“Go underground, sit silently with our passions and demons”, said the Facebook post by Wanderlust. “Turn inward” it suggested, as it romanticised this, the shortest day of the year, Winter Solstice. It made me stop with those words. Our passions and demons. My passions and demons. Your passions and demons.

Passions and demons.

It’s uncanny because three nights ago I tried to sit quietly with my demons to better understand them…and ended up writing about passion. About passionfruit.

With it being three nights shy of winter solstice it was a bleak evening, with a deep black darkness smothering the hills and valleys around here, and the grimness had been seeping under my skin slowly but surely. There was a half moon, perfectly formed and perfectly fuzzy, hiding half of itself behind a thin layer of demons, the remainder barely visible through the cloud.

A friend had suggested earlier that evening (or afternoon, its hard to tell), that the solstice is the time to delve into the shadow self, see what meaning and guidance it can deliver before a re-birth of light. So I thought ok, I’ll try this. C’mon demons, let’s play! C’mon shadow self, I thought, I want to know you, I want to hear your insight, I want to see how my demons can guide me. Then surely we can all return to the light for another year please, brighter and wiser like the good pagans we are.

I listened hard to the silence for a message. I sat in the quiet, sank into the emptiness. Yet the darkness gave me little. The silence even less. Except a total awareness of how deep the dark could be, and stronger motivation to seek out light!

I started writing. I wrote about passionfruit tart, and home, and Ed Sheeran, and fairy lights and eating take away food. I wrote about sofa-beds and facials and singing loudly while driving and leaving the toilet seat up. I wrote about passion, and passionfruit, and passionfruit tart.

There were no demons to be seen. Not on that night anyway. Unless my demon is the darkness itself, and passion is my release from it. Release through passion and passionfruit tart.

My passion-fruited demons.

Happy Winter Solstice x