Celebrate Solstice in Your Heart and Home

The Summer Solstice, coming up on June 20th, marks the moment when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, resulting in the longest day and the shortest night of the year. This celestial pause, a peak in the Earth’s seasonal rhythm, has long been celebrated across cultures and eras as a time of illumination, fertility, and fulfillment. Astronomically, it’s a turning point: though summer has just begun, the light will slowly begin its journey of descent after this day. To acknowledge the Solstice is to attune to this great breath of the Earth; she has expanded with her inhalation, and will soon begin her great exhale. Now’s the time for us to place ourselves inside a cosmology where time is circular, seasonal, and sacred.

To prepare for the Solstice is to become intentional with how you receive and share the light. This might mean creating a small altar of golden things, calendula blossoms, a beeswax candle, a bowl of sun-charged water. It might mean rising early to greet the dawn or gathering friends around the fire. You may wish to infuse your home with herbs that carry solar energy: rosemary for clarity, St. John’s wort for protection, lemon balm for joy. The season asks us to tend both the outer hearth and the inner flame.

Just as the Earth stands still for a moment in her turning, the Solstice invites us to listen to what is ripening within. Amid the brilliance, there can be a quiet longing, an awareness of impermanence, and of how precious this light truly is. Let this be a time to celebrate your growth, name your gratitude, and align your heart with the rhythms of nature. In this way, the Solstice becomes not just a date on the calendar, but a doorway into deeper intimacy with life.

With love, we share a suggested ritual to fold into your Solstice however you see fit. At dawn or solar noon on the Solstice, fill a clear glass bowl or jar with spring water and place it in direct sunlight. As it charges, offer a prayer or intention into the water, naming what you are grateful for, what you are illuminating. In the evening, light a candle and sip or anoint yourself with the sun water, imagining the golden light moving through your body. Let the flame remind you of your inner radiance, steady, luminous, alive.

With gratitude & light,

Ambrosia