Finding Joy in Dark Times: What Happens When You Stop Fighting the Dark

This month, themes of dark and light keep surfacing. I am finding that I’ve gotten used to the dark and it is no small thing.

I escaped just in time from the heavy November–December darkness of Minnesota and flew to my new home in Junos Vaddo, Goa—bright days, warm air, palms, crashing waves, and tourists soaking in the “Goa vibes.” Every day I take time outside for coffee and to purvey my natural surroundings. I also take some time between my independent work and evening sessions and classes, to walk out on the beach, letting the sea air lift me. It is beautiful and bright and fills me up.

Inside the house, though, is another story: cool, dark, almost cave-like.

It’s a three-story home built of laterite brick, with Portuguese-style windows and solid teak doors that shut out almost all light. The balconies are bright, but when the doors close, the house falls back into shadow—perfect for Shaan, who leans monk-ish, and difficult for someone raised in Minnesota, where winter darkness makes light feel like medicine.

I grew up in a house with constant warm light and a mother who refused to let the place fall into shadow. “The one with all the lights on,” people said when they heard our address. That shaped me. It set my nervous system to recognize brightness as “right” and darkness as “wrong.” So moving into a house that blocked the light stirred something deep.

We spent weeks in “The Great Door Battle”—me opening doors for daylight, Shaan closing them to keep out heat and mosquitoes. Eventually I had to face reality: the darker interior wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe the lesson was to surrender, not fight.

As so often happens, this struggle was reflected in other parts of my day—letting me know that this is a pattern up for observation.

Conversations, sessions, class questions, articles, podcasts—how to surrender to things as they are. The impulse to avoid or fix what is in the dark. Invitations to consider that dark and cold are not negative or wrong. The dark is not something to be avoided but embraced.

And then, the deeper thread pulled me back to a night one year ago.

It was in the first week after returning to Minneapolis for a family emergency on election night 2024. Everything felt dark, troubled, and frightening. I had no idea which direction the crisis would turn—great tragedy was one of the possibilities. I was alone, far from my partner, unsure when I would return to him. One minute I was in the hills around the Tiger Cave Temple in Thailand; the next I was in my cold, quiet Northeast Minneapolis apartment, alone, scared and exhausted.

That night I found myself standing in my kitchen, completely still, staring at nothing. My mind was full only of anxious images. I was holding my breath without realizing it, I had pushed my anxiety forward as the only acceptable expression of love and care available to me. As if suffering on someone’s behalf might protect them from suffering.

But suddenly I heard the question in myself:

How is this helping? Is my suffering preventing suffering? No.

And then the real challenge appeared:

What would happen if I was to care for myself in this moment? What would happen if I softened? Yielded? Relaxed?

As soon as I considered those questions, my body responded. I started to breathe again. I made the decision to dedicate my care to the spirit of this crisis. Meeting calamity with calm and presence and love. I was able to move again.

I made food. I ran a bath.

And lowering into that warm water, robe waiting, bed turned down, I asked myself another question:

Could I also choose happiness here? Contentment? Even joy—right now, in the middle of a crisis?

It felt outrageous, almost forbidden. But as soon as I allowed the possibility, something shifted. A light moved through me—tears and laughter together—the unmistakable signature of a healing moment. I wasn’t chasing joy. Joy came to find me, and I let it in.

Moments later my phone pinged. It was my daughter, the very center of my fear, texting to tell me she wanted me to be happy. The timing was impossible to ignore.

That moment became a kind of cosmic key.

Now, almost exactly a year later, I’m back in Asia—twice over—and the crisis resolved in ways better than I could have imagined.

So yes, being at ease in the cool darkness of my new home—a darkness that once would have felt “not right”—is the physical proof to me of that deeper lesson.t is showing me that things have changed, I can change.

It is not only safe but healing to have rest and care in the face of dark circumstances. With a choice we can move beyond our fear and create miracles. When we stop resisting the dark, and open to joy we may find an entire new life inside it.