In the darkness, what I couldn’t see began to clear and take form. Perhaps life is like this—absence tells us what is important. There is a fullness in those empty spaces made visible in the dark.

Change and transition. Light to dark and perhaps to light if I pay heed.

Waking up into a darkness blacker than I’ve ever known set me onto an altered path, a day spent attempting to find my place in this abruptly misplaced existence. My balance on a shifted beam placed upon the normality of the life I’ve been leading.

But is there truly such a thing as normal? And if there is, what does it mean?

In darkness, the secrets may reveal themselves in truths I’d never understood.

This alteration may turn out to be good for us. A shift among all the shifts this year. This one forcing us to slow down in a new way.

Darkness demands focus and refocus and stopping long enough to pay attention. Mindfulness is demanded with no room for negotiations.

Time moves slower in the darkness. When distractions are at their minimal.

 

My husband and I used this time to reconnect with ourselves and with each other. We played games, talked more, and kept our bodies close.

I listened to more music and fell in love again with songs which had lightened my path during its darkest moments—after my father died, my brother hit me, and relationships ended. Those days when the pain outside of me turned inward and I struggled to stop the self-hatred. These songs gave me the words to sing and dance my way on the forgotten path towards renewing my broken life.

My life hasn’t been broken like that in a while although this has been a year of great challenges. Anytime someone you love comes close to dying and you know you are helpless to stop what may already be written, you are forced to dig deep into yourself to find the strength to live with kindness, gratitude, joy, peace, and love. But having done that, I now struggle with a different kind of darkness.  The strength it took to cope, has left me flat-lining on my own life as I struggle to reconnect to my deepest emotions. I want to because they hold the key to my creativity and aliveness.

The darkness we were forced into last week, thanks to PG&E, offered me the opportunity to glimpse what has been missing in me, and I hope now that the lights are on, I will continue to mine what the darkness began to reveal.