My final wish for you all this Yule season is that you be surrounded with love.<\/p>\n
We are social apes, we humans, and loneliness is a terrible burden to us. Here at the dark and cold time of year, we can feel even more isolated, even more as though we must face life’s trials on our own. It is quite likely that this was one of the main drivers of the creation of our Winter Solstice traditions in the first place.<\/p>\n
I happen to be someone who has no blood family any longer. It’s better that way, overall: the dynamic within my family was toxic and abusive and would not,\u00a0could not<\/em> support me in being who I am. But at the holidays, it’s easy to feel some sadness about what it might have been like to have a family that loved me. It’s easy to fall into self-pity at what I went through with the one I had.<\/p>\n But life is generous in that we can choose NEW family, and so I have done. There are many people in the world who love and value me, and with whom I can celebrate and commune and share the events of life.<\/p>\n I wish this for you: that your loved ones, blood or chosen, be a source of joy to you. That you know you are loved by those who value and see you. This is a season when we make gestures to remind one another of our love for each other, and I hope you receive many such reminders.<\/p>\n As we enter a new year of the great Sun’s cycle, may we all feel set like jewels in the great lacework of love in the world.<\/p>\n And on Earth peace, good will towards all. Merry Yule!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My final wish for you all this Yule season is that you be surrounded with love. We are social apes, we humans, and loneliness is a terrible burden to us. Here at the dark and cold time of year, we can feel even more isolated, even more as though we must face life’s trials on our own. It is quite likely that this was one of the main drivers of the creation of our Winter Solstice traditions in the first place. I happen to be someone who has no blood family any longer. It’s better that way, overall: the dynamic within my family was toxic and abusive and would not,\u00a0could not support me in being who I am. But at the holidays, it’s easy to feel some sadness about what it might have been like to have a family that loved me. It’s easy to fall into self-pity at what I went through with the one I had. But life is generous in that we can choose NEW family, and so I have done. There are many people in the world who love and value me, and with whom I can celebrate and commune and share the events of life. I wish this for you: that your loved ones, blood or chosen, be a source of joy to you. That you know you are loved by those who value and see you. This is a season when we make gestures to remind one another of our love for each other, and I hope you receive many such reminders. As we enter a new year of the great Sun’s cycle, may we all feel set like jewels in the great lacework of love in the world. And on Earth peace, good will towards all. Merry Yule! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-9598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holidays","tag-yule-or-midwinter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}