I’m Clare
: light bearer :
: fire in full bloom :
: priestess of the spiral path :
: daughter of the moon :
“Little pieces…start searching for yourself in the dark.”
EVERYTHING STARTS WITH NOTHING.
Born into this body on the Winter Solstice, I was destined to be a bright light on a dark night. My soul knew it’s purpose long before it came into my realm of consciousness. From the beginning I longed to teach; to show people “the way of doing things”. I didn’t know then that there are many ways. My soul steered me to the field of teaching students with visual impairments. I spent years guiding them through their dark days. And then, my daughter was born.
The birth of my daughter awakened a mother wound lying dormant deep in my womb.
Like all of us, I was born from a mother trapped in a patriarchal system. She, like the mother before her, raised her children from a place of love, despite her stifled feminine spirit. And like the mother before her, she made mistakes along the way; mistakes that weren’t her fault, but rather symptoms of an insidious wound lying dormant in all of our wombs. As a child and young adult I was filled with laughter and light, even during the dark times. But those dark times imprinted a fear of motherhood in me, one that I eventually overcame. I put my fears aside and dove deep into mothering. I read all the books, took all the classes, and vowed to parent like a pro. But a fire awoke in me; a biting, controlling, searing temperament that I’d never been acquainted with, began to surface and take over. I was no longer that light filled free-spirit.
My shadow side had finally appeared. And I could no longer avoid her.
My shadow side led me here.
My offerings are the culmination of my own shadow work.
“Little pieces…you lost along the way, in the fog.”
THE DARK IS A PART OF US ALL.
After years of mending, I was able to keep my fiery shadow self at bay…mostly. But I hadn’t yet learned how to love her. I slapped a big bandaid on my mother wound, denied I even had a shadow self, and kept going. I was ready to embark on another parenting journey. My son was born in March 2020, and that’s when EVERYTHING changed. As my world crumbled around me, I was forced to rip off the bandaid and really look at myself, all of me. And I didn’t like what I saw. And the more I tried to hold onto the “me” that I knew, the pre-pandemic “me” that I liked, the more she slipped away.
I felt myself disintegrating from the inside out.
I searched for answers…for the “me” that I lost. I leaned heavily on my support system; some buckled under the pressure. I went to the doctors; some prescribed pills. I bottled everything up, and drank it down to get rid of it. But it always resurfaced. She always resurfaced; the part of me that remained, in the fog. Until I gathered with women.
In that womb space I felt seen.
I could be the messiest version of myself
and still be loved and accepted.
“Little pieces…gather them all up, one by one.”
HEALING IS A SPIRAL.
I replaced alcohol with herbs, avoidance with embrace, and surrounded myself with women who saw and loved me for me. I discovered the power of positive affirmations, started listening to a lot of Toni Jones, and eventually began to embody those lessons. I stopped denying those parts of me that are “intense, high-maintenance, critical, overly-sensitive, too much, etc.” The seeds of self-care were planted. All I had to do was tend to them tenderly and watch them grow. And grow they did.
When I vowed to love all parts of me; the dark became the light and the light became the dark, and I finally understood the purpose of my human experience.
All lit up from my spiritual awakening, I felt an urgency to share it with the world. Despite never having produced a single event in my lifetime, I shared what I learned from my fiery ego death by way of event production. Get Lit was a self-care smorgasbord aimed at sparking radical self-acceptance in others, and it marked the next phase in my healing journey.
“I release, I learn, I hold onto the lesson, and it starts all over again.”
“Little pieces…put them together and what do they become?”
EMBODIMENT IS A STATE OF BEING.
Guided by purpose and driven by divinity, I could no longer contain myself.
As I continued to peel back the layers, an ever expansive venture inward and outward, Clare of the Solstice was born.
Born of the eternal fire lit long ago by the pre-Celtic goddess Brigid, Clare of the Solstice keeps the fire lit for all who may need to find their way back to themselves.
Once my divine fire was lit, I had to keep it going. I continued doing things that lit me up; meditating, journaling, creating, practicing daily rituals, gathering in circles with women, dancing to my heart’s desire, and bathing in sound. Then I discovered the teachings of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. New epiphanies ensued.
From there, my practice shifted from a state of doing to a state of being.
That shift is what brought me here to this moment. It wasn’t enough to simply offer what I had learned. In order to fully bloom into my fiery self, I needed to embody the raw creative energy that propelled me forward through my fiery ego death. My offerings are my own spiritual practice, and sharing them is the final stage of their full realization into being.
This work is a never-ending spiral that fuels my existence.
Thank you for riding the vibe with me.
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”