A Letter for December: The Light Returns
Dear friend,
December carries a paradox, doesn’t it?
The world shimmers with motion — gatherings, plans, glittering storefronts — while inside, something deeper slows. The year is winding down, but our hearts are still catching up.
There’s a particular stillness in the air this month.
You can feel it when you step outside and watch your breath rise into the cold dusk. Something in you knows: endings and beginnings are brushing shoulders.
And yet, beneath all the sparkle, there’s a quiet truth emerging across sessions, social media, and whispered conversations: we’re tired.
Not just “holiday tired,” but soul tired.
The kind of tired that comes from carrying a full year in our bodies — the joy, the grief, the growth, the questions that never quite settled.
December tends to magnify things.
The connection and the loneliness.
The gratitude and the ache of what’s missing.
The nostalgia and the sting of unmet expectations.
Nothing is wrong with you for feeling more — this month brings everything closer to the surface.
If November was the quiet between, December is the faint light that flickers at its edge.
A soft signal that even in the longest night, something is returning.
And here’s the truth your nervous system knows even if your mind forgets:
You’re not meant to sprint to the finish line.
You’re meant to soften into the ending.
Meaning doesn’t arrive on demand.
Closure doesn’t wear a bow.
You don’t need resolutions or a five-year plan or the perfect “word of the year.”
You only need to notice where the light is returning —
in small kindnesses,
in deeper honesty,
in the way you’re meeting yourself more gently than before.
This month is a threshold, not a test.
Let yourself arrive without performing.
Let yourself rest without earning it.
Let yourself feel without needing to label it.
As the year folds into itself, here are ways to honor this tender crossing:
December Practices for the Threshold Season
Candlelight Moments
As daylight fades, light a candle for everything this year held — the beautiful, the hard, the unspoken. Watch the flame dance. Let it be enough.Year-End Softening
Instead of resolutions, write a thank-you note to the version of you who survived this year. Honor her effort. Honor her becoming.Digital Sabbath
Choose one evening to unplug completely. Let quiet replace consumption. Notice how your shoulders drop, how your breath deepens.Tiny Joy Inventory
Each night, name one small thing that made you feel alive — a laugh, a scent, a warm mug, a song lyric. Let joy be ordinary.Morning Light Ritual
Step outside or to a window first thing. Feel the cold, feel the sun (even faint), feel yourself here. A reminder: the light always returns.
Reflective Journal Prompt: December
What light is returning in your life right now — softly, quietly, without demanding to be seen? And how can you make space for it to grow?
December doesn’t ask you to rush the ending.
It asks you to bow to it.
To acknowledge how far you’ve come, even if it wasn’t graceful.
To honor that survival itself is a kind of success.
As the year turns, may you meet yourself in the soft glow of your own becoming —
no grandeur,
no pressure,
just the honest light of being here, still.
With love and quiet celebration,
Abby
@groundingu.therapy
