Illuminate

My youngest sleeps with a little black lantern every single night. Part of the bedtime routine is finding the lantern, which inevitably gets lost in a sea of blankets and sheets through the twists and turns of the night. Once it’s been found, I turn the light on and she holds it close, ready to settle in for the night. Her whole face illuminated by the dim light of a cheap battery operated lantern, she smiles contentedly. “Snuggle with me, Mom. Lie here with me.” Fear subsides. Calm. 

 

There’s something so unsettling about darkness. I turned 40 this year, and then seemingly overnight everything started falling apart. My 18-year marriage hit a major snag. My anxiety decided to manifest into frequent panic attacks that would wreak havoc on my entire body. My oldest child started visiting college campuses and casually mentioning that he might be interested in joining the military, thus exacerbating the already out-of-control anxiety. After 18 years of being a stay at home mom, I decided it was finally time to enter the workforce, only to find that nobody was rushing to hire a 40-year-old mom with no work experience. And out of the blue, I started having sciatic nerve pain that lasted for weeks. Darkness crept in. Fear took over. 

 

I heard a story recently and I can’t remember where from or I’d totally give them credit, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It was a story of a man who had hit rock bottom. Feeling desperate, he goes to a spiritual retreat center where a spiritual leader immediately meets him. They spend hours walking the property, the man pouring out his soul and the darkness of his heart to this spiritual leader. Saying nothing the entire time, the spiritual leader just listens for hours. Their walk finally finished, the spiritual leader looks into the eyes of this beaten down man and simply says, “Me too.” 

 

Darkness feels overwhelming and lonely, the blackness of it suffocating and disquieting. It’s easy to let fear take over in those dark places, and fear keeps us quiet and alone. But all it takes is one sliver of light to illuminate the whole room. When we allow others to meet us in the darkest places of our lives, when we say “Lie here with me” and make space for connection, their “me too” pulls back the curtain to reveal that the scary thing isn’t insurmountable after all. Talking about anxiety with other people has taken away some of the power that it had on me, because it turns out that most people have experienced it. Vulnerability breeds connection. And connection is a little black lantern in a big, dark room. 

 

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Ordinary Inspiration".