The Summons before the Sun Returns

I thought I was done.

Not done in despair—

done in the way one believes a chapter has fully closed,

the way a soul assumes it has already crossed its great thresholds

and earned a quieter path forward.

And yet, just before my Solar Return,

something reached for me again.

Not loudly.

Not ceremonially.

Not with visions or instruction.

It came as a narrowing.

The world thinned.

Edges softened.

The outer sounds faded as if I were being gently pulled inward—

through a corridor I recognized before I could name it.

Then came the moment when the body could no longer stay upright.

A moment when others moved around me,

decisions made without my participation,

wheels turning, lights passing overhead.

No grand diagnosis.

No dramatic conclusion.

Just the undeniable sensation that I had been interrupted by The One that

governs me.

But what startled me most was not the body’s response.

It was the familiarity.

I had been here before.

As a child, I used to slip into this same quiet narrowing—

a space where the world fell away

and something ancient watched from behind my eyes.

I didn’t have language for it then.

Only the knowing that I was being drawn somewhere inward

where time felt different

and meaning did not require explanation.

As I grew older, that space receded.

Life layered itself on top of it—

responsibility, devotion, service, endurance.

I assumed the awakening had already completed its work in me.

I believed I had graduated from being summoned.

But awakenings do not obey timelines.

They do not ask permission.

They do not retire simply because we have carried enough.

This one arrived not to overwhelm me—

but to remind me.

That the quiet door I entered long ago

never closed.

That the part of me who knows how to disappear inward

without fear

was never lost—

only resting.

It was not a warning.

Not a collapse.

Not a failure of the body.

It was a pause placed precisely where it needed to be—

just before the Sun returns to its original place in my chart,

just before a new year of breath begins.

A Solar Return is not simply a birthday.

It is a recalibration.

A moment when the light asks:

Are you still aligned with what you carry?

And my body answered before my mind could.

⸻

Not long after, I found something I had forgotten I still carried.

A piece of paper.

Careful handwriting.

A child’s truth, untouched by fatigue or performance.

He was asked a simple question:

“Who is your mom?”

And this is what he wrote:

My mom is lovely.

She loves our family.

She sees what I can become.

She wants the best for us.

My mom is loving.

She feels goodness.

She worries nothing.

She tries to be good.

She hopes the best for my family.

My mom is holy.

She says the truth.

She understands who everyone is.

She wonders good things.

She dreams good dreams.

My mom is the best mom ever.

Reading this now—

with the song “Holy Forever” playing as if on cue—

something inside me softened all the way through.

Because he did not describe what I do.

He described who I am when I am aligned.

He saw me before exhaustion.

Before the years taught me how costly it can be

to remain truthful, gentle, open, and devoted.

He named an essence

before I understood how much strength it would take

to protect it.

And I want to say this honestly:

It is challenging now.

The world is louder.

The expectations heavier.

The cost of remaining true more visible.

Some days, holiness looks like restraint.

Some days, it looks like choosing softness when hardening would be easier.

Some days, it looks like staying when disappearing would hurt less.

But I remain.

Not because it is easy.

Not because I am untouched.

But because a child once recognized something in me

that I am still responsible for honoring.

The summons before my Solar Return did not come to make me more.

It came to return me to what was already true.

To remember how to stand

without bracing against the world.

To let the inner corridor remain open.

To allow the narrowing to teach me again

how to listen.

I thought I was done.

But I see now—

I too am and was only being summoned back to the place I never truly left. 

And this is my gift to myself - To name it!