The Shortest Day of the Year
A year ago, I wrote my very first piece on Substack. It was a bold step for me. In 2024, I was put into a situation where I felt very unsafe. My voice was silenced. I retreated from the online space in a bid to feel safer. But I was soon shown by life that retreating wasn’t going to keep me on my path - my path to cultivate my integrity and place it out into the world.
So I took the brave step, after some lessons from the wonderful Tania Kindersley and guidance from Denise Elizabeth Byron, I wrote and published my first piece. I called it: 20 Minutes of Writing: The Shortest Day of the Year.
To celebrate and honour that step, I bring to you, my dear readers, my first piece of writing on my first piece of writing within this new online space. The Cognitive Equestrian Herd.
Thank you for being here.
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The day with the least amount of daylight is knocking on my door. I can hear her right now. She wants everyone to know she is here.
We, as a society, dread her.
We spend from about late September right up until she is knocking on our door, complaining about the increasingly darker days that she manifests to remind us she’ll be showing up soon. If you’re in Northern Europe, this time of year also brings these ever wilder, sometimes successive, storms. The howling winds. The lashing rain. Clouds that roll across the skies on a fierce rampage.
As a horse guardian, it’s a tough time of year. Especially in Northern Europe.
I live in the country that is an island. With it’s rolling hills and jaggered cliffs. It’s caves and forests. It’s heathland and wetland. Sitting within grasping distance of the Atlantic Ocean; we are the first, along with the Northern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, to get battered by the storms. It can be wet and windy, with showers of rain that blow through from south west to north east. If the wind shifts, we end up with bitter cold conditions blasting down from the Arctic.
In my land, Somerset, we have both the hills and the wetlands. The Mendips and Polden Hills, as well as the Levels which are famous for their flooding. In the midst of any storm, the roads become running streams of water and debris, trees fall down and we suffer the odd powercut.
This year, I am not taking care of my horses every day like I have done in previous years. Instead, they are living about two and a half hours away under the care of my mother, some helpers and myself when I can. So I don’t have to face the elements as often as I have in the past. However when I do, the difference is now there is not a constant wind. I don’t feel as drained. I just am. Present. Calm. Grounded.
The Shortest Day of the Year is knocking on the door. And today her presence is giving me that very heartfelt sense of things are finally shifting towards where I have been journeying too for many moon cycles.
There are many reasons for this shift. Just as I was last year when I wrote the previous version of this piece, I am sipping my lemon and ginger tea. This time, rather than sitting with a ‘meh’ feeling, caught between what is and what will be, I am wholeheartedly excited for the what will be.
The past year was home to my Saturn Return. A time in my life where Saturn has placed itself on my birth chart exactly where it was on the day I was born. It is a period in our lives that creates monumental shifts as we rebirth and transition into a new period. From the Netherlands to the UK. From city life to country life. From my 20s to my 30s. From First Officer to soon-to-be Captain.
A lot has changed but it has been a very beautiful journey.
Shortly after starting my Substack, the idea of creating my own Podcast was born. I just jumped straight in, even though I knew the year ahead had a big move in it and a big jump in my career - the biggest I will ever face as an airline pilot. It has been a project that has brought me so much joy. In every episode I laughed, even during the ones where I also cried. I have connected with new humans with amazing stories all over the world. I’ve been inspired by every conversation and pushed to grow my mindset even more than I have been. I’ve stretched myself into an even deeper, more spiritual space than before; whilst remaining grounded.
When we close one chapter and open another, everything changes. That can feel threatening to the very intricacies of our animalistic functionings - our nervous system. But if we don’t say yes, if we don’t push ourselves out of our comfort zones, we will never unlock our full potential and our truest life purposes.
And because The Shortest Day of the Year is knocking on the door, so is 2026. She’s showing up with her plans and her ideas. She wants to unpack them all and decorate my house with them. She has a lot of enthusiasm for what is in store and this year my door is immediately wide open for her to come in and do her thing. Her ideas include hopefully another move, this time to my forever home where I can live with my husband and my herd in unison with the land that feels so very much like home in ways I couldn’t even have foreseen. With an equal amount of hopefulness, the privilege that I have worked incredibly hard for: becoming an airline Captain. To me, becoming an airline Captain is not about the job itself. It is about having the opportunity to bring everything I have learnt (and continue to learn) from the horses into a leadership role in a working environment far removed from the equine collective.
As I sit here, watching 2026 running in and out of the front door to bring all of her ideas to decorate my house with, I see 2025 sitting across the dining table from me. She knows her time is up. Her awful, tacky, neon HAPPY NEW YEAR light up glasses have long since run out of battery. They got a bit damaged in the move. We sit here in a silence of companionship. I will miss her. She gave me more than I could have ever imagined. She pushed me and inspired me to look for and follow my life’s purpose. She is looking at me with pride and admiration, telling me I did good. I went through a lot, but I came out the other side shining. It is soon time to say goodbye to her and I sit here just before The Shortest Day of the Year feeling nothing but gratiude.
