Do you like roller coasters? I still remember my first. I was probably around 12 years old and was spending a day with a new friend at Lakeside Amusement Park in Salem, Virginia. She persuaded me to get on the Shooting Star, a vintage wooden roller coaster. I rode, hands tightly clutching the bar in front of me, while my friend daringly raised her hands over her head. To my great surprise, I loved the thrill of that ride! The park was not busy that sunny afternoon, and we would jump off the coaster, race back to the beginning, and get right back on for another turn. I lost count of how many times we rode, but by the end of the day I was raising my own hands, not holding on, and thrilling in the excitement!

Sadly, Lakeside Amusement Park is gone now, but the memories of that summer afternoon and my first roller coaster will never fade!

I’ve ridden a number of roller coasters since then. My favorites were the Rebel Yell at Kings Dominion in Doswell, VA, the Loch Ness Monster at Busch Gardens: The Old Country in Williamsburg, VA, and of course the Cyclone at Coney Island Park in Brooklyn, NY! What fun! But these days, the roller coaster ride is different, and not so much fun.

Grief has a way of taking you by surprise. You can be cruising along, loving life and happy on the peak of the hill – and suddenly find yourself plunging downward, almost in freefall, into the dark pain of missing your loved one. The ride continues and you are tossed about by the gravity of the moment, until finally, gliding to a stop in the station, you find relief. But so often the exit to the ride seems to lead right back to the beginning, and the ride starts all over again.

Another way of looking at those highs and lows of the roller coaster ride is to consider them as opposites: high or low, happy or sad, light or darkness. On this day of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year when darkness prevails with the longest night, I am reminded of a saying by the ancient poet Rumi:

“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you have two wings to fly, not one.“

Can we truly know light if we have never known darkness? Can we understand happiness if we have never been sad? Appreciate health if we have never been ill? Can we know joy without having experienced despair?

It is in knowing and accepting all parts of life that we find our wings and take flight. My journey through grief has changed me, and it continues to do so as I find my wings and fly through this grand adventure called life. There will be ups and downs, there will be happy and sad, there will be grief – and there will be joy. As I see and accept the cycle of life, I watch the seasons change. Winter is here, but I know that Spring will follow. The long night is here, but dawn will most assuredly come. The roller coaster may carry me into the depths of grief, but it will also carry me to the heights of joy. I have wings, and I can fly.

On this darkest night, this Winter Solstice, may you look towards the light of dawn and find your own wings.

Come fly with me.