The Longest Night was the last fully detailed art piece I completed before the tremors from my chronic illness became too severe to allow me to create technically precise drawings and paintings.  It was first posted on December 14, 2012, so just shy of a decade ago.  There are a couple small realistic pencil drawings, a handful of minimalist drawings, and a number of uncompleted art projects that I undertook during the intervening years when my symptoms and mood allowed it, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.  Thus, I feel it is reasonable to state that The Longest Night was the end to a stage in my life that I valued very, very much, and still grieve to the depths of my soul.

In the original post for The Longest Night, despite the deeper meaning to me, I only wrote one very brief paragraph:

“I have been wanting to create at least one piece of art for the coming Yule, so in the previous two days, between housecleaning in preparation for a holiday visit, I created “The Longest Night”.  It’s a drawing of a stag, representing the horned lord of the forest, pausing in the moonlight on the night of the winter solstice.”

What I failed to convey on that occasion is that it was not just “for the coming Yule,” it was a dedication to the deeper meanings behind the sabbat of Yule, of the winter solstice, of the longest night of the year.  It was a way for me to bring to life through art, my understanding of not only the natural processes of winter solstice as they relate to the turning of the year, but also the symbolic and metaphysical meanings of the holy night, and how those meanings can function as a deeper metaphor for difficulties at any time of year.

If you have read my other articles, you may already be familiar with my take on the cyclical nature of the solar cycle and how it relates to finding life balance.  Winter Solstice and Finding Balance in Extremes uses the metaphor of the winter solstice to discuss the vital role extremes play in maintaining balance.  Transient Balance and Duality of the Equinoxes – Mabon and Ostara discusses how perfect, even balance is a transient thing, because everything moves as time marches on, meaning that true static balance is not sustainable.

Critically Examining The Longest Night

That image, The Longest Night, is an artistic representation of that extreme moment in the solar cycle where the Earth shifts from increasingly longer nights to increasingly longer days.  It is simultaneously the darkest, longest night, and it is also the turning point for the sun cycle that promises the winter will end, and spring will come.  It is cold, especially the closer you are to the Earth’s poles, and tends to be quiet, especially when there is snow on the ground.  Many plants and animals are conserving their energy, hibernating, or even die back for the season, waiting patiently for warmer weather to burst forth.  It is a time of rest and rejuvenation, where the old melts away so it can fertilize new life in the spring.

And sometimes the deepest winter means death, a final kind of ending when food is scarce, or bad circumstances strike, and there is not enough bounty present to allow for recovery.

Usually, such deaths exist alongside brand new beginnings, that are not just rejuvenations, but create fertile ground for something entirely new.

The silent trees, in the silent snow, represent the quietude and rest that happens when times are dark and lean.  It is impossible to know what is hiding underneath the blanket of white, what animals and plants are snuggled down, waiting out the winter that is nowhere near over.  It is impossible to know what seeds are sinking into the earth under a heavy blanket of decomposing plant matter and snow, ready to sprout when the sun kisses the earth once more.

And yet there is still movement and life, however quietly and carefully it treads, represented by the stag.  It is both hard to see and hard to miss, defined as much, or maybe more by shadow than light, and is easy to misinterpret.  We have no idea what he is up to, other than the fact that the viewer has caught his attention for a moment.  Will he walk off quietly, deciding we are not a threat, or will he bound away into the darkness faster than the eye can believe?  Either way, what will be left are his hoofprints in the snow, tiny impressions of the passage he made through the forest, destined to be obliterated in the next snowfall like they were never there.

The stag also represents the Horned Lord, and the fickle forces of nature and fortune.  We may have expectations of how things will work out, because we have seen the cycles that came before, and naturally expect those cycles to be faithfully repeated.  Indeed, they may repeat, but those faithful repeats are never true for all things.  Hardship that falls during lean times is all the more difficult to overcome, and not all things will overcome those hardships.  Yet, that is also an inexorable part of the cycles of life.  That is neither good nor bad.  It is simply an unavoidable aspect of nature.

The full moon watches over this scene to remind us that even in the longest, darkest night, there is still hope, and there is still a way forward.  Even if that light is dim, it exists, and we should never give up on it, even when we cannot see it, for when we give up hope, that is when we are truly lost.  Indeed, when times are the most clouded and difficult, softer lights become easier to see, so that we can better understand the subtleties and important core lessons around us that we would miss in bountiful times.

It is in these difficult times that it can become most clear what is truly important, when the distracting baubles of easy life are not keeping us focused on superficial things.  Or, we can get lost in the shifting shadows, unsure what is real or unreal, becoming overwhelmed by our fears and increasingly more lost as we lose sight of what is most important.

And therein lies one of the most dangerous aspects of extremes that leave us lean and potentially exposed: extreme circumstances often demand extreme responses.  If we fail to find the extreme of rest and rejuvenation, where we are able to retain focus on what is most important, we instead are prone to panic and self-deception.  Will we accurately assess that which catches our attention, or will we panic and act without thinking things through?  It naturally follows that what started out as something difficult, will become compounded by erroneously focusing on illusions and distractions.  When we do that, it is easy to lose sight of that which can most effectively get us through those difficult times, and set us up for growth when those difficult times eventually pass.

If you do not die (and even if you do die), difficult times will always pass, eventually, so ideally you not only survive, but are prepared to flourish when they do pass.  For like the winter solstice, extremes are unsustainable, and the world will eventually swing in another direction.

