PEOPLE IN THE DARK

People in the dark need people who are not afraid of the dark. How scared of the dark are you? I’m talking about mental health. 

Someone please explain to me why we are alarmed by suicide rates in a world that isn’t available or willing to acknowledge that we as human beings are as much shadow as we are light, as much suffering as joy.

When we make ourselves only available for other peoples light but not their darkness, we dismiss the wholeness of who they are AND we become one more place they can’t fully be seen or feel like they fully exist. We dismiss our own true nature.

We can’t make it the norm for people to have to hide their struggle and then be horrified that they would take action to free themselves from that struggle.

Be available for people’s pain and the truth of who they are and the totality of their experience in the moment.

People often kill themselves because they don’t believe they get to be the whole of who they are: to have all their feelings and moods yet still be loved and seen and accepted and get to belong.

People in the dark need people who are willing to accept them while they’re in the dark and not need them to first come into the light before they are “acceptable”.

Everyone seems to be so surprised when someone takes their life but I think until we are each willing to allow for our selves to be whole, to tell the truth about the pain in our own hearts along with the joy we can’t allow others to do the same. 

If you care about the mental health crisis, care enough to do the work of loving the painful parts of yourself so that you can love the parts of other people that are hard to be with. 

Said from a place of light only possible from knowing the dark.