For thousands of years humans have slept in the darkness. We’ve found comfort in the coziness the dim light provides, hunkered in ourselves, our dwellings, surrounded by what creature comforts we can find. Others have chosen to venture in the darkness, trading the fiery glow of dim lights for the shadowy unknown. Some instinctually frightened, others intrigued, and all nurtured by coalesced experiences to refine our response to the darkness we perceive.
This echoes externally when we shut the lights off to go to bed, what pops into your head? What about when you're walking alone at night, do you ever feel fright? Or dimly lit haunted houses filled with debris in garbage bags hanging from the ceiling, how is the dark feeling?
What about when we have trauma in our being? How darkness descends on us during the lull of winter? When it becomes so dark that you can’t continue, but human instincts maintain your breath. Is there any light in those moments left?
When we’re watching political parties “arguing”, secret societies ritualizing, children disappearing, and trauma-based minds, controlling? Where do we go and what do we do when the darkness seems to consume you and the world you’re in too?
The only way out is to welcome it in, to receive, sit with, and break it down again and again. Until all the fear has left, then we can sit in the darkness and know it loves us no less.
We all have a story to tell once we make friends with our darkness. I have taken mine, an inferno that incinerated my life in the flash of an eye. It became extremely difficult to find the resources and support I needed for the darkness I was living in. As I have encountered others, whether coming to me for psychic readings, strangers in line, and friends of mine, I've seen the squirming we enter when the lights go out. When shadows come out, guilt and shame grip our brains, and we spiral into self-loathing and shutting out the pain. Or when we realize our world isn’t exactly as it was made to seem, who wants to trade “knowing” for a harrowing reality of calamity? Creating deeper beauty though it feels unlikely when we don’t know if we can survive this alone.
Alone, it’s always alone. We have to do this work inside before we bring it out, don’t forget the light can also blind. We find ourselves scared to move, feeling unworthy of the light but scared of the dark. So we just chose to fight, ignore, dissociate, or numb. Everything in moderation, some of those things can come in handy when our brains are really breaking. When we need rest and the river lulls, we can lay back and go slow. But we must sit up when the water is rushing, we are collectively and constantly battling rapids.
We need to create more safe spaces, where we can go to snap out of the illusion, into our bodies, into our truths. Remembering, forgetting, and remembering again. Banishing bindings and ties that keep our minds imprisoned to the system. Inviting our souls to return home because we finally let the light in again after the dark of winter we had to sit in.
I deeply believe that as a humanity, where we’re going is infinitely better than where we’ve ever been before. But we must first be willing to understand and see how darkness has been out of balance on this planet for hundreds of centuries.
“My name is River, and I'm here to announce my new podcast Deconstructing Darkness. Where I will sit with you, share with you, cry with you, trigger you, and love you. Myself and my guests will break down darkness to reveal pockets of light to help integrate it on both sides. We will help deconstruct, understand and learn how to withstand things that take our power. The first episode will be released June 2024. Feel free to follow along on Instagram at @deconstructingdarkness or Youtube at ‘Deconstucting Darkness Podcast’ – https://www.youtube.com/@DeconDarkness”
River, a spiritual practitioner, has spent years exploring energy, intuition, and healing. After offering psychic sessions for three years, she felt a shift needed in what she was offering to the collective and how she was doing it. Through her own personal journey with trauma in herself and the collective, she felt a lack of space held for what we perceive as the dark. Her new podcast, “Deconstructing Darkness,” fearlessly tackles human dread—whether it’s fear of failure, the unknown, vulnerability, or even the curious allure of demons and dark spirituality. Join her on this transformative journey as we dismantle fear, one episode at a time.