Night Bloomers. Michelle Pearce
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through your pain using this new perspective. Those two things—illuminating the new perspective and providing the practical tools—that’s my job and my expertise. What you choose to do with this change in perspective and the tools is up to you.
Your Darkness Is Also Your Opportunity
When the darkness in life descends upon us, regardless of its source or type, it feels like the end of the world. The pain can become so intense that you long for the end of the world, or at least the end of your world of pain. I don’t know specifically what you’ve been through or what you’re going through now, but if the description of this book resonated with you, then it’s likely that you will benefit from the blooming principles and exercises offered here. You are most likely at a place where your life will never be the same again and you will never be the same again. No amount of wishing or foot-stomping or crying or even praying will make things go back to how they were before your found yourself in this darkness. Your way of being has come to an end, and accepting this is one of our hardest tasks. We have to begin to trust that something greater is at work, and that something greater lies ahead.
I’ve come to believe that the darkness affords us a unique opportunity to radically change our lives and our identities and to find or change our life’s purpose. It doesn’t happen automatically. The darkness is an opportunity for transformation, not a guarantee. My goal is to help you take full advantage of this unique time in your life. My hope is that you use your difficult experience to find a new perspective and fulfilling life path.
I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be all roses (pun intended)—there is real work to do in the dark. If your process is anything like mine and that of the clients I’ve worked with, it’s going to be painful and messy and you’re going to want out of the suffering. Badly. But if you’re anything like those of us who have tread through this, you’re going to gradually see how your painful situation will open up otherwise unavailable opportunities for self-awareness, greater meaning, and personal and spiritual growth.
I’ve Been There
I’ve had a number of those “life-turned-upside-down-and-smashed-into-tiny-pieces-and-I’m-not-sure-I’m-going-to-make-it” moments. Besides my parents’ divorce, years struggling with a medically confusing chronic illness that leaves me profoundly fatigued, and a long-standing estrangement with my mother that saddens me to this day, I grieved hard over the loss of my marriage. When my husband left, all I could see was the death of my dreams, and I felt like I was dying. There were days when I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on. I could not see beyond what I had lost. It was much easier to keep looking back with regret and sink into hopelessness and despair. I did everything I could think of to resurrect my past and restore my marriage. Nothing worked. The shame piled on as I helped other couples in my clinical practice through their marital difficulties and yet I couldn’t fix my own.
It wasn’t until I changed my perspective that I was able to see this time in my life in a much more positive light. Instead of seeing the mandatory year of separation before the divorce as a year to win my husband back, I began to see that I was being given time to build a whole new kind of outlook and life for myself. After the angst and mourning over my previous life, it was time to attend to me. During this time I would do more than heal; I would become more than I had ever been and my life would be set on an incredible new course.
My healing came when I realized that what I really needed was for my life, not my marriage, to be rejuvenated. I needed to become a woman who engaged courageously in life, who broke out of her routines and her self-limiting beliefs. I needed to become a woman who loved much and loved well. I had to stop letting fear control my life and my relationships. I needed to create and enjoy a richer and more joy-filled life. What I didn’t realize and didn’t want to do was give up my old way of being, my old perspective on life to get there. Yet, something must always die before resurrection. I needed to accept that my old way of living and my marriage were part of the past and that it was only because they were in the past that I could experience a new life and a broader perspective.
I am writing as one who has been where you are right now. I know how devastating it is to have your life, your marriage, your health, your family, and your dreams ripped from you and your heart torn into pieces. When I talk about this new perspective, I am in no way downplaying your pain. It’s real and it’s miserable. But that’s not all it has to be. Let me tell you about the day when my perspective on my pain and loss changed.
Night Bloomers
I was in the clinic seeing clients one Wednesday afternoon not too long after my husband left. In those early days, it was hard to concentrate on what my clients were saying. My grief and fear were overshadowing everything in my life, including my work, which I loved. Over the lunch hour that day, I checked my phone and found a text message from a friend. She had sent me a picture of a vibrant pink flower with a message that read, “Night blooming cactus. I’ve cared for this cactus for years and it finally bloomed last night.”
Those two sentences and that pink flower changed everything.
I had no idea that some flowers bloom in the dark, that some flowers actually require the dark to bloom. As I paused to consider this new information, it hit me: some people need the dark to bloom. Some people need the trials and suffering and loss and life upheavals to experience growth and transformation, to come into the fullness of their beings and life purpose. I am one of those people. Like it or not, my greatest personal growth has always come from spending a season in the darkness of pain, loss, and suffering. I think there are a lot of us out there who need the dark. I call us “Night Bloomers.” If you’re reading this book, there’s a good chance that you or someone you love is a Night Bloomer. I wanted to write this book to provide my fellow Night Bloomers with hope. Hope that your heart-wrenching, faith-shaking loss may provide the fertile covering of darkness that can produce beauty not possible in the light.
A Famous Night Bloomer: From Prison to the Palace
To help you get an idea of what I’m talking about, let me tell you a story about someone who chose to bloom in the dark. Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) has been described as a protester, a prisoner, a president, and a peacemaker. I would add to that list a Night Bloomer. Mandela, who grew up in a small village called Transkei in South Africa, knew what it was like to suffer. He knew what it was like to lose things that were important to him. He lost his eldest son, his two grandchildren, his freedom, and his ability to control his life. He lost twenty-seven years with his wife and family while he sat in a dark prison cell.
Mandela had a strong sense of justice. He fought against racial oppression. To many he was a saint and a hero, but Mandela wasn’t always this way. In the 1950s, he was number one on South Africa’s terrorist list, as the founder of a military wing of the African National Congress. Although he fought for human rights, originally there were groups of people he did not want to include in this fight, such as Indians.
Listen to how Richard Stengel, who collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, describes how prison changed Mandela:
“The man who went into prison in 1962 was hotheaded and easily stung. The man who walked out into the sunshine of the mall in Cape Town twenty-seven years later was measured, even serene … I asked him many times during our weeks and months of conversations what was different about the man who came out of prison compared to the man who went in, he finally sighed and then said simply, ‘I came out mature.’”
Prison was where Nelson Mandela bloomed in the dark. We remember Mandela not as the man before prison, or the man in prison, but as the man he was after he emerged from prison. He prevented a devastating racial civil war and created a democratic South Africa. His life had an astounding impact on human tolerance and freedom, not only in South Africa, but all around the world. The first president of a democratic South Africa, champion of the anti-apartheid fight, bestower of dignity to the poor, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate had bloomed in the dark. The hard work of these achievements was done while he sat in that dark, lonely prison cell for twenty-seven years, refusing to allow the suffering and injustice to destroy him.
Mandela