Turning Towards the Light
In honor of the longest night of the year
For those in the Northern Hemisphere, tonight is the Winter Solstice — the longest night of the year. I find my mind turning towards how darkness — both literal and metaphorical — takes its toll.
There is a cost to living in a world overflowing with pain and hatred and fear, with nonstop species extinctions and climate-fueled crises and toxic overload. There is a cost to living in the midst of poverty and racism and abuse and neglect and war. There is a cost to living a life not aligned with our gifts or our values, not aligned with the wellbeing of our communities, not aligned with the thriving of the natural world.
We pay these costs with our bodies — and some bodies, much more than others.
And sometimes, we pay the cost even when the pain is not our own. It is common in the nervous system education world to talk about how our bodies have not caught up to the onslaught of modern life, how the threatening saber-toothed tiger of yesteryear has become the minute by minute influx of disasters chiming away on our phone. And it is true, that most of us have work to do in terms of right-sizing threats and setting limits to media consumption and recognizing our own safety — when we are indeed, safe.
And yet, while I recognize that I have a tendency to take on all the world’s pain as my own, I also wonder . . . Is that pain truly not our own?
Fundamentally, we are interdependent creatures with very sensitive nervous systems. Fundamentally, we exist in a web and the actions we each take have ripple effects all around the world. Fundamentally, the suffering of others is all ours to carry. And so isn’t the fact that sometimes we can feel our kinship so dearly a beautiful, painful, fundamental truth?
I do not want to turn away from that truth.
But I also do not want to go numb.
This has long been a struggle for me, especially because of how radically I’ve had to protect my system and my energy as I heal. Feeling constantly under threat is not exactly a recipe for a healthy nervous system — or body. Yet neither is feeling separate from the world and those around me.
As I struggled to find the right balance, I began to pay attention to what brings me deeper into my life. Not to regulate my nervous system and widen my window of tolerance, though that was important. Not to build capacity to read the news or listen to others’ stories of heartache, though that was important to me too. Not even to heal my illness, which arguably has driven much of my life for the past 6 years. I paid attention because I wanted to feel a part of this world. I wanted to feel alive.
And a little bit to my surprise, I found my most potent remedy was not therapy, or the perfect somatic exercise, or endless self-reflection in my journal.
It was laughter.
Laughter fills my body with energy, with sunshine, with fizzy bubbles. Laughter shocks my system — in a good way, like a friendly reboot. Laughter feels like light itself has entered my body, revved my engines, warmed my frozen tundras, created chlorophyll for my plants. Laughter activates my blended nervous system state of play, the one we find when we move towards yes, play, and also fun, pleasure, flow, awe, passion, inspiration, creativity. And so laughter helps me move from dysregulation into regulation, from frozenness into movement, from constriction into expansion.
I spend an awful lot of time alone, tired, and in bed. Silliness, play, laughter, can sometimes feel out of my reach. But never completely. Lately, I’ve turned to watching comedy stand ups and skits. Joining that facebook group where everyone pretends to be moths. Writing silly poems for myself in the mornings. Joining that other facebook group where people post pictures of things without faces that look like they do have faces.
Laughing at faceless faces is not going to shake this earth to its core. But in a way, laughter itself . . . just might. For humor — like art, like play, like connection, like compassion — are some of the greatest alchemizers of human experience. They are life-bringing, for they have the awesome power of helping us metabolize our darkest pain.
And turning towards the light, helps us turn towards the dark.
As we laugh, and make art, and chat with a friend, we grow. As we amplify moments of pleasure and ease, we grow capacity to meet moments of pain and suffering. As we tend to what feels good, we grow capacity to tend to what hurts. As we lean into love and laughter, we grow capacity to lean into darkness and despair.
And so, in honor of the longest night and in honor of the light that is to come, I have a solstice wish for myself, and for all those searching for how we come alive and come together in a hurting world.
May we laugh, not to escape our lives, but to come more deeply into them. May we regulate our nervous systems, not to become obsessed with being constantly soothed and stress-free, but to be able to turn towards what requires our attention. May we listen to our bodies, not to convince ourselves everything is fine, but to discover what our true needs are and what must change for us to meet them.
And for those who have the conditions and capacity to do so, may we heal, not to fit back into oppressive systems, but so we may work to dismantle them. May we resource and nourish ourselves, not to keep such privilege for ourselves, but to share our abundance with others. May we practice gratitude and seek beauty and embrace love, not to turn away from suffering, but to come ever closer to our truest selves and to one another.
P.S. My new-ish solstice ritual is to light a candle and spend time reflecting on the past and coming year. I ask myself:
What do I release into the night?
What do I call into the light?
This year, I release into the night the idea that we heal alone. And I call into the light fierce and wild love and laughter.
How about you?