“my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender” — Ntozake Shange
As the Solstice arrives and the light begins its slow return, we find ourselves looking back at the year we have traveled together in the menopausal multiverse.
We began this year by choosing to divest from a menopause landscape that was never built for us. We stepped away from narrow rooms, extractive narratives, and frameworks that shrink our truths. We stepped toward terrain spacious enough to hold the menopause stories, needs, and realities of the Global Majority, queer and trans folks, and people who are currently or formerly incarcerated. That divestment became a path. It asked something of us. The decision demanded more than quiet intention. It called for a declaration that could be seen and held by others. What rose up in us felt like a prayer woven with a manifesto, shaped in the margins, born in maroon spaces, and echoed across the multiverse.
It was remembering and refusal braided together.
Then the road curved and we found ourselves preparing for Iranti Ẹ̀jẹ̀ inside a funhouse of mirrors. Some mirrors showed us possibilities and resources that turned out to be shimmering mirages. Some reflected promises made to offer sanctuary and sustenance for our journey that were later withdrawn. And still other mirrors revealed the truth of what is possible when a vision is bigger than any one person. We learned what breaks open and what breaks apart. We learned what happens when a leader’s dream stretches the edges of a container again and again until the container becomes something else entirely.
And this is the part that matters most. The team shaped a new container. One held by many hands. One stitched together by community, personal relationships, champions, oracles, and ancestors who whispered that the work was still worth doing. The mirrors tried to trick us, but the people did not.
The story did not.
The purpose did not.
As we close this year, we are sitting with gratitude and awe for every person who showed up with clarity, generosity, and belief. Every hand that helped rebuild. Every voice that said keep going.
This year has been hard for so many. We have watched people’s humanity be harmed, targeted, surveilled, and erased. We have carried heartbreak for communities under attack, for loved ones navigating systems built to diminish their lives, and for all who have been pushed to the margins. Naming this truth honors our collective experience and honors every person who has endured, resisted, reclaimed, and continued.
The Solstice arrives as the longest night of the year, a sacred turning when the sun pauses, and the earth leans into deep darkness before beginning its slow return to light. This night invites us to place the last of what we are shedding from 2025 into the quiet, fertile dark. It invites us to trust that release is part of the ritual of becoming.
May this Solstice help you loosen whatever has grown too heavy to carry. May the long night hold your grief, your questions, your tired places and your quiet hopes. And when the light begins to rise again, may it melt the ice around the tender parts of your life, may it warm the ground beneath your intentions, and may it breathe new life into the dreams you have been tending in secret.
We stand in solidarity with all people who are seeking liberation, safety, care, and dignity. May every soul know freedom. May every community find protection. May every future be shaped by justice, imagination, and love.
Thank you for walking this path with us. Thank you for trusting a multiverse that keeps expanding.
We will carry this light forward.
A Simple Solstice Ritual
If you feel called, take a few quiet minutes tomorrow night. Sit with something from the land that knows you, maybe a jar of water, a candle flame, a handful of dirt, a leaf, or a stone. Set it on a table or windowsill where you can see the night sky.
Speak the truths you are ready to lay down from this year.
Name the heaviness, the harm, the exhaustion, the disappointments, and the moments that asked too much of your spirit. Let the long night take them from your hands.
Then speak one intention for the world we are trying to build. Something rooted in freedom, dignity, safety, and care for all people. Let that intention rise from your chest like a prayer your people would recognize.
When you finish, place your hand over your heart and thank your ancestors, thank the earth beneath you, and thank your own body for surviving another year. Sit for one breath of stillness.
Let this be enough.
Team BGGG2SM
