“So this weekend the sun stood still for a while; now it is beginning its slow climb through the season of the light. It’s time to look for the light amidst the dark. And it seems as if it’s been a dark year, in many ways. A dark decade? So the stories we need right now, more than ever, are stories which show light emerging out of darkness. I’d like to offer you such a story. A bedtime story, tailor-made for the season. I wrote it at precisely this time last year, dreaming over a winter stove with the dogs. Like so many of my stories, it’s a story about the Cailleach – that Old Woman of the World who, in the Gaelic tradition, presides over the winter season. It’s my original reimagining of an old folk tale about the Cailleach, and it’s from my recent collection Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women. I offer you a recording of me reading the story in gratitude for your company during the course of the year, and in appreciation for the tribe which walks this path of re-enchantment together. The story is called ‘No Country for Old Women’, and it’s a story of light emerging out of darkness. It’s a story for these times. I hesitate to use the much-maligned word ‘hope’, but it’s a story of hope. And we could all use a little of that right now, I think. Above all, it’s a story of the Cailleach. Of the archetypes which are calling to us, and rising again.” -Dr. Sharon Blackie

Even stones have a love, a love that seeks the ground.

-Meister Eckhart

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