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PH, this is a special version of the satisfied woman podcast today. Today's podcast is going to center around a winter solstice ritual. Now the last few podcasts this month have given you some tools and tips to survive what can be a very stressful time of year to hopefully reclaim some joy, some satisfaction and even some sovereignty as you are walking into sometimes challenging and tricky situations with family or friends or being overwhelmed and inundated with parties and events. So if you haven't listened to the last few podcasts, I highly recommend that you do so and make sure that you take some of those things that I've been offering you this month and integrating them into your time, not just this month during the holidays, but throughout the entire year. You see the work here at the satisfied woman is not theory. It's not just content. It's meant to be lived, embodied and put into practice. And if that's something that you want support doing, because it's true that really no woman can do it alone, then I want you to consider joining me in the rooted membership where I go live several times a month in order to help boost your experience of actually living as a satisfied woman. We're here to rewrite your nervous system. You see, for years, maybe your entire life, you have been regulated around dysfunction or over giving discomfort. You've been used to giving yourself away. And it's time to prioritize you and make sure that you receive all that you deserve in this life. So to that end, today's podcast builds on a tradition that I've been working with for the past 25 years. You see right now, this podcast is being released either on the day of or the day after the winter solstice, which in the northern hemisphere, is the shortest day of the year. It's a day that we stop moving towards darkness and start a return to the light. So I hope that you'll enjoy this particular ritual with me, and it will help you embody so much more lightness, sovereignty and satisfaction for your New Year.

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Welcome to the satisfied woman podcast. I'm your host. Alanna Kaivalya. This podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms, visit the hub at the satisfied woman.com

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and make sure that your next step with me is not just listening to these podcasts, but bringing them to life through membership with me in rooted

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so it is an honor and a pleasure To be bringing this ritual to you in this experience, so that you can really embody it yourself. Practice it anytime. I've been doing Winter Solstice rituals since, well, really, since my late teens and my early 20s. I learned to do it through my first

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experiences with really yoga and spirituality. And there was a place down the street for me that I cherished quite a lot, and had a wonderful teacher who didn't really celebrate holidays per se, but embodied the spirit of all of the holidays through a winter solstice ritual. And this is something that for me as a mythologist, really,

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you know, it lights me up from the inside out, I guess, no pun intended here in the winter solstice, because that is what's happening at this time of year. But mythologically, you know, humans throughout time and history have all been subject to astronomical events, and you'll see that you're watching the video. I've worn all my star gear for you today. I put some stars on to try and clue us and our psyches into what's happening this year. If you've listened to my last view podcast, then you know that this time of year, psychologically, astronomically, nature wise, is all about coming inward. It's about introspection, actually slowing down being more at home with oneself, which is really counteractive to what many of our holiday experiences are. Most of us are attending multiple parties, going out with friends, seeing family, perhaps even hosting, perhaps even hosting several times. There's a lot of externalized and outward energy during this month for most of us, in terms of the holiday season and certainly Christmas time,

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but in our natural rhythm and our natural cycles, which is something, of course, that I focus on whole.

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Heartedly as a woman and as the founder of the satisfied woman, I want us all as feminine women to be paying attention to our natural rhythms and our natural cycles, and women in particular are attuned to nature more than anyone else, certainly more than men. Our bodies are trained to bleed with the moon. We feel nature more intensely than our masculine counterparts, and our cycles and our rhythms aren't just monthly, but they are cyclical. They are yearly. So you know, human evolution even beyond whatever religion we practice, has evolved with the natural cycles, with the natural astronomy of our world, with our seasons.

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So your foremothers, all your ancestors, all the women who have come before you, and I'm talking not just several generations, but over the last several million years, have attuned themselves to what's happening right now in the world. So for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and for those of you in the southern hemisphere, you'll have to think in the opposite way and maybe play this podcast in June. But for those of us in the northern hemisphere, what we've been experiencing what's actually happening in our world around us is an increased level of darkness, and that's literal, right? The nights are getting longer, the days are shorter, the temperature is cooler, and the world around us is actually shutting down. I'm looking outside at my beautiful trees in my backyard, and all the leaves have fallen. The grass has turned brown. It's stopped growing All right, so nature knows when it's time to go dormant, when it's time to go a little more silent, when it's time to turn inward, and so do we.

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So despite the religious implications of this season, which are bold and amazing and great, and we are all celebrating those as well, I want us to pay just a little bit of attention to what's happening inside of our bodies, to what's happening to nature as well, and honor those cycles, in addition to celebrating the season and Christmas.

