Finding Light in the Darkness

Though I have a fundamental belief that we can find light in the darkness, that premise has been tested lately with so many really challenging events in the world. I do not want to be in denial about what is happening but know that a significant part of healing for me has been to believe there is light at the end of the tunnel as well as looking for points of light along the way.

One of the points that shown brightly in the midst of the recent devastation in the Ukraine was Amelia Anisvych, a 7-year-old Ukranian girl. She sang the song “Let it Go’ from the movie Frozen while hiding in a bunker in Kyiv with her family and many others to stay safe from Russian attacks. The video of her touching performance went viral. And when she immigrated to Poland, she was invited to sing the Ukrainian national anthem for a fundraiser for refugees. The photo showing her bathed in light while performing at a stadium before an audience of thousands surely symbolized light in the darkness.

My experience of seeing light in the darkness came prior to my first CT scan to determine why I had a frozen vocal chord. Fear and dread had cropped up but I had reduced that significantly with a process called Picture Tapping Technique (PTT), a derivative of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), an energy psychology healing modality that uses tapping on acupressure points to reduce or eliminate the intensity of an emotional or physical response to a situation. PTT uses drawing and tapping. The process involves drawing a picture of what you are feeling at the time and giving it a title. Then you do 2 rounds of tapping on 8 points while describing what you have drawn, not the issue or your feelings about it. When you feel that is complete, you turn the image over, take another piece of paper, ask what you are feeling in this moment, draw an image and give it a title and tap. You do this sequence as many times as you need to (usually 4-7) until you feel that you have arrived at a resolution picture. You then imagine framing the picture and using the frame color to wash the resolution through your body.  It is quite a magical process. Many people start out somewhat skeptical but are amazed when they reach a resolution without having to talk about the issue. And they have a powerful image to remind them of the resolution.

The sequence of my drawings prior to my first scan were Fear, Unraveling, Open to the Flow and Let there be light. I took the resolution picture filled with bright yellow light to my scan with me and though the results were not what I hoped for, I didn’t experience the level of initial fear- just some mild trepidation. After I received my diagnosis of stage IV cancer I did another PTT process and the sequence of images were titled Surprise, Angry, Retreat, Fight, Healing. The last image was again filled with bright yellow light similar to my resolution drawing from the prior session. I felt that my subconscious was telling me that things would be OK, despite what they looked like at the moment. Though there were many times I could not see the light, I knew it was there.