Therapy is like that: you think it’s over, but there is always the chance of another beginning. I like my therapy conclusions all to be cadences that clearly feel like endings and yet are not final. Let’s be happy about life going on. Therapy is eternal and takes many forms. Remember the glass vessel, and be gentle with your good-byes.

Your dark night is forcing you to consider alternatives. It is taking you out of the active life of submission to alien goals and purposes. It is offering you your own approach to life. You can sit with it and consider who you are and who you want to be. You can be fortified by it to stand strong in your very existence. You can be born again, not into an ideology that needs your surrender, but into yourself, your uniqueness, your God-given reality, the life destined for you.

We can’t understand what is happening to us, and if we are in the habit of always wanting to know what is going on, this aspect of the dark night will be maddening. We can find meaning in these times of change, but we have to think differently about our lives, be less psychological in our approach, and more philosophical and spiritual.

You are not complete until your relationships have been cared for. Your dark night is important not only for yourself but for those around you. You may not realize it, but they have been enduring your dark night, too. They need at least a small rite of return, some signal that night has ended and new life can get under way.

Temporary insanities, like those of hard loss and grief, are always potentially creative, depending on how you deal with them. The temptation always is to sink too far into self-pity and to find relief in the compassion of others. It’s important to feel the sadness, but emotion is always only a partial resolution. Grief is complete only with a shift in being, in the way you live, think, and relate to the world.