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.
Clare of the Solstice
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 offerings are the culmination of my own
shadow
work.
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 didn’t know then that mothers are meant to lose themselves in the shadows in order to shine. 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 in the fog…for the “me” that I lost. I leaned on my support system - some buckled under the pressure. I saw doctors who 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. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was navigating the inner split of matrescence. I continued searching for “little pieces of myself that I’d lost along the way - in the fog,” until…I gathered with women.
Held in the womb of women, I arrived unraveled, messy, and vulnerable, only to be met with love and acceptance.
HEALING IS A SPIRAL
In the wisdom of women I found myself. As I saw myself through their eyes - this raw, disheveled little Clare in all her fetal glory, something stirred in me. I was ready for my rebirth. Tenderness, grace, and love were the foundation that would soon hold the fragile fragments of my being together.
I replaced alcohol with herbs, avoidance with embrace, and continued to surround myself with women who saw me and loved me for who I was. I discovered the power of positive affirmations, started listening to Toni Jones, and eventually began to embody those lessons. I stopped denying the parts of me that were “intense, high-maintenance, critical, overly sensitive, too much,” and started making space for them.
When I vowed to love all parts of me - the dark became the light, the light became the dark, and I finally understood the purpose of my human experience.
My relationship with myself evolved into a coveted contract of love, sprouting seeds of self-care and reverence. As I reclaimed my relationship with myself, I began to rewrite my relationship with motherhood. I realized that I had to mother myself first if I was going to show up for my kids with integrity.
Although my perspective on motherhood had shifted, I continued to seek integration between this newly awakened, spiritually expansive version of myself —with her big ideas and grandiose presence — and the motherload of commitments, demands, and complexities that came with parenting.
EMBODIMENT IS A STATE OF BEING
With a ferocity for evolution, I embarked on a quest to find harmony amidst my fiery rebirth. As I continued peeling back the layers of myself — an ever expansive venture inward and outward - Clare of the Solstice was born.
Born of the eternal fire first kindled by the pre-Celtic goddess Brigid, Clare of the Solstice keeps the fire lit for those seeking their way back to themselves.
In the depths of my rebirth, I continued embracing the things that brought me closer to the integration I was seeking: meditating, journaling, creating, weaving ritual into everyday life, attending women’s circles, dancing to my heart’s desire, and sound bathing. With my nervous system recalibrated and my mind more pliable, I discovered the teachings of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. New epiphanies ensued.
From there, my practice began to shift from a state of “doing” to a state of “being”. And the deeper I went the less I knew, until I arrived at the abundant void where my soul embodiment journey began — the womb.
We all Begin in the Womb.
As I continued down the spiral path unfolding before me, my expansion led me back to where I began…THE WOMB.
The integration I had been seeking was encoded in my blood. The very blood that brought my mother wound to the surface after the birth of my first child; the very blood that carried me through the shadows after the birth of my second; the very blood I had neglected for so long is now the force that fuels my fire.
I read Wild Power and it changed EVERYTHING. I embarked on a wildly feminine journey of self-discovery, learning about the inner seasons of my menstrual cycle and how to harness their powers.
When I fully understood the gifts of my womb — I bloomed.
I began to see my cycle as part of the network of cycles surrounding me, and the ebb and flow of these cycles as part of the divine dance of the universe. This intricate weaving of cosmic womb wisdom led me to Amy Taylor-Kabbaz’ Mama Rising course, where I came to understand that I had undergone two matrescence (motherhood) rites of passage without even realizing it. Both had sparked an evolution within me that rippled outward, transforming not only my relationship with myself but also the lives of those around me.
As a light-bearer, my own matrescence awakenings — born in the darkness — revealed what Clare of the Solstice was meant to do with her light: help others navigate life's transitions through the remembrance of their origin and the embodied reclamation of their role as creators.
The universe, and everything within it, exists in a constant state of transience. And WE ARE IN A POINT OF COLLECTIVE AWAKENING. I believe that through the intentional exploration of our embodiment and the liberation of our creative expression, we can reach new heights of evolution.
Beyond our borders and beneath our skin, we are but frames built in a cauldron - born from a single point of origin, living to create ourselves.