Moonwake by Candlelight: Tending Light Through the Dark

February is not a season for pushing forward.

At Moonwake Retreats, we wanted to invite people to lean into the darkness that is winter, rather than push into a new year. 

Moonwake by Candlelight was created as a gentle pause inside the heart of winter, an evening to gather in warmth, quiet, and shared presence, and to remember that light doesn’t survive dark seasons by force. It survives through care.

Held on February 1, beneath the Snow Moon, this candlelit gathering in Washington, DC invited thirty women into a forest-like sanctuary of soft light, sound, and ritual.

The room glowed with flickering candles, bowls of water, twinkling lights woven through greenery, and fabrics that softened the edges of the world outside. Cedar lingered in the air. Blankets and cushions lined the floor. The atmosphere was intimate, grounded, and deeply human.

We opened by naming what February often brings: heaviness, slowness, a quiet ache to feel okay again. Instead of treating that as something to fix, we chose to stay with it. To listen.

Through Moonwake’s Five Element Method — Water, Air, Fire, Earth, and Stardust — the evening unfolded as a slow arc of release, rest, and reconnection.

Water invited participants to gently set down what felt heavy this season, compassionately, through breath and visualization.

Air followed through a sound bath that created space where thoughts had grown tight, allowing the mind to rest without effort.

Fire and Earth came together in a ritual of tending the light: each woman reflecting on something in her life that already brings warmth, passing flame from candle to candle, reminding us that our light amplifies the light of others.

And finally, through Stardust, the iron that connects everything in the universe, we were reminded that none of us hold light alone. Community itself is a form of illumination.

There was no rush. No pressure to share. No expectation to be anything other than present.

Moonwake by Candlelight wasn’t an escape. It was a practice of noticing warmth, protecting it, and letting it grow slowly, as nature always does.

And as candles were carried home, along with a small ritual to continue the work, the message was clear:

In dark seasons, light doesn’t disappear. It waits for us to tend it.