The solstice is my favorite holiday. I love the winter solstice and the summer solstice, mirroring one another. I experience the solstice to be a time of deepening and a powerful time to set intentions. I like to set my intentions and sing and rattle, praying to the trees, the plants, the earth, and all of the elements for wisdom, guidance, and support in manifesting my intentions. I pray to learn to love and to be in service to the whole. I read a little bit this year about the additional powerful energies, including the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, surrounding the solstice this year. In the recent weeks leading up to the solstice, I’ve experienced deep fears showing up to be witnessed and to receive attention. My deep fears in this lifetime include not being free, not growing to my greatest potential to give and receive love, and not being able to find the way to fully support myself through giving of my gifts. As I’ve been breathing and asking with the willow oak (my tree guide) and with dandelion and lavender in my little garden patch for support, wisdom, and guidance, I’ve experienced coming to a place in myself where I can feel that peace and power come from integration of myself as nature. This is the place where I am most at home, where I can feel my gifts naturally flowing directly from nature. I long to work from this place in support of others. In this beautiful place of being, I experience how time and space are only constructs in our world, and I feel free and creative in this lack of constructs. Today, the trees and plants and the elements, fire in particular, have been sharing with me something that I feel very emotional and curious about. They shared with me how it’s possible that in this human life, the only place of full freedom is within myself. I’ve chosen this lack of freedom so that I can learn to love and give from a place of freedom. This life as a human being is an opportunity to release control of external circumstances where I feel that I am not free, so that I am free in my heart to accept and love myself and others, and to give freely from my heart. The plants and trees show me the way. They are my teachers in love and service, as they give so freely of themselves, in a world where they have not been recognized as the equal, powerful, beautiful, wise beings they are, and not given sovereignty by human beings. May I learn to love and be in service and care of the whole, where all beings are recognized for their gifts.