When the Light Feels Farther Away
A Reflection on Winter, the Dark Night of the Soul, and Becoming WholeThere are seasons in life when the light feels farther away — much like winter — not because it is gone, but because something within us is resting, reorganizing, and quietly changing.
Winter is not a time of failure in nature.
It is a time of dormancy.
Energy draws inward. Roots deepen. Life conserves itself in preparation for what cannot yet be seen. Nothing is rushing. Nothing is trying to bloom out of season.
Human transformation often follows the same rhythm.
There are times when growth is not visible, when momentum slows, and when the work is happening beneath the surface — away from performance, productivity, and proof.
This is often where the dark night of the soul lives.
The Chrysalis Is Not Gentle
In nature, transformation is rarely comfortable.
Before a butterfly takes flight, it enters the chrysalis — a place of enclosure, stillness, and profound change. What is less often spoken about is that the caterpillar does not gently evolve into something better.
It dissolves.
The structures that once allowed it to survive break down completely. Identity disappears. What existed before can no longer remain intact.
And when the butterfly begins to emerge, it must struggle.
That struggle is not a flaw in the design.
It is essential.
Without it, the wings would not strengthen.
Without it, the butterfly would not survive.
The dark night of the soul works in much the same way.
It is not meant to be easy.
It is meant to allow a reorganization so complete that we can no longer live from the same internal structures we once relied upon.
My Own Dark Night
I didn’t recognize my own dark night at first.
It arrived quietly, during a certification course I entered with experience, competence, and confidence. One learning — just one — sent me into a tailspin:
Unmet needs.
Not abstract needs.
Foundational ones.
The need to be seen.
The need to be heard.
Belonging.
Acknowledgement.
To feel safe and protected.
As I sat with this, something devastating and clarifying emerged:
I had never fully had my needs met.
From the time I was a young child, I felt misunderstood. I did not feel seen for who I was or valued for what I brought into my family. When I was being harmed, no one listened. When I spoke up, I was told I was too emotional, too bossy, overreacting.
I learned early that my experience was inconvenient.
I didn’t feel like I belonged.
My parents carried their own histories of deep loss, each having lost one or both parents at a young age. Safety, emotional attunement, and protection were not things they had been taught how to offer.
Most painfully, I did not feel safe or protected with a predator in my home.
Foundationally, there was a lot missing.
How Adaptation Becomes Survival
Like most children, I adapted.
Not consciously.
But intelligently.
To be seen, I became a motivator — someone who saw the good in others and named it.
To be heard, I learned how to use my voice in a way that resonated deeply with people.
To belong, I became a sports coach, beginning at nineteen and continuing until I was fifty-six, creating teams, loyalty, and shared purpose.
To be acknowledged, I developed a large personality and stepped into leadership roles within my schools.
To feel safe and protected, I found a beautiful partner who allowed me to be fully myself — even while living with the fear of being outed as a gay woman in a Catholic school environment.
These adaptations were not wrong.
They became strengths.
They supported others.
They helped me survive.
But adaptation is not the same as wholeness.
When Needs Go Unnamed, Intimacy Suffers
One of the most confronting realizations in my dark night was this:
Because I did not know how to ask for my needs to be met, I was also not very good at meeting the needs of those closest to me.
When our own needs have been unsafe, ignored, or dismissed, we often become skilled at anticipating others. We give. We adjust. We compensate. But intimacy requires something more vulnerable than competence.
It requires the ability to name what is needed — without apology.
To receive — without guilt or collapse.
To recognize that needs are not demands, but information.
Without this capacity, closeness can exist without true intimacy.
The dark night revealed this with startling clarity. It showed me not only what I had survived, but where connection had been limited — not by lack of care, but by lack of language.
Letting the Dark Night Teach You
The dark night is not something we simply endure.
It asks something of us.
It asks us to sit and listen — not to distract ourselves, not to numb what is rising, and not to rush toward relief or meaning. It asks us to stay present long enough for the experience to begin teaching us what it came to reveal.
This is not about crystals, affirmations, or spiritual shortcuts.
It is about relationship — with yourself, with your inner world, and with what is asking to be seen.
The dark night is a solitary journey. No one else can do this listening for you.
And at the same time, we are not meant to do it without support.
Reaching out for perspective, grounding, or containment does not weaken the process. It strengthens your capacity to remain present within it.
Some people journey with trusted friends.
Some with therapists, healers, or guides trained to walk alongside deep inner work.
Most need a combination.
What matters is discernment.
For me, this meant moments of reaching out — to gain perspective, to feel steadied — and then returning inward to sit with what was uncomfortable, unresolved, and real. No one could do that part for me.
This rhythm — inward and outward, solitary and supported — is often how transformation unfolds.
Listening to the Body: The Forgotten Teacher
Another essential part of the dark night — and one that is often overlooked — is the body.
Our bodies are not separate from this process.
They are part of our resource system.
Long before the mind understands, the body knows. It signals through tension, fatigue, restlessness, ache, or numbness. When those signals are ignored long enough, we live in a quiet disconnect: everything looks fine on the outside, but something doesn’t feel right inside.
Much of my own work during this time involved allowing the body to unwind.
What I had stuffed down for years lived in my physical body. It needed a way to move.
For me, that meant engaging body-based supports — reflexology, massage, osteopathy — and other forms of somatic work that allowed the body to speak in its own language.
What works will be different for everyone.
The point is not the modality.
The point is listening.
Listening when the body asks for movement — and when it asks for stillness.
Listening when it asks for touch, grounding, or rest.
Somatic work restores communication. It allows sensation to complete, rather than be overridden. It brings us back into relationship with ourselves — not just cognitively, but fully embodied.
Sovereignty Is Not Self-Sufficiency
Sovereignty is often misunderstood.
It is not independence at all costs.
It does not need anything from anyone.
Sovereignty is the capacity to stand in yourself without disappearing in relationship.
It is knowing your needs and trusting they are valid.
It is allowing others to meet you there — and learning how to meet them in return.
It is intimacy without self-erasure.
This kind of sovereignty cannot be rushed. It emerges when survival strategies soften enough to be seen, honored, and released.
The Power on the Other Side
The dark night does not elevate your frequency by making you feel better.
It elevates your frequency by bringing you back into alignment with your true self — authentic, self-actualized, and sovereign.
When you stop organizing your life around survival, approval, and adaptation, something else becomes possible.
Presence.
Integrity.
Embodied truth.
Needs no longer feel shameful to name.
The body no longer has to hold what the voice can finally express.
Intimacy no longer requires self-abandonment.
The butterfly does not emerge stronger despite the struggle.
It emerges stronger because of it.
And if we have the courage to enter our own dark night — to stay with it, to listen, to allow what no longer serves to dissolve — we too can emerge from the chrysalis.
Not as someone new.
But as the beautiful being we were always meant to be — whole, sovereign, and fully alive — once we no longer have to fight to exist.
If you are still in the chrysalis — if this feels like winter — you are not unfinished. Give yourself the grace and space to be exactly who you need to be in this moment, without attachment to the outcome, trusting that beneath this seeming stillness, something incredible is quietly emerging: you.
Closing Reflection
The dark night does not ask you to do everything at once.
It asks you to stay honest.
To listen deeply.
To resource yourself enough to remain present.
You are allowed to need solitude.
You are allowed to need support.
You are allowed to need both.
Take a moment to write one sentence you can return to during this season:
During this time, I give myself permission to…
Let that sentence guide you — gently — as you continue your way through the chrysalis.
