I am currently reading a book entitled Dark Night of the Soul by Thomas Moore, and I am very much appreciating the way he puts despair into a cultural and mythological context.  So unlike the bland psychological approaches that dominate our culture today.  Even I, as a professional critic of the mental health industry and our pharma-cratic culture, have fallen prey to the urge to label myself as “depressed” lately. 

Moore talks about it in a much more nuanced way.  Culturally, we have forgotten about the value of the dark night of the soul.  Moore refers to a kind of well-being that “can rise up out of a deep place in you that is dark but has its own kind of light.”  This is known as the Black Sun, a dark luminosity that is “less innocent and more interesting than naive sunshine.  This is one of the gifts a dark night has to offer you.”

This I know to be true.  I have been through many dark nights in my time, and this latest one has lasted the better part of two years.  It started with the death of my father in 2006, followed by a long, excrutiating separation, divorce, physical pain, surgery, breast cancer scare, etc.  Lots and lots of stuff. 

I keep having nightmares about my ex and his new wife around 4 am.  I wake up around 4:30 am and cannot sleep again.  I lie there wide awake, tormented by thoughts of the happy couple, blindsided by a rage that I did not know I had within me.  The rage lodges in my throat, like a scream that is dying to be let out.  But I don’t have the space to scream.  My acupuncturist encouraged me to try a shamanic practice that she uses.  When she is angry, she goes to Rock Creek Park or some river/water source, takes a stone, and when she is sure she is somewhat alone, she screams her rage into the stone and lets it into the water.  I think I need some sort of ritual like this.  The anger feels like stuck energy that is not moving, and I need to help it move.  I don’t have to deny it or make it go away, but it needs an outlet, a way to let it move without hurting anyone.  And I am not much of a pillow beater. 

I keep thinking of all this hideously mean one-liners to say to my ex.  Not a good use of my time and energy.  I know that in time, the rage will subside and I will be able to breathe a bit more freely again. 

In truth, I don’t know what is more prevalent: the anger or the grief.  I know that beneath that anger is a massive hurt, lodged solidly in my throat, heart, and stomach.  It is easier to feel the rage than to sense what lies beneath.

Thank heaven for hot baths and time to reflect.  Thank heaven for the sound of Sami’s laughter as I tickle his neck.  Thank heaven for Sami’s small body nestled securely into my own, after midnight, after he has left his bed and crawled into mine.  Thank heaven, too, for the hours just before dawn as I hold him, even those tormented by thoughts of his father and his new love. 

Thank heaven for my life, for this Black Sun that illuminates the path I tread. 

This dark night, this “night sea journey” as Moore so poetically refers to it, is mysterious and lonely and terrifying in its unknowable-ness.  Yet it is vast and humbling and magnificent at the same time.  I see that no matter how broken into pieces I am, no matter how ground into dust, I can be reconstituted.  Refined by grief and loss and tears, enriched by love, snuggles, and laughter, I gleam with my own strange light.