I am feeling led into deeper and more meaningful stillness. There is something so beautiful about sitting in darkness in the wee hours of the morning drinking decaf coffee. (The decaf coffee helps me to stay embodied during stillness.) There is something so beautiful about just watching and observing your mind at work even in the darkness and stillness. There is something so beautiful when you catch a piece of stillness in the midst of your busy mind. It is all part of the wonder of me, Janet. This is how my mind, body, spirit and heart work in life and all is well. Amongst the periods of the busy mind and the periods of stillness I find such richness and peace for I truly honor and respect how I am existing in the world and in where my life has led me.

It is a great thing to be finding beauty in the darkness because I have always been terrified of the external darkness – so many things that I could not control in my personal life and in the world around me happened in darkness. Even today, I have a terror response to darkness each night.

Furthermore, I had learned from my religious upbringing that many of the feelings I had as a child were not good to have, that you had sinned and were bad because you felt these feelings at all. In addition, I learned from society and academia that these feelings were considered negative, dark, or bad. Since my intelligence lies in intrapersonal skills, I have always innately been aware that hate, envy, sadness, anger, grief, despair, murderous rage and fury were a real part of my life on a daily basis. Therefore, I felt I was evil at the core, and I have come to realize that these emotions were a result of the natural human experience but intensified by a trauma history.

I am so glad that at 56 I have finally stopped thinking of my emotional life as darkness and light. I feel such power and beauty when I feel the embodied energy of any emotion and I can express it in my writing, my reflection and in conversation with my husband and therapist. I continue to get more comfortable with the energy of any emotion. My body and brain still react to the energy of emotion by having a hypervigilant response because I have severe PTSD. Yet, I have come to a place of peace with that physical reaction and constriction. Again, I have learned to find beauty and power in my humanity as well as in my disability. I am so glad I am freeing myself from the light/darkness thinking.

Since I have embraced my entire emotional life, I am learning to see the humanness of others in the world differently. In a way, I am starting to feel safer in the world, in the darkness and with all the happenings in the world. I am able to see our humanity coming through in all that goes on in the world. Once again, I see issues of power, powerlessness and helplessness playing out all over the world as well as the role they have played in my personal life.