In this last week of the year, when things are winding down from the holidays, from the year over all, from all the doing and the being and the going…we have an opportunity to lean into the quiet and breath. When it is quiet we are able to attend to what is around us, what is in us, the quiet voices inside us with all of their wisdom. Some people take the opportunity to clear away the debris, rest up, and prepare to once again take on all those New Year’s resolutions that didn’t work out last year but must get done so this must be the year! Others will look around them, see what worked, what didn’t, take stock of who they have become, be thankful for the wisdom they have gained, then laugh at the thought of New Year’s resolutions and then hunker in the bunker again awaiting the storm that is 2016. (With no mistakes in it yet, of course. LOL)
I find that this week between here and there, between the gathering together and beingness of Christmas and the transformation of New Year’s, there is a lovely pause that allows us to sort and sift through everything and gain a bit of clarity. One way of doing that is, before packing away all the traditional items and family memories, before folding up the mythology we have created or inherited, that we shake it out and really look at it. Family myths, those stories that tell us where we come from and who we are, come from cores of truth wrapped in fantastical events woven into tales of woe and victory. As children we accept them without judgement or skepticism. But now we are no longer children and those unexamined myths could probably due with a good airing. Tales where one partner is always the hero and their significant other is always the bad guy, stories of one sibling who is the smart one vs. the other who is pretty or a failure or a jock….stories of why things happened the way they did and make it seem as if the events were fated…all of these are myths that like old silver, come clean when polished with care.
The mythology we inherit isn’t something we need to carry around with us forever. In fact, it can be the culprit when it seems as if we are constantly setting ourselves up to fail or we have bad judgement or trust issues. We may think this is something broken within us when in actuality the issue is in the mythology we have based our world on. Luckily we don’t have to suffer with it nor do we have to try and run away from it or have it removed surgically. All myths are constructs. Like swords or shields they are forged from raw materials through the flames of need, ours or someone else’s. They take facts and forge meaning out of them. And what has been made once can be remade. Like the shards of Narsil we can take what has been broken and make it into a thing of beauty. We can reforge our mythology. During this time of the light’s return we can shine a light on these old stories and start to pull apart the pieces until once again we have facts. Then, as adults, we can reforge them into a new mythology that heals wounds, releases us from old patterns, and allows us to move forward unencumbered and fully armed into the New Year.