Honor your dark night

The dark times leave their mark and make you a person of insight and compassion. Oscar Wilde, an Victorian writer jailed for his homosexuality, went through a dark night of the soul and wrote from this place, ‘My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken. That is why God sends sorrow to the world. To me, suffering seems now a sacramental thing, that makes those whom it touches holy.’

Give yourself what you need at the deepest level. Care for your soul rather than cure it. Arrange your life such that you can be tender and kind to yourself. Talk with those you love about subtleties of your struggle and don’t allow any of us to give you an easy answer. Loss, even death, is a mystery that if you can honor your own experience, may give you a glimpse of the divine.