The Solstice Knows Something We’ve Forgotten

Tonight is the longest night of the year.

And if you’re like most of us, you’ll barely notice. We’ll scroll past it, schedule through it, string lights against it. We’ve become very good at pushing back the dark.

But the solstice knows something we’ve forgotten: the darkness is not the enemy.

I’ve been thinking about this as I watch the women I work with navigate the second half of life. So many of us arrive at midlife having spent decades outrunning the dark — filling every silence, solving every problem, illuminating every corner of our lives with productivity and purpose.

And then something shifts. The roles that defined us begin to loosen. The body changes in ways we can’t optimize our way out of. The questions we’d been too busy to ask start surfacing at 3 a.m.

We find ourselves standing in the dark. And we don’t know what to do there.

The solstice offers a different teaching.

For thousands of years, humans have marked this night — not by rushing toward the light, but by honoring the turning point itself. The threshold. The still point where the world pauses before beginning its slow return toward longer days.

The ancients understood that you cannot have the return of light without first having the fullness of dark. That the seeds underground need the cold. That some things can only grow in the absence of illumination.

They didn’t fear the longest night. They built fires and gathered together and waited, with the darkness rather than against it.

I wonder what would happen if we approached the darker seasons of our lives the same way.

Not rushing through grief, but letting it have its full measure. Not solving the emptiness left when children leave or careers end, but sitting in it long enough to discover what else might be there. Not frantically searching for the next thing, but trusting that the turning will come — as it always does — in its own time.

The second half of life is full of these solstice moments. Times when everything we knew is behind us, and what’s coming hasn’t yet arrived. Times when we’re asked to stand in the not-knowing, in the dark, without a map.

It’s uncomfortable. We’re not trained for it. Everything in our culture tells us to fix it, fill it, move past it.

But the solstice knows better.

Tonight, if you’re willing, try this:

Instead of pushing against the darkness, let yourself be in it. Turn off a few lights. Sit with the quiet. Feel the weight of the longest night — not as something to survive, but as something to honor.

Ask yourself: What in me is waiting for the dark? What can only grow underground? What is ready to turn toward the light — but not yet?

You don’t need answers. The solstice doesn’t ask for answers. It only asks for presence.

Tomorrow, the light will begin its slow return. But tonight belongs to the dark.

And that’s not a problem to be solved.

That’s the whole point.

Terri Altschul is a depth coach working with women in the second half of life. Learn more at terri.coach.