When a dark night of the soul becomes the moment we discover magic.

Life unfolds in so many ways, some joyful and some painful. Sometimes we want to laugh out loud and others we feel like our chest is being squeezed so tightly we can hardly breathe.

It's easy to wish life could be one way. Happiness without sorrow, pleasure without pain, the light without the dark. But this is not reality...this is not life.

When the tsunami comes and we are engulfed by our emotional brain, the dorsal vental part of our sensitive nervous system shuts down. This is a fiercely protective mechanism which for a while diminishes our life force, our ability to express who we our verbally, creatively, intellectually, physically and spiritually.

During these excruciating times we feel far from the light and disenchanted with our existence.

I love the story by Milton Erikson the acclaimed psychologist and hypnotist. He reminds us that it takes a tiny spark to pierce the dark in his case study about a reclusive, deeply depressed, wheelchair-bound woman. Her only social outlet was attending church and Erickson observed that her only source of joy a small collection of African violets. He encouraged her to take cuttings and grow plants to give as gifts to her church members. Erickson's famously stated that it was easier to grow her life than to weed out depression and encourage the lady to nurture the African violets in a small greenhouse. Over time this transformed her life, igniting the spark within giving her renewed purpose and a way to find belonging within a community. Her obituary described her as the "African Violet Queen of Milwaukee," who touched thousands of lives with her kindness.

Carl Jung said that healing stems from the process of accepting what has happened or what is, amor fati, no matter how painful and consciously choosing growth. Jungian depth psychology talks about the integration of ones shadow (everything we have outlawed, repressed, ignored and numbed out from) and the inner child archetype (this holds all of our childhood memories, emotions and experiences as patterns of survival either "wounded" or "magical" ) These aspects of ourself are the 'pure gold' of the psyche and help turn our pain into the power to become who we are at our core.

No matter how dormant our energy may feel there is always a teeny spark within. This can be stoked, cared for and nurtured like you would do a child or a beloved pet so that the dark nights of the soul become the moments we discover magic.