From the dark night of the soul we discover magic.

Life unfolds in so many ways, some joyful and some painful. Sometimes we want to laugh out loud and others times 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. However this is not reality, this is not life.

When 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 including our ability to express who we our verbally, creatively, intellectually, physically and spiritually. During these excruciating times we can feel disenchanted with our existence.

There is a story by Milton Erikson the acclaimed psychologist and hypnotist that I often share when people are struggling with this. It literally begins with a reclusive, deeply depressed, wheelchair-bound woman living in her big only mansion, curtains closed in darkness. Her only social outlet was an occasional church visit. Erickson observed on a house visit that she kept a small collection of African violets on her window sill with the curtain left open just enough to explose a little sunlight. He worked with this tiny spark of interest, encouraging her to take cuttings, grow plants and offer them as gifts to her church members. He famously stated that it was easier to grow her life than to weed out the darkness and depression.

Over time this transformed her life giving her a new way to find belonging. Her obituary described her as the "African Violet Queen of Milwaukee," who touched thousands of lives with her kindness.

Carl Jung said that healing is the process of accepting what has happened no matter how painful and consciously choosing growth. Jungian depth psychology talks about the integration of our shadow, everything we have outlawed, repressed, ignored and numbed out from. This also contains our inner child archetype, holding 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 turning our pain into the power and our energy no matter how dormant into a driving life force.