As for injuries, pain is not always felt when and where it is inflicted. Grief is slow internal bleeding. And it turns out that my father was right, or almost right, about trauma being in the blood.

A dark night of the soul need not be depressing. Today we tend to think of all emotional negativity as depression, and so we imagine ourselves sometimes to be depressed when in fact it is only the world that is pressing down on us. You can be bright, thoughtful, creative, and imaginative during a dark night. You can use all your power to imagine your situation in your own way. You can reverse expectations and refuse to be literally defeated. And none of this has to be a denial of your tragedy or the repression of your feelings.

When you listen to strong, melancholic music or contemplate a sad piece of art, you are taking your attention beyond mere sensation to the interior meaning of your mood. You are educating yourself in your emotion, so that you not only get past it ultimately, but you gain from it from having penetrated deep into its nature.

...new life always requires the termination of the old. Death is an appropriate image. And that is exactly what it is, an image. It doesn’t mean you are going to die, although you may feel the sadness of ending in the midst of your dark night. It means that life wants to go on differently. Real, vital life doesn’t repeat itself.

It’s helpful, then, during a dark night, to constantly broaden your imagination of what is happening to you. If your only idea is that you’re depressed, you will be at the mercy of the depression industry, which will treat you as one among millions, for whom there is only one canonical and approved story.