Here in Ireland, we approach the Winter Solstice of 2025. Whether you are in the northern or southern hemisphere, the Solstice marks a turning, the day when the light pauses, either a longest day or longest night, and then begins to change direction.

But the Solstice is a pause point. My ancestors celebrated this as a returning of longer days, a celebration of return of the sunshine and the promise of a new and perhaps easier year. But the Solstice is the pause, and there is no hurrying the new into being. The days lengthen only imperceptibly for some weeks to come, and for those of you on the other side of the world, the nights are still short and your summer continues in its hazy glory. This is a slow movement, and one which cannot and will not be rushed.

We can see this as a space where endings and beginnings merge seamlessly, where one grows out of the other, where there is potential and possibility visible but not yet tangible. We stand at another point in the turning of the year where we are invited to go within, take stock, recalibrate. And this too is a slow movement, and one which cannot and will not be rushed.

This year more than ever, the Solstice holds an invitation to spaciousness. It has been a hard year, with instability and uncertainty filtering through different aspects of our lives. It has been a year of shedding, a year of uncomfortable truths, a year of observing what you can no longer pretend to have the energy for. It has been a year of clarity.

And maybe, the clarity is only right now showing you what is complete. Maybe the glimmers of what is to come are indeed only glimmers right now. That is perfect for this moment in time. This cannot be rushed. And part of what is shedding is that need to rush, the urgency, the hurrying along. This whole year has been an invitation into embodiment, and with each deeper dropping-in, another layer sheds.

And as we flow on from the Solstice point, there is an invitation to continue to pause, to calibrate, to integrate, to assess and observe. With every new year, there is a collective momentum towards the “new year, new you” rush, with resolutions and good intentions coming from the desire to flow differently. Herded along by the collective momentum, many of these begin with great impetus, and then gradually, as January moves along, the energy dissipates, the old habits creep back in, the momentum fades.

This speed can and does undo the newly-won, often quite vulnerable, clarity of the Solstice inward pull. There is a cost to mistaking urgency for alignment, to rushing to the doing before the earthing-in and the embodying has occurred.

January doesn’t need to be your launch-pad this year.

January can be a month of slower beginnings. It can be a time of deciding what kind of momentum you’re done surviving, and what kind of momentum sustains and nourishes you. There is a crucial different between the movement that drains and the movement that supports. What if you let yourself be led more by the nature that surrounds you? As we are still in the depth of the winter here, my intention is to move more slowly into 2026. There are no big programmes beginning for me. It is a time to hold the space for myself, personally and professionally, so that I can ease more gently into this coming calendar year than I have in the past.

What becomes possible when you don’t rush into what has only just begun to be true? I have spent these past two years taking apart and rebuilding my life and my business, and that work deserves to be honoured. It deserves space to settle before I begin to move into the light again. Last year I rushed into January, and lived to learn that lesson in the months that followed.

This year, I honour my energy, my life, my work and all the relationships in this world and others that I have co-created. I honour these aspects with the spaciousness of tending to them, and of allowing new inspirations to fully land and embody while that which is completing does so in its own time.

The turning of the Wheel of the Year is almost here. January doesn’t need to prove it all conclusively, immediately. What changes for you when you stop asking January to instantly manifest what the Solstice is only just beginning to reveal?