Take some time to ground into your reflections of the past year and your intentions for the year ahead during the Winter solstice, if it feels right. Here are a few ideas of how to take time and space to pause, reflect, and set intentions for your home, life, work, and play for the next collective trip around the sun.

What and when is the Winter solstice?

In 2024, the Winter solstice is on December 21st. It can fall on the 20th, the 21st, or the 22nd. It’s always the darkest day of the year – with the longest night – in the Northern Hemisphere. The Winter solstice marks the beginning of the light’s return into our daily lives.

Themes associated with the Winter solstice are:

• Regeneration & renewal
• Shining the light into darkness
• Creative inspiration
• Reflection
• New life
• Connecting to nature/the mystery of life or the universe

Some of these themes may speak to you and some might not. There is also a lot more to discover about the Winter solstice! This is just a quick summary and a few ideas to try.

7 Winter solstice ideas

1.) Journaling, meditation, and reflection

I can’t overstate how powerful it is to take time to reflect on your life without distractions. Whether you find it more supportive to write, speak, or meditate on where you are at, who you are now, how far you’ve come, and what you want to do next. Take some time on or around the day of the Winter solstice to spend time contemplating these things and reflect on them in a way that feels helpful for you.

If you want to try this idea and feel like it would be helpful to create a reminder for yourself to do this, make that happen.

If you are already someone who makes time for journaling, reflection, or meditation, try creating some journaling prompts for yourself that are related to the themes of the winter solstice. Alternatively, try a group journaling or meditation session. You could also search for Winter solstice-related prompts and meditations to try.

2.) Plan for how you’re going to keep yourself well-resourced this year

Some of us who are stepping into our life’s work or headed in that direction tend to trend toward being weight-of-the-world-on-my-shoulders type of people. And it’s no wonder. Climate work is urgent work in many ways, after all.

With all of that in mind, what issues did you continually run into this year? What has been a problem for you when it comes to consistency, wellness, your activism, your work, your relationships, or your art? Where in your life were you feeling supported? Where were you unable to ask for help? What is the work, art, or creative activity that you feel deeply called to, but can’t seem to find the time for? How can you create more space in your life for that thing within the next year?

Think or write about the ways that you can ask for support or to support yourself through the next year. For me, some of this looks like asking my family for help more often and doing meal prep on Sundays and Thursdays so that I don’t have to cook from scratch every day of the week.

3.) Learn a new skill or hone a known skill

Winter is a great season to learn something new or deepen your skills. Can you create some time and space to do that this season?

Learning skills is a step in the direction of community-sufficiency, which will be vital to the years ahead of us. Building skills that will help us survive and thrive is also building resilience to the climate crisis. So, whether you’re writing, crocheting, teaching, cooking, woodworking, taking care of animals or plants or elders or children or something else, you’re resourcing yourself and your community for the future.

Check out the social change ecosystem framework created by Deepa Iyer for more ideas on what kind of skills or roles you could take on.

4.) Be of service to your community and/or ask for help

We’re all connected through nature. We all live in a communal way with the Earth. Because of this, we are affected by each other’s well being. If you can find some time this season to help a friend, neighbor, or another community member, you will benefit, too. If you find that you don’t have the capacity to offer help to someone else, allow yourself to ask for help.

Each time we give, we receive. Every time we receive, we also give. Think about how good it feels to help someone. When you allow yourself to ask for help (no matter how hard it is for some of us to do that) you give an opportunity for someone to help you and feel that connection and fulfillment.

Asking for and giving help can both be acts of love.

5.) Restore yourself and connect with nature

Part of this time is listening to Earth’s natural cycles. Not every season is a season for expending all of our energy! Same with Mother Earth. In Winter, she rests. We can too.

Whether or not you are currently able to rest in the ways you want to, see if you can create more rest in your life. Resting could mean weeks off of work or school. It could mean more sleep. It could also mean reducing the amount of energy we spend on masking ourselves. There are lots of ways to bring more rest into your life, even if it isn’t exactly what you envision as how you’ll be resting on the regular when you have found the balance you’re seeking.

Check out the work of Tricia Hersey and find her book, Rest is Resistance for more information on different ways to rest.

Spending time in nature is one of those ways. Spend time by the water, take a hike, open your window and listen to the neighborhood birds, or go on a walk around your neighborhood.

6.) Set intentions for the next year

Aside from what we already talked about, what are your intentions for next year? Who do you want to be? What do you want to feel? Is there anyone in your life that you feel the need to make more time for? Spend some time clarifying what you want to bring into your life in the future. If you feel called to, work through some action steps that will send you in the right direction, too.

7.) Clean and clear your space (Mentally, physically, digitally)

Yep, cleaning! It’s a good time to refresh and rest your space.

• Physical cleaning and decluttering can change your mood and boost your energy. Don’t forget to call in help if you need it!
• Mentally, clean out cyclical thoughts and to-do lists by getting them out onto paper. While you might not be able to clear all the mental clutter in one sitting, you can  make a big improvement in your well-being by regularly taking the time to jot down what you’re holding in your head so that you don’t have to hold it all there by yourself.
• Digitally, clean your space, too. Especially if you spend a significant amount of time on your phone, computer, or other devices. You can be sure that gets displayed in front of our eyes and brain every day has an effect on how we feel! Try unsubscribing from marketing emails you don’t need, deleting old texts, unfollowing people on social media who feed into materialism, and deleting apps you no longer use. There are so many other ways to do a digital declutter – can you think of any more that might be useful to you?

If you’re into that kind of thing, turn on a relaxing soundscape video, dance to music you love, or listen to a calming audiobook or a voice message from a loved one as you do this cleansing work.

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Thanks for reading! I hope you have a fun and empowering Winter solstice. 🙂