Personal Meaning in the Flow of My Life

I am reexamining this piece right now, in the Mabon season for the Northern Hemisphere, a quarter year from the time it is dedicated to.  On the surface, that seems silly.  The days and nights are of similar length, and summer is barely releasing its hold.  We are moving into fall, not winter, and spring is so far away as to be inconsequential.  Certainly, none of the solar circumstances right now have any true relevance to an art piece dedicated to the winter solstice, right?

Except that sabbats have meaning, not only for the solar cycle, but as metaphors for what those sabbats and solar cycle changes represent in our very human lives, regardless of the season.

The Longest Night is a not just a symbol of an annual celestial event.  It is a symbol of what that event means as a concept and a lesson for life.

I created The Longest Night at the very end of my independent business as an artist and seamstress.  It was the very last piece I created and tried to sell, before admitting defeat to chronic illness, and closing shop.  It came to life when I had descended into my own, personal, longest night, one of chronic illness and disability.  It came to life shortly before I finally met with the doctor who would be able to diagnose and treat me, so that the rapid decline in my health would finally be halted, and hopefully reversed.

When I found that doctor and turned that corner, I thought it would be just a couple years, and I could be back to normal.

But, the winter solstice is not the middle of winter.  It is not the coldest or most difficult part of winter.  In fact, by modern accounting, it is typically regarded as the start of winter.  It may be the turning point for the sun, but the hardest months come after the winter solstice, and so much of what truly dies during that season does so when times are most lean, from the winter solstice until the turn of springtime between Imbolc and Ostara.

I took that turning point of finding a doctor and beginning to receive treatment as the turning point of my life, but it was not that.  It was the turning point in my opportunities, in the possibilities that could lay ahead of me.

The most difficult times were still ahead, and I failed to comprehend that, or at least, I was staring at indistinct shadows, seeing what I wanted to see, and ignoring the possibility that my difficulties were far from over.

When I created The Longest Night, I was approaching 6 years since I had been bit by a tick and contracted anaplasmosis.  That was almost six years of mysterious illness and debilitating decline in my overall health. This coming winter solstice will be nine years since I created that drawing, a little less than nine years since I received my diagnosis and began treatment.  It will be seven and a half years since I finished my antibiotics and officially entered the recovery phase of my illness.

I have now spent more than fourteen years of my life with chronic illness, and eleven of them disabled.

I am past my personal longest night, characterized by the terror of living in a body that was falling apart, with no clue why or how to fix it.  That longest night did indeed come to a close before that physical winter was finished.  But, I am still in my personal longest winter, and it is entirely possible that winter will never break into full spring, at least, not the way I expected when I started medical treatment.

I had to learn to accept that which I lost.  I had to grieve the life I used to live, where I could hold down a day job, run my own sewing and art business, wrote most of the tutorials you will find on this website, taught and presented at conventions and workshops, and had an active social life that involved frequent dinner nights with friends, weekly outings, and multiple conventions each year.

I had to accept that my life was forever altered, but that if I approached it with care, I could lay the foundations for something new while I rested, rejuvenated, and focused on healing.  But, in order to do that, I needed to identify what was most important in my life, so I could nurture it and give it fertile ground.  I no longer had the ability to do it all.  I could only focus on one or two things at a time, and taking care of my physical needs as a chronically ill person was, by necessity, at the top of that short list.  That way someday, when the snow melted and the sun once more kissed the ground, it had the potential to grow into something beautiful.

Personal Meaning in the Present Day

My blog has been quiet since the beginning of May because my limited energy and resources have needed to be elsewhere.  I left Patheos, but it is more than just that.  I also have been putting energy into shadow work, my symptoms have been particularly terrible over the summer, and there have been other adulting necessities that eat up what energy I have.

I also, quite frankly, was not in the head space to write much.  I wanted to, and I continued to jot down prompts for articles that feel important to write, but the ability to actually do so was lacking.  My energy was needed elsewhere.

Because I am still in that longest winter, I need to continue to move deliberately and cautiously, and when I get too eager or move too fast, I wear myself out and lose the ability to do what I had been managing for a while.  I did this a couple years into my recovery, when I decided that I could handle one major event a month, and then burned myself out entirely because I actually could not.  I did this when I tried to start drawing again four years ago but couldn’t sustain it.  I did this two summers ago, right before I started blogging, when I was leading monthly ritual at a local shop, Lightweaver’s Metaphysical Boutique.

When May came around and I suddenly could no longer write, I could not help but fear that maybe I had done it again and pushed myself too far.  But no, I do not think that is the case.  There is a difference between taking a needed rest so you can focus on different things, and fully burning out, but if you do not take the rest you need, burnout is usually laying in the near future.

I am giving those things the attention they need, but I also do not want to lose the sense of community that I have gained through blogging, especially since covid has removed the other avenues of socializing that I had previously used.  I may be an introvert, but I still need social interaction to be a happy and balanced person.

I am also trying new things, in the hopes that they will help with symptom management and I will be able to more consistently meet the physical needs of living in our society, while doing some of the things that help to feed my soul and bring me joy and satisfaction.  I am looking at the intersection of childhood trauma response and chronic illness, and exploring options that may address both simultaneously.

I am still very much in that darkest winter.  The difficulties of my illness, and the financial difficulties it guarantees me, still rule my life.  They dictate, not just what I am capable of day to day, but also what medical treatments and therapies are available to me.  There are many therapies that I know help, but I cannot afford them, and so they are not available.  With so few options, I must by necessity focus my resources and energy primarily on those things that might, provide an avenue to a new spring.