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So

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it might feel in con, in contradiction, and it is to what December usually is, family, externalized, party, going, hosting and so much more over giving, there are additional pressures, oftentimes for women at this time of year, when family demands are placed on us, when we're trying to make everyone happy, we're we're even more at this time of year, having to diminish our own needs, put our own desires away tend to the needs of others. So just for now, just for the duration of this experience, for this particular ritual, I want you to prioritize you and to do this ritual and ask you to grab a candle. I found one in my cabinet. Haven't even burned it yet. I want you to find a matches or a lighter so that you can light the candle, grab a pen. I've found a fancy, sparkly one, and some kind of journal or something to write in,

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because we'll activate through this ritual what is alive in the psyche and in nature, in our bodies at this time, it's already there. You don't have to do it. It's not in violation of anything else that's going on in this season. It's actually a real gift of self honoring this ritual, because what the solstice is, and the solstice happens on December 21 or December 22 every year. And that date varies because it's it's a point in astronomical time where we can actually measure it through the movement of the planets and the Sun and the Moon and the Earth. And fun fact, I did actually study Physics and Astronomy in my undergraduate so I know these things to be true. I love science. It's a point in astronomical time, and sometimes it falls on the 21st sometimes on the 22nd but either way, even if you're listening to this a few days after, don't worry about it. It's still active. It's still alive for us. In fact, it isn't until a few days afterward that we actually recognize and understand the return of the sun, and that is the day that we traditionally celebrate Christmas, for those of us who celebrate the Christmas holiday. So there is a literal and metaphorical Return Of The Sun happening on Christmas because ancient peoples didn't realize exactly when the.

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Light started to return. So in your psyche, and you know, I'm speaking really as a mythologist here, in your psyche, your ma, your your your psyche, your spirit, your soul, has noticed the darkening of the days. And while that's literal externally, it's also metaphorically true for us on the inside, we want to come home to ourselves. We want to turn inward. We want to be more cozy. We want to tend to ourselves. It's not time to go out and play and harvest and work and effort. It's really a time to assess, recalibrate, store up what is most important to us, because after today, the light returns, and it's taking a while to notice. It will take a while to notice, but eventually you'll start to see the days get longer, the sun grows brighter, the eventually, in spring, the growth will return. Things will start to, you know, appear as flowers. You'll start to see the colors again, and this is all reflected internally as well.

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So as I'm speaking, go ahead and take your journal, as you have it here, and find a page that is free and clear so that you can start fresh for this Solstice. Because what we'll want to do today during this ritual is release. What is old, what needs to die, what needs to be surrendered, right? Just as nature is doing on the outside, you know, all the leaves have fallen. They need to be cleaned up and disposed of.

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Things are in hibernation. We're no longer attending externally anymore. So what needs to be released? And at the top of the page, I like to write something along the lines of, you know, may it be for the highest good of all, because whenever you decide to release, you'll you'll enact it almost as a prayer or a promise or a wish for yourself, or even just an intention that you're setting for yourself. So may it be for the highest good of all on this Solstice day in the year 2025 assuming that you're listening in this year.

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So write that there at the very top, may it be for the highest good of all involved on this day, the solstice day, and then write something like, I release or I surrender or I let go of

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and now you'll take time. You can do it as a bullet point. You can do it as a letter to yourself, whatever feels most comfortable and alive for you, but list the things that you'd like to let go of, the things that no longer have room or space to grow, the things that have not served you, just as the trees release the leaves,

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just as the sun sets a little bit early and rests behind the horizon

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internally. Allow yourself to also release what no longer serves you. Let the darkness consume what no longer can survive.

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You know, for us as women, Shakespeare, famous famously wrote that we are both the womb and the tomb, and as so many of our mothers famously said, when we were children, I brought you into this life, and I can take you out.

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Women are often thought of and upheld and revered as the life givers in our world, but we are also responsible for the death.

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We have the power of both death and rebirth. We are the representatives of nature. And so on this day, during this ritual, as you write what you let go of, embrace, that embrace, that other side of you, that part that you know society generally doesn't like to look at that. Wants to ignore we want to repress it ourselves. We don't want to recognize that we're also responsible for the death. But it is the death that brings the rebirth. It is the letting go that creates the space for something new. I was

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speaking with a dear friend over the weekend, and she has this person that she's kept in her life for probably far too long. I said, Well, you know, would you consider him a boyfriend? Are you dating? And she said, No, you know he's he's just a person. He's just a friend.

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And this is all to say that keeping anything anyone around in that way. Unfortunately, doesn't allow the space for something new to arise. So if there's

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something that you've been keeping around, if there is something that's occupying space in your mind, in your heart, in your body, in your home, in your life.

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It's preventing that new growth, because spring will come, but unless the Earth has been tilled properly, unless things have been put away, unless there has been a proper hibernation, death period, new growth cannot happen.

