Regardless of what or if you celebrate, living in the western world means the holiday season is around us everywhere. A time of joy, celebration, and connection, the holidays can also be extremely stressful. The pressures of consumerism are high and gift giving can easily get out of hand. Even something as seemingly simple as making a meal for our family and loved ones can be overwhelming and laden with expectation—leading to choices that may not be in alignment with our bodies and minds. Managing family relations under such circumstances can be challenging.
Whether through the goddess Inanna, Quan Yin, Green Tara, or any other goddess, call in her energy to assist you over the holiday season. Read on for five simple ways to navigate the season with a little more ease.
Self-Care Tips
Prioritizing your self-care is essential. Maintain your daily rituals despite the increased pressures and demands of the holidays, just shorten them, and give yourself the permission to improvise! What’s important is the gesture to yourself—what you do is less crucial at this time.
For example, if you typically do a spin class in the morning, consider a short walk around the block with a few 1–2-minute faster sections. If you’re traveling, do a 15-minute core workout in your hotel room instead. A self-care gesture can be as simple as turning your daily shower into a mini spa with candles, calming music, and essential oils.
This impromptu holy temple to yourself can be a baptismal experience with the Goddess, one where you emerge anew into a deeper level of self-love. Continuing to carve out a few minutes for yourself is crucial and will do wonders for your spirit and your mood!
Gift Giving Guidance
Think about making spiritually inspired gifts that come from the heart instead of purchasing gifts.
· Make a pendulum by attaching your favorite symbol or talisman to a silk cord you can pick up at a craft store. Bless it and write up an instructive note for your loved one on the significance of the pendulum to how make it their own spiritual tool.
· Create a ‘blessing pouch’ for a loved one. Use a piece of cloth in the color you feel captures the energy you wish to pass on and fill it with symbolic items that you can find in nature or already possess ¾ coins, dried flowers, crystals, a shell, or stone, written words, images of the attributes you wish to impart such as abundance, health, and compassion. Finally, sew up the bundle and sage it with a smudge stick, then hold it in meditation to infuse it with the intention that it will support your loved one under the Law of Grace.
Festive Goddess Nourishment
This one can be super easy. Literally say prayers over every item you ingest. This will help you get centered so you can be intentional about what you are taking in. In addition, doing so lifts the vibration of whatever choice you are making. For fun, either solo or with your family, you can honor the Goddess by following the ancient tradition done in Neolithic Europe of baking bread in her honor. You might bake bread in the shape of a crescent moon or even cookies topped with designs linked to the Goddess, such as the snake, owl, egg, or an inverted triangle. Add your own holiday flare to it with colored sprinkles.
Peaceful Yuletide Relations
The path of the Goddess is inclusive, unifying, and based on unconditional love. This unconditional love includes love of self. One way to honor the self is to ensure your sacred boundaries are in place. Rather than walling in or out, these simply ensure what we absorb is aligned with our highest good.
Can you channel the Goddess by erecting sacred boundaries around yourself? Before you go into a family gathering, stop and pause. Close your eyes, imagine yourself growing roots from your feet and root chakra deep into the earth and then ask Gaia to send up protective boundaries from her heart all the way around your whole being.
With sacred boundaries firmly established you will be less triggered and more easily able to see unconscious projections of others for what they are so that you don’t take things personally. As a result, peaceful relations will be accessed with greater ease, and you will find your heart stays open.
Global Love Ritual
In the northern hemisphere, the Winter Solstice takes place on December 21. A powerful portal for spreading love and protection globally, the Solstice is one of the eight high holy days of ancient times. These are dates during which the veils between the worlds are thinnest. Use this time to anchor in your heart intention for the whole world to be at peace and free. It is a potent time to cultivate a ritual in honor of world peace and individual sovereignty. Ask the Goddess to protect the earth and lay down an offering in her honor in return ¾ perhaps this is simply lighting a candle in her honor once you do your ritual, or leaving her food or drink, or even a love note. Get creative. Use you or intuition to come up with a ritual but it is a significant time to do so.
Allow the Goddess to inspire your holidays so you feel grounded, connected, and deeply aligned throughout this often frenzied season.
*Inspired by the wisdom of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, this blog is an invitation to live as she does, like an Unapologetic Heroine.
Seana Zelazo, LICSW is a psychotherapist, spiritual coach, and intuitive channel committed to helping us live unapologetically, by restoring balance within and without through the wisdom of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna. She is the author of The Way of Inanna: A Heroine’s Guide to Living Unapologetically. seanazelazo.com
