Finding light during your “dark night of the soul”
When I was 28 I had what I thought of at the time as a quarter life crisis, but what I recognize now to be “A Dark Night of the Soul”
If you don’t know what a "dark night of the soul" is, but it has been described as a profound period of intense personal struggle and spiritual crisis. For me, this was right after I had my daughter. I felt like my whole world was turned upside down, and not in the way I thought it would be…I knew being a mother would change my life, but I felt woefully underprepared for the next couple years of my life.
A dark night of the soul is often characterized by: Loss of identity, emotional turmoil, isolation and loneliness, existential crisis, spiritual confusion, apathy / lack of motivation and fear of the unknown. Here are some experiences I went through
Loss of Identity: In the wake of my newfound identity as a mother, I suddenly had this sense of losing my identity as a young, ambitious career focused woman. I started to feel like I had lost my sense of self and feel uncertain about who I really was. I had been conditioned to place my value in my hard work, my achievements and my productivity, and while I felt like I was working as hard as ever, now all my efforts and outputs felt insignificant or invisible—I didn’t know how to evaluate myself. This eventually led to reevaluate my beliefs, values, and life goals.
Emotional Turmoil: My daughters birth and the subsequent months were nothing like I imagined they would be. While there was love and joy and beauty, it was also filled with intense and overwhelming emotions and I think I was gravely unprepared for that. I didn’t realize it at the time but I think part of me was grieving for what I hoped things would look like —I felt a lot of unexpected fear and anxiety which created a lot of sadness in me. The shifting of my identity and being away from work also created a strange sense of emptiness inside of me. There were a lot of moments where I struggled to find joy or meaning in everyday life.
Isolation and Loneliness: I felt strangely isolated. I had my daughter in the winter as well so I wasn’t going out much, but right from the beginning of my motherhood journey I felt very isolated and disconnected. I remember feeling like I was suddenly in a different place then all of my friends and acquaintances (most of which didn’t have children yet) and that no one understood me. I felt disconnected from others—even when I met other moms I didn’t feel like I could open up, I was ashamed about some of the ways I was feeling and like people wouldn’t understand. I struggled to communicate my internal struggles, leading to a sense of loneliness.
Existential Crisis: My conflicting feelings about motherhood, work, my struggle for connection with myself and others began to stir up questions about the meaning of life, myself, and my purpose. I had to reconcile my feelings and changing views. This process was challenging and at times painful as it caused a lot of reflection and questioning of previously held beliefs, values, and even my spiritual and philosophical beliefs which form the foundation of who you think you are. It was basically a process of unlearning everything I knew in order to begin relearning.
Spiritual Confusion: At the time that I had my daughter, I had long ago renounced all my religious beliefs. Although technically Catholic, from a young age I had felt at odds with religious concepts and teachings of God, but I had always had closeted spiritual beliefs and connections that some would consider “woo” and I mostly hid them through my life but really tuned them out when I began adulting in a material world. Once I had started to experience this existential crisis, I started to notice that lack of connection to a higher power or spiritual belief system started to create some dis-ease during this dark period and I started finding a new spiritual path back to a God(dess) of my understanding.
Apathy and Lack of Motivation: I started to disengage from my career—-it didn’t offer me any meaning or fulfillment but although I wanted to be with my daughter more I also had a resistance and rejection to being “defined” by motherhood and my domestic duties. It all felt like so much pressure and between that and all the other things happening in my head, I started to pull inward and disconnect. Because of time constraints I stopped a lot of other activities I enjoyed too and overall felt apathetic, disinterested, lacked motivation towards usual activities, goals, and/or responsibilities. This created a sense of stuckness, and stagnation in my life.
Fear of the Unknown: Motherhood was an entirely new world for me and it was clear my expectations were so far off of my reality that I didn’t know what to expect but I was a anxious about it. I also didn’t know how I was going to balance this new period of working motherhood. Everything felt uncertain, I felt like I was lacking a clear direction.
For a long time I felt a lot of shame around this period of my life. I didn’t share it with anyone for fear of judgement and also because felt incredibly vulnerable. While it was a period of my life that involved a lot of pain and hardship, it also also a period of transition in my life— a period of grieving that allowed for me to uncover pieces of myself, a period of immense growth — of evolution. Re-evaluating and shedding what no longer served me so I could create greater alignment and authenticity. Unlearning all that I thought I knew about myself and the world so that I could see it anew and and relearn what felt more true. It not only fostered a deeper understanding of both myself and the world, but it cultivated another level of resilience in me.
Of course, the tendency for many people at this time is to pull inward, but in reflecting back, I wish I had had support and mentorship during this period, I feel that it could have been incredibly helpful. And that’s why I wanted to say that if you recognized yourself in any of this, I highly recommend seeking support from therapists, spiritual advisors, coaches or mentors to support you during the your period of night, because it always helps to walk with someone who can hold the light.