It's like we're all a little bit in the closet about poetry, but once we know we're in safe company of fellow lovers, we can pull the tattered paper out of our wallets and compare notes (I carry a few hand-written lines of Rumi, gifted long ago by a friend).

Poetry is delicious medicine that has helped me make sense of life since high school. I have many old poetry collections published by Hallmark that were my grandmother's, one of which is in the Favorite Four below.

Mark's most popular book, The Book of Awakening, was recommended by a friend many years ago and has since become my constant companion and my go-to gift to loved ones. It's a daily reader that will have different meanings each year. You can read it every day, put it down and come back months later or pick it up randomly and it will offer exactly what you need that moment.

People throughout history have celebrated the winter solstice as a symbol of hope, promise, rebirth, and the ongoing cycles of life. Monuments, tombs, and temples have been constructed to celebrate and capture the solstice light since as early as 3200 B.C.E.

So what does "celebrating the solstice" mean?