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So this is your moment, as you're writing what you're ready to surrender, to get comfortable with your incredible feminine power of not just life and creation,

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but also death and destruction, because we know that that's what allows for new growth and new life to occur, and I know it's a big burden for us as women. I understand and it is ours, but today, on the winter solstice, let's treat it as sacred. Let's treat it as a privilege to understand and know what is meant to be released. Your body knows every month, as it sheds in the menstrual cycle that it is time to release that lining. It is time to release and let go of what is not growing, what has not been planted, this seed that was not fertilized, it's okay. Not all seeds get fertilized, not all things get planted they do in their right time, in their right purpose, in their right way. So let yourself be the harbinger of this incredible cycle you already are.

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So embrace it and lean into it now as you've written your list here of what it is you'd like to let go of

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that psychologically creates the space for what will come, for the light to arise. And now you don't have to really understand or know what is coming for you, for now and today, for this Solstice experience, just allow yourself to release and surrender and let go.

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Our receptivity as the feminine really comes from our ability to surrender and let go,

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right? Because if we continue to take on, if we continue to pile on, if we continue to be like that camel who's putting more and more of a load on its back, we will break under that weight. And you know, this is the state of so many women that I have here with me in the rooted membership, and that I counsel with one on one coaching. They've taken on too much. They've overloaded themselves, not only with their burdens, but the burdens of their families, their friends, their careers, and they're not allowing themselves to release those burdens. They're not understanding or recognizing necessarily what is actually theirs and what is not

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so today's day for you to practice that. What do you no longer need to hold

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now you may be able to do this here with me on the podcast. You may choose to do this next part a little later, at a time that's quiet. But this letter that you've written, this note to yourself, may it be, in the highest good that on this day, this winter solstice of 2025, I release or surrender or let die

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these things that you've listed,

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what we'll do, and this is psychologically powerful, especially in terms of ritual, is allow those things to be consumed by fire. So I want you to do it in a safe way.

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For now, I'm going to light the candle that I have brought here for this ritual. And of course, I can't necessarily burn in this candle, but what you might do for now

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is simply allow this candle

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to burn, right fire psychologically and for your for your psyche, which that's what we're working with today, right

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is always going to be transformative in a really fundamental way. And again, I'm thinking mythologically, fire transforms things from one state into another. When you place wood into fire, it turns into ash, and even just that, has been sacred to many cultures worldwide throughout history. So psychologically, as you witness this fire that you've chosen to light and burn in front of you, you'll notice

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that in your own psyche, you can actually symbolically offer things to this flame. So let's take a moment, and I'm going to put this down for a moment,

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and just with your eyes, look gently at the flame that you've created.

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And.

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Can close your eyes a little bit just witness the flame,

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and on this paper that you've written,

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you can read it out loud, or you can read it to yourself. But imagine these ideas, these things that you've decided to surrender actually being consumed by the flame.

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Imagine any part of you that is still reluctant, that is still resistant to this surrender

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being burned up by the flame. We don't need the resistance. We don't need the heavy load. Imagine as you witness this sacred, even small flame in front of you, that you are unpacking the things that aren't yours, anything that has created darkness within you. And we need darkness to understand light, just as we need the masculine to understand the feminine and vice versa. One is not better than the other, and one actually reveals the other. So let the darkness be a gift. Let the heaviness be a gift. Let the burden be a gift, and let this time of year that calls this inward home to ourselves be a gift.

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Now consider very carefully what you choose, what you want, what you desire, to bring into your home, and whether that be your actual physical space, or whether that be your mental or your heart space of home, what deserves to be in there

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this Solstice time is a time of cleaning house, a time of comfort if there's something in your home that produces discomfort, burn it up. Send it into the flame.

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Let it

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be offered into the fire. Let it be surrendered.

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If you are done with over giving send it into the flame. If you are done with burnout, send it into the flame. If you are done with compromising yourself, send it into the flame. If you are done with playing small, send it into the flame.

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If you are done with lack, scarcity,

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unworthiness.

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Offer it into the flame.

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If you are so over putting yourself into some kind of box to try to make others happy,

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send it into the flame, let those pieces of you die that no longer serve your highest good.

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Now, if you got just a candle lit this next piece you may choose to do later, or you can walk with me in this audio broadcast or this visual broadcast, if you're watching on YouTube or wherever you might be watching, I like to use a

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metal mixing bowl and put it in the sink, and then I take the paper that I've written, the note that I've written, because it also needs to be burned right. The purpose of a ritual is that it has an external component that reflects our internal transformation, right? So we do things on the outside to represent what we're ushering ourselves into on the inside. So go to your sink. Find a metal mixing bowl, take the paper that you've written with all that you are ready to surrender at this time, this sacred astronomical time, this natural state of year where we are darkening in order to return to the light and set it on fire. Watch that paper burn

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in the safest way possible. Don't set off any fire alarms,

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but watch it burn,

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and as you watch that paper burn, as you see your words be consumed, as you watch the actual wood pulp of the paper be transformed into ash, as you watch those words disappear into the flame. Let them go.

