Soul Chronicles: How to Build a Holiday Toolkit in the Dark
Segment 2 of 6 in our Soul Chronicles for the Chronically Ill series.
By Shaler Wright
Introduction
I’d like to thank Health Story Collaborative for working with me to bring you “Soul Chronicles for the Chronically Ill.” This monthly audio series offers a soulful perspective on how to navigate the unique challenges of living with ongoing health conditions.
My name is Shaler McClure Wright and I live with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome.
Story
We’re hip-deep in holiday season as I make this recording. Daylight is giving way to darkness, while we’re wading through a sea of festivity.
Holidays can be tough for those of us with chronic illness. Rushing around, overextending ourselves can cause flare-ups in our symptoms. That’s no way to celebrate! So how can we protect ourselves, yet still participate?
We need to build a holiday toolkit.
Let’s begin with an empty box and see what happens. We know that nature abhors a vacuum, so if at first we do nothing, what do you think will fill it?
American poet Mary Oliver envisioned her answer in this short poem that came to her in her sleep: “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” (Mary Oliver, The Uses of Sorrow)
The gift of darkness takes time to understand because it takes us a while to get past our simplistic, fearful conception of the dark. Once we put that aside, we can see that the gift of darkness is also an invitation—to slow down and feel more deeply. Yes, darkness is an invitation to spend time with soul. By soul I mean the part of us that embraces ancient wisdom and acknowledges the value of intuition.
Connecting with soul takes us outside of ourselves and opens us to the spiritual and natural worlds. For me, walking in the forest is a soulful activity. I wonder what feels soulful to you?
The energy of darkness is soulful. Mystical, magical, creative energy. Ann Ulanoff, author and Jungian analyst, writes about the healing power of the imagination. She explains darkness like this: “Darkness… characterizes the world of the unseen, and the mysterious processes of the unconscious where creative activity starts.” (Ann Ulanov, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology, 1971, pp. 170-71).
Darkness offers a fertile space for exploring possibilities for our actions and reactions. Darkness is a great incubator. And darkness is restorative, as it facilitates healing through stillness and rest. Without it, our physical resilience suffers.
So why do we go to extremes to resist the soulful invitation of darkness?
It’s too different from the energy of everyday life. The soulful energy of darkness emerges from a place of quiet contemplation, and this goes against our carefully cultivated habits of busyness and productivity. So we resist, even though we need to replenish the energy we’ve spent throughout the year.
Think about it, the most festive holidays fall in the darkest time of year. We cling to an extended cycle of celebration in defiance of natural order. We can feel nature pull us toward quiet, but we ignore her. Even at our own peril. Mother Nature wants us to slow down, like the animals do, but instead, we crank up the volume of daily life and try our hardest to keep busy. In America, we cling to mega-sized holiday traditions.
But excess doesn’t feed our soul. Simplicity does.
Perhaps we can learn a lesson from the Littlest Angel. The Littlest Angel is a children’s story written in 1946 by Charles Tazewell. It follows heaven’s youngest—and clumsiest—angel, who was allowed to keep one thing from his childhood on Earth to help him adjust. He chose a small, dingy box holding ‘a butterfly with golden wings, a sky-blue egg from a robin’s nest, two white stones from a muddy river bank, and a tooth-marked leather strap, once worn as a collar by his mongrel dog.” Objects that elicit memories. Objects that serve as symbols of the life he loved. Without knowing it, the Littlest Angel had assembled a box that would give him the resilience he needed to adapt to life after death.
Wouldn’t you like to assemble a box like that? A box of resilience?
Right now our holiday toolkit is filled with darkness, soul and energy. But what if that’s not enough? What else might we add to give us the resilience we need? Perhaps if we choose as carefully as the Littlest Angel chose, we will find out. Perhaps we can transform our box of darkness into a box of resilience by adding symbols of strength from our life. Let’s imagine what those might be…
● A joyful memory can give us strength. I’ll add the blue booties my child was wearing when he took his first steps. How about you?
● An unexpected act of kindness can give us strength. I’ll add the four leaf clover my mother found for me when I was feeling very, very unlucky.
● A personal ritual can give us strength. I’ll add the matches I use to light a candle when I meditate.
● And finally, a free pass (to do less) can give us strength (to do what’s important). I’ll give myself permission to upack five bins of holiday decorations instead of nine.
Still not sure?
Let’s imagine a simple scenario of how we might use the new tools in our box…
It’s Christmas Eve morning. We begin our day by quietly filling the bird feeder outside our kitchen window, as we do every day. But today there are three red cardinals perched in the closest evergreen. We’re reminded of how our grandfather taught us to always look for their mates, who might feel forgotten because they blend in with the brown bark of a tree. Holding the image of redness, we smile and remember the thick red wool socks our grandfather always wore for the holidays.
Then we receive a notification from UPS that our most important gift for our child is lost in transit. We panic and beat ourselves up for not having ordered it sooner. We get a headache and start to feel shaky and fear our symptoms will cascade. But instead of escalating our pain by quickly trying to do something to fix things, we give ourselves permission to pause and do nothing.
In that moment of stillness, we imagine a creative solution to our problem. And we write a letter to our child, describing every detail of the missing gift and explaining why we chose it, and what we hope it will mean to them. We place the letter in a colorful envelope and tie it with a red bow, smiling once again at our memory of red socks. The doorbell rings. It’s the UPS man. He has come to work early to search their pile of damaged packages and he’s found ours. The gift is unharmed.
We feel surprised, relieved and blessed. While wrapping our child’s gift we realize the letter we wrote to take its place is perhaps more important than the gift itself. And by choosing to do less—by choosing not to run out and buy something else—we have actually given ourselves the opportunity to do more. We have accepted the invitation of darkness and soul, and given expression to a meaningful gift from our heart.
Things have a way of working out. And even with all the cultural pressure to do more, it’s still our personal privilege to choose to do less. To stay healthy. To seek deeper, quieter solutions to our problems. Soulful solutions that enrich us instead of draining our energy.
So, whether we celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice or Christmas, we each deserve a holiday toolkit that can help us make better use of mother nature’s restorative gift of darkness. Because resilience is born in the dark.
Shaler McClure Wright is fascinated with the mysteries of creative process, the healing power of creativity, and the creative synthesis of method acting, intuitive learning and depth psychology. A graduate of Wesleyan University and The Actors Studio, Shaler has worked as an actor, writer and educator for more than 40 years, and lives in southeastern Connecticut with her son and husband.
Go here for more episodes of our Soul Chronicles series.