12/20/2025
By Megan Rundel:
At the winter solstice, we find ourselves in the long night—the place where nothing is being asked to improve. The Earth is not striving toward light. It is resting inside the dark, and in that resting, something ancient and trustworthy is already turning.
This is familiar territory for KAP therapists. Much of what we accompany lives below the surface of language and intention. The nervous system moves the way roots move in winter—slowly, invisibly, guided by an intelligence that does not announce itself. Our work is not to interpret or direct this movement, but to stay close, curious, and kind as it unfolds.
In sessions, we often sit with moments that feel like stillness, confusion, or descent. Joan Sutherland reminds us that these moments are not interruptions to the path; they are the path. Winter teaches us that not-knowing is not a failure of practice. It is a form of intimacy with life as it is.
The solstice invites a particular kind of trust: trust in what cannot yet be named, trust in the body’s timing, trust in the way healing grows sideways before it grows upward. When we allow the dark to be fully here—without reassurance, without hurry—we offer a field in which something true can arrive on its own.
This season also asks something tender of us as practitioners. Where are we being asked to rest inside our own unlit places? Where might we soften our grip on competence, certainty, or being helpful? The same field we offer others is the field we need, too.
And quietly, without ceremony, the light returns—not as a solution, but as a continuation. A little more space. A little more warmth. Not because we made it happen, but because we stayed.
On this solstice, may we remember that the dark is not a problem to solve, but a companion. May we keep company with it—together—until it turns.
