Tending the Imbolc Threshold: Grief, Hope, and Resistance in a Time of Darkness
In a time of political darkness, Imbolc calls us to tend both grief and renewal—to clear space, resist isolation, and carry the light forward.
Imbolc arrives in the stillness before spring, when the land remains cold but life is already stirring beneath the surface. The seeds swell with energy, held in the dark, waiting for the right conditions to rise. The roots reach toward one another, forming unseen networks of care. The thaw has not yet come, but the earth is already preparing.
Imbolc is not just the return of light, it is the work of ensuring that light has something to reach. It is the tending, the clearing, the deliberate shaping of what is to come. It is a reminder that renewal is not passive. That growth does not happen by chance. That what rises depends on the conditions we create.
And before new life can emerge, space must be made. The soil must be prepared. The hearth must be swept. Grief, too, must be tended.
Carl Jung wrote that renewal is not about inventing something new, but rediscovering what is most essential in ourselves. Grief has this power. It strips away illusions, reorders priorities, forces us to see what truly matters. In times of loss, we do not become something different—we return to something deeper, something elemental.
This season of preparation is not about forgetting. It is about remembering.
A Time of Light, A Time of Deep Uncertainty
Imbolc marks the turning of the wheel, the shift toward longer days. It should be a time of renewal. And yet, how do we welcome the light when the world before us is so troubling?
The current administration continues to enact policies that strip away autonomy, sever communities, and punish care itself. The rollback of trans rights, the criminalization of reproductive care, the surveillance of those who dissent—these are not just policies, but deliberate strategies designed to manufacture shame and enforce submission.
Coercion does not only impose suffering, it isolates. It turns grief inward, making people believe they are alone in their sorrow, that their loss is a private failing rather than a collective wound.
But grief is not meant to be carried alone. Like the roots beneath the surface, grief seeks connection.
Shame is not an organic response to loss. It is manufactured. It is imposed. And it can be rejected.
The same systems that control our bodies and communities also dictate how we are allowed to grieve. By severing us from mourning, they sever us from meaning itself.
Death-Phobic Culture as a Tool of Control
Coercive systems do not just strip away rights, they strip away the space to mourn what has been taken. They tell us that to grieve is to be weak. That if we acknowledge what has been lost, we will break.
But grief is not the enemy. Grief is what allows us to remember what matters.
A culture that fears death fears regeneration. If we cannot face endings, we cannot create new beginnings. If we cannot fully grieve, we cannot fully love. If we cannot bear witness to loss, we cannot build the world that must come after.
Shutting us off from death shuts us off from the cycles of renewal that exist all around us.
In nature, there is no avoidance of loss. The trees release their leaves. The whale mother circles her dead calf, unwilling to leave. The fungi break down what has fallen, turning it back into nourishment for the forest.
And yet, in human culture, we are told to look away. To deny the pain. To move forward without integrating what has been lost.
But Imbolc is a season that demands presence. It is the tending of the fire, the recognition that what is coming has not yet fully arrived, that we stand in the liminal space between loss and renewal.
To grieve is not to surrender. It is to acknowledge the depth of what matters.
A Ritual for Grief and Regeneration
Imbolc is not just about witnessing change; it is about making room for it. This is the season of preparation, of regeneration, of working to create the conditions where what is needed can rise.
Grief rituals have existed across cultures, honoring loss as an essential transition rather than something to be endured in silence. In many traditions, grief is not an individual burden but a communal practice, held in song, in movement, in firelight. In ancient rites, the body was engaged—through weeping, through wailing, through drumming and dance—because grief is not just a thought, but an embodied process.
This ritual is not about moving past grief but about integrating it into the soil—transforming it into something that can sustain us.
1. Preparing the Space
Begin with something tangible. Fold the laundry. Wash the dishes. Sweep the floor.
As you do this, let your mind rest on what you are holding, what grief still lingers, what changes you are moving through, what has ended but not yet settled. Recognize this tending as a sacred act.
2. Naming the Threshold
Find a quiet place. Light a candle.
Speak aloud what you are standing between.
I am holding both loss and renewal.
I am honoring what has ended while making space for what is coming.
3. Offering to the Fire
If there is something you are ready to release, write it down. A word, a sentence, a name.
If it feels right, burn the paper. Watch the flame consume it, knowing that what is given to fire is not lost—it is transformed.
Tending the Fire, Carrying the Light
We do not wait for the light to return. We carry it with us. We carry it in the tending, in the gathering, in the prayers whispered over seeds that have not yet broken through. We carry it with a prayer for renewal, not of what once was, but of what matters most.
The lessons from the deaths of winter will sustain the new life to come. And even in the dark, we are not lost. We do not need a clear path. We only need to move toward what we love. The roots beneath us reach toward one another, unseen but certain. The fire we tend is not just our own, but one shared, passed from hand to hand.
In some Imbolc traditions, a Mother Candle is lit first, and from this central flame, others light their own. A ritual of shared fire, of individual flames carrying the same light forward.
This year, many of us may find ourselves physically isolated, separated by distance or by the conditions of coercive control that shape modern motherhood. We may be tending our fires alone, in quiet spaces, without a visible circle of others beside us.
But separate rituals are still collective.
Each flame lit, each prayer whispered, each act of tending adds to the unseen network of care that binds us together. Just as the mother trees sustain the forest through their underground roots, just as the fungi pass messages between what seems separate, just as the whale grieves and the ocean holds her loss, our rituals are not solitary. They are strands in the web of renewal.
The flame you lit, the grief you named, the warmth you held—these are not isolated acts. They are part of something larger, a fire that is being tended across time and space.
Even if no one witnesses our tending, we are tending together.
Even if our fires burn in different homes, they are part of the same returning light.
We do not wait for the world to change. We shape it.
We do not wait for the light to return. We carry it forward.
We are not waiting to be saved.
We are not waiting for permission to feel or to heal.
We are choosing to tend.
We are choosing to nourish.
We are choosing to carry the light forward—because renewal is not given, it is made.
Tend the fire. Nourish the seeds. Carry the light.
And when the thaw comes, we will meet it with open hands, ready to tend what is already rising.