Old Year’s Night-This Year, There Will Be Fire

New Year’s Eve portends a year of hopeful questions. Old Year’s Night is the last day of an answering year. In every case, the answer is the same. If it didn’t kill you, no matter what it was, you will never fear it again. 

Old Year’s Nights prepare for New Year’s Days by way of a bonfire into which I toss my laments, written on scraps of paper. Cauterized, what tried to destroy me can no longer harm me. In a crucible of my own making, I see the harms vanquished. In 2025, so much that I held dear was stolen or seized under mortal threat. As midnight approaches, I’m about to burn it all away. 

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October 2025-it had been many years since the last time I had prayed in a labyrinth. In sacred traditions, labyrinths offer opportunities for spiritual transformation, where you may begin the journey towards the center with a plea or intention. While I had no plan for my walk, on that day, our hosts encouraged us to form a supplication before taking the first step, and upon reaching the center, consider pausing or sitting as we laid that burden down. When we felt it had been released, it was recommended that we offer prayers of gratitude as we made the journey out. 

Inside a local centuries-old stone church, I removed my shoes and quieted my mind. What I experienced during this walk was different. Pausing mindfully before taking the first step, searing tears fell. I walked and wept. I moved slowly, breathing deeply, feeling the need to hold myself together, wrapping my arms tightly around my torso to steady my movement and calm my heart. 

I was certain that I didn’t want to continue the walk, as burning tears fell, but I did. With each step, I argued with God in my head, at first not clear why. I realized then that this moving meditation was the act of shedding some of the weight of my grief. It made those steps into the labyrinth heavier, even as they became more intentional. I kept moving. As I moved closer to the center, the heaviness built. 

When I reached the center, I felt changed. The racing of my heartbeat had slowed, as had my falling tears. I was certain that the walk away from the center would feel different once I took that first step, but I was also afraid. That still, small voice whispered to me that the woman walking away from the center of the labyrinth had been transformed in quiet ways since she began that journey. My grief, my steps, and my heart felt lighter. 

My tears were rain, the method by which petrichor may be achieved. Petrichor, the scent unleashed by a kiss-Living Waters falling upon Dry Bones and barren land. 

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CHASING PETRICHOR…

After purifying fire comes soothing, healing water, and sweet petrichor, my favorite word.  Like mortar on pestle, Petrichor is the fragrance of pounding rain upon parched earth and the beauty liberated thereby.

Petrichor marries the dry and the restorative, the profane and the profoundly sacred.

I bear the scars, but we warriors are better for them. 

In the first month of this year as I write these words before midnight, before the sun rose on a Tuesday morning, just short of 400,000 hours after the day we met, I intended to kiss My Beloved awake, as tenderly as I’d kissed him goodnight just hours earlier. The Ancestors preceded me, ushering my heart’s truest desire away from our life together and into eternity.

The women from whom I descend were raised to hold up the world, and we’re weary. We’ve been living in survival mode for so long that we no longer remember the fullness of joy. It’s time to stop.

Recently, someone I deeply respect spoke a prophetic word over me, shaking me to my core. She said, “It’s time for you to come out of survival mode.” 

Few of us recognize when we have entered survival mode. Survival mode is a stress response ensuring our protection. And while it is helpful to enter survival mode when met with immediate threats, remaining there breaks us down, mentally and physically.

I’ve been too weary to rely on my strength. The weight of the grief I have carried is crushing. It’s time to let the weight of all this grief fall away. It’s time to greet the dawn.

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My One Word for 2026 represents hope like I haven’t felt in a very long time.

My word for this year is…

Sunrise