Freya Everly

Honoring Freya

In the dark and cold midwinter, we invite you to honor Freya in the manner of some of our ancestors. For our family, fire and light go hand-in-hand with winter. Our family is descended from Scandinavians, who still practice ancient rituals honoring the dark and the cold of the winter season. Candles are lit and fires are kept. Warm drinks and comfort food are consumed, slow living is embraced and, we seek to find beauty in the darkness.

Winter can be harsh, requiring conservation and resilience until spring’s rebirth. Freya’s favorite way to embrace the winter season was hygge (pronounced “hoo-guh”) – a Norwegian practice of creating a cozy atmosphere and spending time together. This was her favorite time to nestle in blankets, cuddle with loved ones while she watched Elmo, and eat her favorite comfort foods (Goldfish crackers and hot dogs). Hygge helped us make ordinary moments into special memories.

We hope you will join us in seeing death not as an ending, but as a journey. Death belongs to life as surely as birth does, and it is not the end. We are not destroyed, but changed. Our bodies are only borrowings: what we are made of passes on, as it was once passed on to us. And that fiery life that lived inside of Freya, that animating spark, is no more lost than the matter that held it.

We also quietly hope that we will see that spark again, and we trust it will be unmistakable—as true and authentically vital as Freya was.

Until then, though, we honor it. Light holds a deeper meaning for us with Freya’s loss. We use the light to protect our memory of her, to honor her, and to remind us to put kindness, warmth, and hope back into the world.