Darkness. It has a bad rep.

In this culture, we have learned to associate black with evil. Our image of God often includes radiating light; Lucifer was banished underground to the pit of hell. Black is our society's traditional color of mourning. Those individuals born with dark skin were designated by "whites" as less than human to justify their being sold into slavery.

Even the thesaurus lists "blackness, ignorance, evil and secrecy" as synonyms for darkness. But, are they all equivalent terms? Or, is it that we have been taught to see them that way?

"White Sands" by Jeanne Brickman

Let us consider the symbol of yin and yang: two parts of a whole, equal parts of black and white, of dark and light. Together, they fuse to create a circle of completeness. Likewise, in our lives, we must have a balance of light and dark in order to live fully.

Indeed, seeds germinate in darkness before pushing healthy green shoots through the earth to break into the full-spectrum sunlight that will nourish their growth. Without time in the darkness, there would be no new life for these plants.

Similarly, a parallel truth exists in our lives. We, too, often need time in the darkness before we can grow in the light. After all, each of us started life as one fertilized cell that divided over and over and over into embryo and then into fetus, maturing in the shelter of our mother's womb where we floated in darkness for nine months.

Surely, you have observed that life is cyclical: Every day we witness the in and out of our breath, the earth's rotation that brings night and day, the passing of the seasons, the flow of the tides and the phases of the moon.

Like Mother Moon, we too pass through stages of the dark (that is, being invisible to the eye or to the conscious mind), and then we experience the first crescent of growth that expands to fullness to once again shrink to crescent before returning to the "new" moon. Truly, it is the same old moon; it is just that we somehow sense that her time in darkness enables the growth of something fresh and unspoiled.

Often, our time in the darkness feels quite uncomfortable. We may prefer action and expansion, rather than to experience the quiescence of a resting phase or to face our fear of the dark. Yet, in each of our lives there are times when we must live in the darkness, confronting emotional, relationship or physical challenges, which can be frightening.

Recently, I spent seventeen months in chemotherapy and then five weeks in radiation therapy coping with the darkness that cancer can bring. (Hmmmm, "spent" is an interesting word choice here; I did pay a price to earn more years of life.)

Yes, cancer brought me the darkness of pain, fear and loss. It also enabled the light of friendship, honesty and love. I have come to realize that the darkness that is cancer increasingly opens me to the joy of deeper connections with loved ones and to the expression of my creativity through my writing, poetry and art.

I would like to share one of my poems with you:

• Shadow
  Mysterious contrast,
  black against light,
  dark edges dance
  at the boundary
  between truth and lie.

• May you be happy.
  May you be healthy.
  May you have ease of well-being.

Bio:
Anne Kelly-Edmunds is a freelance writer who enjoyed her long-time stint as magazine editor and feature writer. A poet and fledgling artist, Anne facilitates creative writing and healing workshops.

Anne can be reached at: annekellyedmunds@hotmail.com