“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi
In 2011, my world shattered. My mother passed away, and with her, the fragile scaffolding that held my life together. It wasn’t just grief. It was as if her death unearthed a deep well of pain I had been carrying for years.
Looking back, I can see that I was living with complex PTSD (cPTSD), though I didn’t have the language for it at the time. cPTSD is a condition that often results from prolonged exposure to trauma, leaving deep emotional scars. It manifests as a constant state of hypervigilance, emotional numbness, and difficulty forming healthy relationships.
What I did know was that my inner world was in chaos, and the external one soon followed. The grief triggered a flood of emotions that I couldn’t control or understand.
In the months after her death, I unraveled completely. I blew up my marriage in what felt like a frantic attempt to escape my pain. I pushed people away, made reckless decisions, and sank into a despair that seemed bottomless.
I was living through what some call the “dark night of the soul,” a period of profound spiritual and emotional crisis. At the time, it felt like I was losing everything, but in hindsight, it was the beginning of something much deeper. It became a journey into the core of who I was and a reckoning with the pain I had carried for so long.
Finding the Root of the Pain
When I finally sought therapy, I began to understand the roots of my suffering. Growing up, my relationship with my mother was complicated. She could be physically harsh, and there were no displays of affection or love. I don’t recall hugs or comforting words, and as a child, that left me feeling unseen and unworthy.
Everything began to change when I was in my twenties and my mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was as if the illness softened her, and for the first time, I began to see a different side of her. She became a wonderful grandmother. She was gentle, patient, and loving in ways I hadn’t experienced as a child.
When my mother passed, I was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of grief that felt far too immense for the relationship we’d shared. Even a friend remarked on it, leaving me grappling with a mix of confusion and guilt.
But my therapist offered a perspective that changed everything. This grief wasn’t just about losing my mother. At its core, it was the raw mourning of a lifetime of unmet needs: the love, safety, and connection I had longed for as a child but never received. It was the ache of realizing that door was now closed forever.
The cPTSD diagnosis was, in some ways, a relief. It gave me a framework to understand the hypervigilance, emotional flashbacks, and deep sense of unworthiness I had carried for so long.
But understanding wasn’t enough. Despite the insights therapy gave me, I still felt trapped in my pain. It was like standing at the edge of a vast chasm, seeing the life I wanted on the other side but having no idea how to cross it.
That’s when I met my yoga guru, a man whose wisdom became a bridge to healing. Through his teachings, I learned to hold my past with compassion, to forgive where I could, and to see myself as worthy of love and peace.
The First Lesson: Be
Working with my teacher, I was desperate for relief. I wanted him to give me a roadmap, a step-by-step plan to fix what was broken. Instead, he offered me something far simpler, and infinitely more challenging.
“Be,” he said during one of our first sessions. “Just be.”
At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. Be what? Be how? I was used to striving, fixing, doing. The idea of simply being felt foreign and, frankly, useless.
But he was patient. He encouraged me to sit with myself, to notice my breath, my body, my thoughts, and my emotions without trying to change anything. In those early days, the practice felt unbearable.
My mind was a whirlwind of guilt, shame, and grief. Sitting still felt like sitting in the middle of a storm. But slowly, I began to notice something. Beneath the chaos, there was a quiet stillness. A presence that wasn’t swept up in the storm.
For the first time, I began to glimpse the part of me that wasn’t defined by my pain.
The Second Lesson: Be With
“Be with what arises,” my teacher would say. “Don’t push it away. Don’t cling to it. Just be with it.”
This was perhaps the hardest lesson for me. My instinct was to avoid pain—to distract myself or numb the discomfort.
But my teacher gently guided me to do the opposite. He encouraged me to meet my emotions with curiosity instead of resistance. One day, I told him, “I can’t stop feeling this sadness. It’s like it’s swallowing me whole.”
He nodded and said, “Then be with the sadness. Sit with it. Let it show you what it needs to show you.” So I did. I sat with my sadness, my anger, my fear. I stopped trying to fix them or make them go away.
And as I did, I began to notice something profound: the emotions weren’t as overwhelming as I had feared. They ebbed and flowed like waves, and when I stopped resisting them, they began to lose their grip on me. I realized that my suffering wasn’t caused by the emotions themselves but by my resistance to them.
By being with them, I allowed them to move through me instead of staying stuck inside me.
The Third Lesson: Let It Be
The final lesson my teacher gave me was perhaps the simplest and the most profound: “Let it be.” This wasn’t giving up or resigning myself to suffering. It was acceptance.
Not in the sense of liking or approving of everything that happened, but in the sense of allowing life to unfold without clinging to how I thought it should be.
One day, during a particularly difficult meditation, I found myself flooded with memories of my mother. The grief was overwhelming, and I wanted to push it away. But my teacher’s words echoed in my mind: “Let it be.”
So I did. I let the memories come, the grief wash over me, and the tears fall. And then, as quickly as it came, the wave passed. In its place was a quiet stillness, a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in years.
Letting it be didn’t mean I stopped feeling grief or sadness. It meant I stopped fighting against them. I stopped clinging to the idea that I needed to be “healed” or “fixed” to be whole.
I began to trust that I could hold space for my pain without being consumed by it.
The Freedom of Letting Go
Through these lessons—be, be with, let it be—I began to experience a freedom I never thought possible. I realized I am not my pain. I am not my past. I am the awareness that holds all of it.
Healing wasn’t about erasing my trauma. It was about integrating it, making peace with it. I no longer had to be defined by the pain of my past.
Lessons for You
If you’re going through a similar storm, here are some insights that helped me:
- Be present: Start by simply being with yourself. Notice your breath, your body, and your emotions without judgment.
- Be with what arises: Allow your emotions to surface without trying to fix or change them. Meet them with curiosity.
- Let it be: Accept life as it is. Don’t fight against it. Let things unfold without trying to control them.
- Trust the process: Healing is not a quick fix. Be patient with yourself, knowing that in time, the storm will pass.
The dark night of the soul wasn’t the end for me. It was the beginning of something much deeper.
If you’re in the midst of your own crisis, remember, you are not your pain. You are the vast sky that holds it all. And within that sky, there is a peace that no storm can take away.
About Kathy Degan
Kathy Degen is a holistic lifestyle blogger with over 30 years in healthcare. She blends yoga philosophy, Vedic astrology, and modern healing practices to help women over 50 find alignment and inner peace. Through her blog, Forward After The Pause, she shares insights and research to inspire a life of renewed purpose. When she’s not writing, Kathy practices yoga, studies Vedic astrology, and helps women rediscover their spark.
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