My loves, you know if you've been around for a minute with me that I love to talk about

suffering because when we talk about it, we lighten it up. We actually move closer to clear

thinking, to happiness, lightening our load, joy, connection, all the things.

No matter where you are at right now in the spectrum of happiness, health, challenge,

arduous, wacky Wednesday, all the things, if you have ever bookmarked or saved a podcast episode of mine,

this might be one you want to add to the list or start with because what I'm going to

offer today about the dark night of the soul is applicable to the micro challenges and the big macro mega challenges.

I'm going to weave in some beautiful perspective and poetry, or I should say poetic perspective

from some of my favorite teachers.

And then I promise, I promise, I promise we will end on hope.

I also think it's really important to break down the characteristics of a true dark night

of the soul because this is a really misused term in the personal development

consciousness space. I think a lot of things that aren't really an actual bona fide dark night

get chalked up to that. And when we misperceive our challenges as the devastation, the divine devastation

that a dark night actually is, then we feel shocked when the dark night comes, then we're just

adding more drama and weight to just like the heavy,

challenging things that come with divorce and health and elections and dysregulated nervous

systems. And when we dramatize those things and say, oh, this is the darkest passage in my life,

then they just become way heavier than they need to be.

You know, sometimes our soul is just making us sweat a little more.

We are running a little farther.

We are not actually in the Iron Man phase of our life.

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