Preparing Ourselves for the Returning Light

Across many cultures and centuries, people have met the darkest days of the year with festivals of light. Long before electricity, families gathered around candles and firelight, shared winter meals, and marked the solstice with rituals meant to warm both body and spirit.

Even now, our holidays echo those ancient instincts. Streets glow with color. Music drifts through shops. Kitchens fill with spice and sweetness. Invitations multiply.

There is beauty in all of this.
Yet, in the midst of so much brightness, many of us feel a little dimmed.

This season can tug at us in opposite directions. The world grows noisier and we are surrounded by cheer even as our own energy thins. For some, the holidays magnify loneliness, and for others they amplify responsibility. Nearly everyone feels a bit stretched.

A Moment of Quiet Repair

One afternoon last week, I was in line at a crowded café. People were juggling packages and phones. A toddler squirmed in her father’s arms, tired and overstimulated, her small legs kicking against his side. Dad looked tired too. His order was clearly a bid for energy:  a heavy jolt of caffeine to carry him through a long day with an even longer list of things he hoped to finish.

For a moment, their fatigue collided. She let out a loud, frustrated cry, and he tightened his hold in an instinctive protest against being overwhelmed.

Then something shifted.
Instead of letting her impatience amplify his own, he lifted her higher on his shoulder and began humming a low, steady tune meant only for her. It was not polished or planned. It was simply a father trying to soothe a child, and perhaps himself.

Gradually, her breathing slowed. One small hand reached up and tangled itself in the fabric of his shirt. Her tears dissolved into little hiccups, and as he kept humming, she pressed her cheek against his neck.

A tiny smile finally appeared. And, for a moment, they hummed together in a quiet shared rhythm in the middle of the room.

Around them, nothing changed. The line stayed long and the café buzzed. Yet that small exchange opened a clearing in the noise. I felt myself exhale, reminded that renewal rarely comes from excitement. It comes from tenderness, the kind that interrupts our rush and reorients something inside us.

The winter solstice is the darkest day of the year, and yet it is also the hinge, the moment after which light slowly begins to return. Our celebrations do not just brighten the darkness. They help us celebrate this turning. They invite us to prepare ourselves for what is already beginning: the quiet return of light.

How Light Returns in Us

We prepare for the returning light the way nature does, quietly and gradually, by turning toward what restores us. In weary seasons, one of the bravest choices we can make is to orient ourselves toward what brings warmth: the people who steady us, the practices that reconnect us to ourselves, the rituals that remind us we belong.

What we choose to notice becomes the ground we stand on.

Renewal almost always begins with small things. The solstice teaches us that transformation starts with minutes of light, not hours. In our own lives, small gestures — a kind word, a shared laugh, a brief glimpse of beauty — can shift our inner landscape more than any grand event.

The smallest sincere moment often carries the greatest power to restore us.

And renewal requires patience. Nothing in winter hurries, yet everything is still in motion. There is wisdom in honoring our own pace, allowing our energy to ebb and rise without judgment.  Trust that growth continues even when it is not visible.

What appears dormant in us is often quietly preparing for what comes next.

A Quiet Invitation

• Notice one moment of goodness today, and let it count.

• Choose one thing that brings you warmth, and make room for it.

• Move at the pace your life is actually asking of you.

• Meet your weariness with kindness. Light returns slowly in all of us.

Renewal does not happen by force. It happens by attention.
And in tending what is quiet and true, we prepare ourselves for the returning light.

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And that’s The Gist of It™: insights on relational courage — the courage to know and be known by others.
These practices help relationships breathe rather than tighten, deepen rather than fracture.

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Marilyn Gist, PhD