Finding the Light in the Dark Year of Our Collective Soul
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back.” — Albert Camus
The funk that prompted me to share “I’m Not OK — You’re Not OK” two weeks ago persists, a low-pressure system continuing to cloud my inner landscape. I’ve found myself haunted by my mother’s ghost, plagued by fears that I might follow in her footsteps, the lightness of the first half of my life giving way to darkness in the second.
I’m around the same age as she was when her descent into madness began, triggered a perfect storm of major life events: the onset of menopause, the death of her father, and the end of her life’s work and soul’s purpose as a teacher of music to young children.
She never really recovered from the death of her father and she never found her what’s next professionally. As time passed, she grew more and more withdrawn, drowning in the dark well of depression and anxiety, plagued by despair. Her light went out long before she extinguished it by taking her own life.
At 54, though I continue to defy the odds, menopause is likely just around the corner and, as we celebrated his 88th birthday this August, I’m increasingly aware that my time with my beloved father is diminishing with each passing day. My journey this year of building the startup of me is both enlivening and terrifying. One moment I can do anything and see a dazzlingly bright future and in the next, plagued by waves of self-doubt, I find myself in a deep dark hole of I can’t, worrying that I might not pull off my own second-half of life career reinvention and lose my way as she did hers.
I know that despite the similarities I am a very different person. The biggest and most significant difference is that I am choosing to give voice to the darker aspects of my journey both publically and privately.
I am reaching out when I need support and being met with love from the massive web of open hearts in my chosen and birth family.
I am connecting instead of withdrawing.
I am shining light on the darkness, bringing it out in the open where it seems less scary, where it’s power over me is diminished.
And yet, my dark year of the soul continues. A dark year that feels more like a dark decade given the extent of the devolution happening around us.
A Dark Year for Me, A Dark Year for WeMy guess is that what’s true for me is true for we. Our dark year of the collective soul continues and grows ever darker as the winter of this year of our discontent approaches.
On Wednesday, I awoke at dawn to a surreal scene. The sky was dark and ominous, a deep, blood-red color like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie.
Day turned to night as the sun rose in the sky until it was so dark at 10am that I needed a flashlight to make my way safely to my car. The particulate matter in the upper atmosphere from the fires burning across the Pacific Northwest so dense that it blocked out the sun.
My brain went to its go-to mode in times of crisis — dark humor:
“Sorry, Emmylou, the darkest hour is actually just after the dawn.”
“Isn’t this how the dinosaurs died?!”
“If I were a religious woman, I’d be picking out my outfit for the rapture.”
The tragicomedy of my internal monologue provided micro-moments of joy. Comic relief on a bleak, alarming, and deeply unsettling morning.
Is This the End or the Beginning? Really, It’s a Both-And.All week long, as I journeyed through the heart of this darkness, activist Valerie Kaur‘s poignant and deeply tender “A Sikh Prayer for America” kept surfacing in my consciousness. She tells us that her faith dares her to ask:
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”
I think it’s really more of a both-and. We are simultaneously dying and being reborn. On both an individual and collective level.
And that’s a lot! And it’s totally understandable for us to be feeling lost and overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all. This has certainly been true for me these past few weeks.
We Are All Catalysts for Each Other’s JourneysOn Apocalypse Wednesday, a wise woman on a Zoom call of remarkable women reminded us of our innate strength and resilience — echoing Glennon Doyle’s mantra “We can do hard things”. She invited us to think of ourselves as both hospice workers for the old and doulas for the new.
How can we support and bear witness to what is dying off while simultaneously holding space for what is emerging?
How can we show up to meet this moment of transformation and play an active, supportive role in the birthing?
Her invitation reignited my fire, reconnecting me to the invincible summer within me that had been hiding beneath a nuclear winter and reminding me of the article I wrote back in March in the early days of quarantine, “To Transform or Be Transformed”:
Transformation is happening. On a scale more massive than anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes. Happening whether we like it or not…In the face of this disruptive global transformation, we have but one choice — transform or be transformed. We can’t opt out of the collective transformation that’s happening all around us. But we can choose our reactions to it.
Her words sparked and reenergized me, reawakening me to my own lifeforce and reminding me that we are all catalysts for each other’s journeys.
Rugged Individualism is Going the Way of the DinosaurLike it or not, our souls chose this moment to incarnate. We each came into the world with a unique role to play in these tumultuous, transformational times. It’s time to dig deep, do our inner work, and discover the gifts and medicines we carry to bring healing to ourselves, each other, and our world.
And we must connect and collaborate as the collective creatures that we are. We can not go it alone. The era of rugged individualism is dying off. The problems we are facing too big for us to tackle on our own. Now is the time for us to come together in collective conscious response. As the heroes that we each are.
To face the literal and metaphorical flames around us.
To choose to be on the light side of history rather than the dark.
To do all that we can to make this one precious life matter.
How Are We the Medicine for the World?My response to the darkness within and the darkness without these past several weeks has been to be gentle, loving, and compassionate as humanly possible with myself and those I love during this Megapocalypse.
To give voice to my experience with courageous and contagious vulnerability rather than suffering in silence.
To reach out to those I love and ask for what I need and offer what I can.
To think about the ways in which I am the medicine for the world and invite others to do the same.
Last night, I reached out to a dear friend looking for support. She shared a beautiful poem by Greg Kimura called “Cargo”:
“You enter life a ship laden with meaning, purpose, and gifts
sent to be delivered to a hungry world.
And as much as the world needs your cargo,
you need to give it away.
Everything depends on this.”
What a great reminder that doing our inner work is necessary but not sufficient. Yes, we must each embark on our hero and heroine’s journeys, curiously exploring ourselves to discover our precious divine cargo. And, we must continuously emerge from the introspection of self-discovery to take action, offering the meaning, purpose, and precious gifts we find within us in service to our world.
If you’d like a guide to help you discover your precious cargo—the meaning, purpose, and gifts you are carrying for our world—book a curious conversation to explore what the Vulnerability Doula can do for you.