Advent 23
Monday, Fourth Week of Advent
19 December 2022
Anniversary Reflections of my Dark Night of the Soul
“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.”
It happened a year ago this month. It’s the kind of suffering that connects me to Suffering, to everyone and everything around me. It Humbles me. I am on my knees, pleading for help, crying into the Void. I am like this for a month — regressed, childlike, terrified, in a state of wordless dread, needing so much. My mind can’t make much sense of it, but my body tells me something is very wrong. I want to crawl out of my skin. I don’t feel safe to sleep. Food disgusts me. I am shutting down. I am taken care of by my chosen family at my community house. Then, I return to my given family for the holiday time, and it is there that I am nursed back to health.
“To know the dark, go dark, go without sight.”
One night, waves of anxiety grip me and I know I cannot be alone. It is a year ago to the day, December 19th, 2021 — the most torturous night of my life. My father is laying next to me, comforting me at three in the morning as my body shakes. With wide eyes, I look at him, “What if I’m stuck like this? I used to feel so alive…” “Sunshine, you’re doing just fine. There is nothing to fear…” He invites me out beyond my thoughts that could spiral me further, guides me into meditation, into longed-for sleep. Underneath the fear, I can sense there is only love.
“And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings.”
One day, I tearfully ask my mother, “Will you still be proud of me, even if I stay like this forever?” Fiercely, she tells me, “Of course. We were always proud of you. Period.”
Another day, my mother shares with me, “I know what you are feeling…” She then reveals to me one of the few stories she’s ever told me of her childhood — one of trauma, of not being able to rely on her caregivers to protect her, of having to parent herself when she was so young. I reflect on her body, so conditioned to fear, as my first home. Her body, so filled with mistrust, so isolated. Her body, grasping for safety and control. Her body, not receiving the love she needed to survive, unless she did something.
In my Dark Moon, the Long Dark, this Dark Night of the Soul, I am visited by an old, eerily-familiar exiled part. This part is so afraid of being lost and abandoned, is so unsure of her ability to survive. For the past fifteen years, I have successfully trapped her in a cave deep within me, where she screams and pounds on the walls, driven to insanity within this confinement. When I was younger, this part took up much more space in my life, until one day I told that part, “Go away — you ruin everything.” And then she did, for the most part, or so I thought…
Throughout my life, this young, wounded part emerges from her cave many nights once my body fully relaxes as I enter the realm of sleep. I meet her in night terrors; I can hear her when I wake up screaming. I meet her again in my waking state only once since December, on the first day of a meditation retreat in May — the first time I am really alone since. I have learned that she settles when I sing to her, when I tell her I love her, when I promise not to leave her behind.
“And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”*
I share this tender tale in community in this time of darkness, of Winter, of Solstice, in hopes that someone can read this and know they are not alone. May we all have the opportunity to dance with the fruitful darkness. I have descended into the Underworld, and, upon my return into the light, brought Shadow back with me. The point is not to return to how I was before, and I wouldn’t wish that. This has been part of my Initiation as psychotherapist; now, I face and embrace this intergenerational soul wound. Now, I hold more darkness to blend with my light, and I am more whole.
KT Glusac ’17
*Poem by Wendell Berry
