying, typically with out language for it. Nonetheless, even inside that reality, a relationship is feasible.
You’ll be able to sit on the bottom and let your physique keep up a correspondence with the earth beneath you.
You’ll be able to provide gratitude—out loud or silently—to the water you drink, the meals you eat, the shelter that holds you.
You’ll be able to ask the land, humbly, how do you wish to know me? How can I belong right here with out proudly owning you?
You may make choices to the land- flowers, songs, little altars underneath timber or on seashores, the best way so many cultures do. (There are lots of directions for doing this in my ebook Sacred Medication, in addition to in a weblog I wrote Sacred Reciprocity.)
Belonging to land doesn’t imply possession. It means reciprocity, care, and listening. Displaying up time and again, even awkwardly, even shyly, even not sure.
Because the wheel of the yr turns and the sunshine begins its sluggish return, could this solstice be a threshold for you, too. A second to honor what you’ve misplaced, what you’re studying, and what may nonetheless be potential. Wherever you might be, could the land beneath your ft come to know you.
And should you, in time, come to really feel recognized by it.
Completely satisfied Winter Solstice, pricey ones!
*In 2026, I might be providing at some point or weekend IFS-informed mentoring intensives, one-on-one with me on this new land I get to know. In case you’re taken with studying extra, simply ship your curiosity to assist@LissaRankin.com. A part of the intensives, do you have to want to expertise it, might be land-based rituals that permit for a deeply somatic expertise of no matter it’s you might be calling in, letting go of, or dreaming into being.