What the Dark Whispered When I Finally Listened
Finding nourishment in the places we're taught to fear
Darkness has always been a teacher with lessons I wasn't always ready to receive.
As a child, I insisted on a nightlight well past the age most kids outgrow them. My imagination painted monsters in every shadow, giving form to fears I couldn't yet name.
Those childhood shadows eventually retreated as I grew into myself. Until last Sunday at 2:17 AM, when I woke in my new place to the realization that darkness wears a different face in unfamiliar rooms.
The refrigerator sighed like a tired giant. The heating system tapped coded messages through pipes. The wind found new voices in corners I hadn't yet befriended. In darkness, my ordinary home transformed into a landscape of unknown territories, each sound marking boundaries on a map I couldn't see.
My fingers found the lamp switch beside my bed—muscle memory from a lifetime of illuminating uncertainty.
But something made me pause.
What if darkness itself was the teacher I'd been avoiding all these years?
The Shadow We Try to Outrun
We live in a world obsessed with light.
Productivity. Clarity. Certainty. Answers. Solutions. Forward movement.
We've built entire industries around banishing darkness in all its forms—literal and metaphorical. Self-help books promising to illuminate the path. Meditation apps designed to clear the shadows of anxiety. Productivity systems that leave no room for the fallow periods when nothing seems to grow.
Let's be honest—there's something primal about wanting light. Our ancestors had good reason to huddle close to fires when night fell. Darkness held teeth and claws and countless ways to disappear forever.
But what if darkness isn't something to overcome?
What if it's as essential to our growth as light?
Nature's Dark Wisdom
Trees don't apologize for winter.
Seeds don't rush their time underground.
The moon doesn't fret about its waning phase.
Nothing in nature fears the dark the way we do. Instead, darkness is honored as the necessary companion to light—the inhale to its exhale, the rest between notes that creates the music.
Consider the seed. In complete darkness, it splits open, sends down roots, prepares for eventual emergence. Without that dark beginning, there would be no golden sunflower turning its face to follow summer light.
Our bodies know this wisdom too. In darkness, we produce melatonin—the hormone that rewrites cellular stories while we dream. Our eyes dilate in dim light, revealing stars and paths invisible in bright glare.
Even creativity seems to flourish in these shadowed spaces. My best ideas arrive not in the busy daylight hours but in that twilight territory between wakefulness and sleep—the space where control loosens its grip and something wilder takes the wheel.
The Night I Stopped Reaching for Light
Last night, I sat on my new porch without turning on the light.
I let darkness reintroduce itself.
It wasn't comfortable. Not at first.
My skin registered subtle air currents I'd never noticed in daylight. The neighborhood transformed—houses becoming silhouettes, trees becoming presence rather than detail, stars appearing one by one like shy guests at a gathering.
The more I allowed myself to be present with the darkness, the less I needed to see in the ways I was accustomed to. Not because the darkness changed, but because I did.
Since then, I've been exploring other ways to befriend the dark, both literal and metaphorical:
Sitting with difficult emotions without immediately reaching for distraction. Allowing creative projects their necessary fallow periods instead of forcing productivity. Taking moonlit walks without a flashlight, letting my eyes adjust to different ways of seeing. Creating a bedtime ritual that honors darkness as restorative rather than frightening.
The dark wasn't done teaching me yet.
What Grows Only in the Dark
There's a reason mushrooms thrive in darkness and shadows.
There's a reason stars are invisible until the sun retreats.
There's a reason seeds crack open underground before reaching toward light.
Some transformations can only happen in the dark.
Yesterday, I burned toast because I couldn't see it properly in my dimly lit kitchen. As I scraped the blackened surface over the sink, I realized how often darkness creates necessary edges in our lives—boundaries that define where we end and begin.
We're taught to associate darkness with loss, with absence, with things missing or taken away. But what if darkness isn't subtraction at all, but addition—the adding of space for what couldn't exist in the light?
I can't tell you I've had some profound revelation. That would be too neat, too tidy for the messiness of growth. But I did feel a subtle shift—like something inside me was finally allowed the space to exhale completely.
Maybe that's the real gift of darkness. Not some dramatic transformation, but the small, ordinary miracle of allowing ourselves to be exactly where we are—even when where we are is uncomfortable, uncertain, or unclear.
Because here's what I'm slowly learning: The dark isn't empty.
It's fertile.
It's alive.
It's where everything begins.
What might be waiting for you in the spaces you've been afraid to enter? What wisdom might be whispering in the shadows you've been so busy trying to illuminate?
I don't have those answers for you. I've come to understand that the questions themselves are invitations—to trust that not all growth happens in the light, that not all paths need to be fully illuminated to be worth walking, and that sometimes, the most nourishing thing we can do is simply to let the darkness be.
Now, when night falls in my new home, I sometimes sit for five minutes before turning on the lights. I let the darkness introduce itself properly. We're not quite friends yet, but we're getting there—having conversations that can only happen when the brightness fades and something deeper emerges.
What would change if you reimagined one 'dark' area of your life as fertile ground rather than empty space?
I'm curious about the seeds waiting in your shadows.
I invite you to share something. I’ll respond soon.
Until then, my friend.
-Alex
About Alex
I’m equal parts old soul and curious wanderer, a farmer boy at heart, and a writer whenever I can corral my ADHD. Ultimately, I write for those who crave rest in a world that never pauses.
As a political psychologist, yoga therapist, and integrative coach—anchored by both research and lived experience—I delve into questions of identity, connection, and wholeness, which are the foundation of my Substack publication, Life as I See It.
If you haven’t yet joined me, I invite you to subscribe for free:
Well, Alex, I think you and I could have a whole conversation about this topic.
I contemplated the wisdom of the dark about five years ago when I was passively suicidal, and nothing and no one consoled me.
That's when I considered that maybe the metaphor of darkness meant something for the existential barrenness I felt. I thought of the things you listed, too - how beautiful things grow in the dark: a caterpillar in its chrysalis, a seed under the earth, a child in the womb.
Then I realized that darkness wanted to mentor me, to show me its quiet presence and teach me how to confront my own shadows and fears.
It was during this time I also read Miriam Greenspan's book, "Healing Through the Dark Emotions." Her language centering around grief, fear, and despair dramatically changed me. Fundamentally changed the way I understood darkness.
I think of the moon and how it reflects the sun, and now I see that both light and dark work in tandem - that one is never fully itself without the other. So I have come to love them both for what they are to me.
Nice reframe. Thanks