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Let them go. They're not they're not yours anymore. You don't need to carry that load. You don't need to continue with what no longer serves you. You don't need to tend to the things that aren't growing anymore.

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This is your time for recalibration,

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for reflection, for comfort, for coziness, for resonance, for warmth on every level, not just from the fire that you build to warm your house, but from the people who inhabit your world let everything be to.

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Serve the next season of your life, which is coming,

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right? We have this winter period now. Seasonally, our winter solstice marks the beginning of winter. It's the first day of winter, and winter is a time of coldness. Winter is a time where things look as if they are not growing.

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But Earth knows different, and you, as a feminine woman, by extension of Earth, feel different. You know that during the winter season, even though externally, things look cold and bleak and maybe White from snow, the leaves are not on the trees. You know what's happening on the inside. You understand that inside of you, things are percolating. This is the moment where the earth decides what gets to see the beautiful, colorful light of spring.

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So while it's not visible on the outside, it's happening for you internally. And remember we as human beings, in this long evolutionary history of who we are, these are the things that our bodies, our psyches are calibrated to.

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It is what's natural for us. It's what we have been doing since time immemorial, and so even amidst the hustle and bustle of December and the seasons and the holidays and the parties and the families and the gatherings, let this ritual connect you home to something so much more deep and primal for you as a woman, give yourself this space.

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May it be for the highest good, may it be for your highest good, and may you realize, because I know this to be true, to the depth of my bones, that what is for your highest good is also for the highest good of others.

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And even if it feels scary to release do it, even it feels even if it feels daring or selfish to let things go, to surrender this load into the fire, to no longer carry what's yours do it

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because an overburdened woman, a burnt out woman, a woman who is buckling under The strain

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of wearing the armor that doesn't serve her serves no one.

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She can't do her greatest work. She can't bring that life in the spring. She can't usher in creativity or find the newness and the growth within her.

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She's the unwatered plant. She's the acorn in the unfertile ground.

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If you want support, because this load feels heavy and it feels scary to take off because the things that are preventing your growth are so overwhelming you don't know how to let them go. Then I'm here. That's what the rooted membership is for,

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for helping you recalibrate your nervous system. Because really, now is the time right. You've been used to being burnt out. You've been used to playing small. You've been used to holding on to this load, and your whole nervous system has transformed around it, and it has told you that that is your normal.

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But right now, with this flame, with a ritual like this,

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you're showing your psyche, your mind, your heart and your nervous system, that there is a different normal for you, that normal is relaxed, that normal isn't overburdened, that normal is expansive, receptive, supported, creative, vibrant.

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To get to that normal, you start now

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to maintain and sustain these changes, get the support you need. Make sure you join me in the rooted membership. Make sure that you're surrounded by extraordinary and exceptional women who want nothing but your highest good, because no woman can do this alone. We weren't born that way. We weren't built that way, and we didn't evolve that way. We are relational beings, and we are here for each other. So as we close our ritual today, and my preference from training long past, has always been to never blow out a flame, especially.

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A ritual. This flame represents the spark of life, and we don't just want to extinguish it with the breath, with our life breath. So I tend to snuff out the flame, and that will close the ritual. And as you do that, if you've already burned your paper, awesome, if you haven't yet, go do that in a moment.

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But as you blow out the flame of your candle, or as you snuff out the flame of your candle, let it be the thing that seals in the ritual for you.

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Let it be the symbol to your psyche that you are now transformed, that we have gone from that fall, closing, darkening time into winter, which is a time of growing light and internal growth.

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I'm here for your internal growth, Sister, I'm here for all of the ways in which you want to knock down the walls, climb outside the box, open your heart, grow, be creative, thrive, not just survive in your life.

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So

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the candle flame goes out,

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and we are now ready for our next season of brightness, lightness and true internal recalibration, that is what I desire most for you, dear sister. So even as you celebrate all of the things that this beautiful holiday season means, I hope that you continue to celebrate yourself and this internal recalibration into a greater level of sovereignty, satisfaction, true joy, creativity and receptivity as the magnetic, attractive, beautiful and extraordinary woman you are,

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it's my great honor and pleasure to be here with you on this journey today, I hope that you've enjoyed this ritual. It's one that you can take with you and do anytime you wish, and particularly on days like the solstice. It's going to have even more power for you and your psyche and your heart.

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Join me in rooted make sure you come visit me at the satisfied woman.com and I will look forward to next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai