The Dark

It's incredible how love opens the heart.

I recently had the chance to escape for a morning with four dear friends to celebrate someone's birthday. We each got a massage, ate absurd macaroons, relaxed in a hot tub, and ordered an absolutely ridiculous lunch which we shared in the bright, fall sunshine with the back drop of the flatirons framing our gathering. I left a jellied mess both physically and emotionally because it is such an incredible thing to be truly witnessed by other human beings and it can be such a rare phenomena. 

But here, in this place, I feel embraced despite my imperfections. The ways in which I am weak are the ways others are strong and, regardless of the struggle, I am cherished and celebrated and it provides me with so much nourishment; this is especially true in the wake of Covid and the fire and the King Soopers shooting. In the aftermath of 2020 and the challenges immediately following, I struggled to work up the will even to change a light bulb. But I don't think any of us had time to process or mourn or figure out why performing the bare minimum felt impossible--the only way out was through and so we have all landed in this current now and are attempting to surface from a reality that lasted for long days and months and years.

And despite the fact that there is a good deal to process and much work still to do, none of us is alone. I relive the darkest moments of the last several years and beside me walk four of the bravest, kindest, most beautiful humans I have had the privilege of knowing. And when it gets too dark or I feel too frightened or the odds seem insurmountable, I am carried along. And if another feels defeated or bone-weary, we all lean in a bit more, propping one another up in defiance of a narrative that the world is solely a bad or scary or terrible place. 

And in the distance, not too far ahead, the light of a candle burns strong and defiant, a promise to each of us that the first hint of light on the horizon threatens the reign of night. The stars seem to whisper a quiet reminder that the dark, too, is fallible. There is light ahead but it is here, also, in this circle where each is held and beloved and loved without pretense. It's incredible how love opens the heart, light emanating outward, forcing even the most insidious of night to retreat.