Grieving the Dark, Awaiting the Light

The crows woke me long before dawn, which isn’t their pattern. Or, better said, the turkeys usually wake up the whole neighborhood first.

Coffee in hand, fleece on for the delightfully cool night, I made my way to my porch to witness the sun inch up from behind the mountain on the other side of the valley. I've always been an early riser, so I sync into the gentle joy of this familiar routine.

Antelucan is the old Latin word for this time before the light begins to glimmer. I love Latin for its neatly creative structure. Want to make a new word? Just put some components together, and there you have it. Antelucan.

Nothing in the world feels neat and tidy at the moment for me as a sensitive person.

I won’t name all the horrors and brokenness of this season. You know. We all do. We feel it in our souls, the ways that so much is wrong, dysfunctional, cruel for the sake of concentrating power in ever fewer hands.

We know the grief, the disillusionment of knowing life shouldn’t be this way. We feel the limitations of our own ability to directly change any of it.

On a collective level, these are antelucan times.

I’ve never been someone who’s taken comfort in the idea that everything happens for a reason. Yes, as a student of history, I believe we can always trace the reasons back through time. But that’s not comforting to me, because I usually can’t do anything about those macro-level forces.

I want to do something to change the reasons that we’re in these antelucan times. And I can’t do that, any more than I can change how the sun rose this morning.

Even as I grieve, I know I have to make a choice not to despair.

A dear friend reminded me that there are things that need to be burned away, composted, released in this season to make room for new growth at the collective level. We can’t skip this process, this part of the cycle, any more than we can skip the summer season.

And so, with all of my grief-teetering-on-cynicism about the current state of affairs, I hold onto hope that these antelucan times are promising a dawn that’s still to come. That we in the twenty-first century aren't exempt from the rhythms of nature.

I cling to the belief that the pendulum of history will swing, and that the glimmers of change that seem to be emerging will eventually gather momentum and take a more hopeful form.

I listen to the chatter of the crows. I watch the fog rise off the creek. I await the moment when the sun tints the top of the mountain with pinky-orange.

I feel my grief.

The ache in my heart, in my spirit, in my marrow. I breathe. I feel myself connected to every other grieving soul.

Antelucan gives way to dawn.

Not in the definitive way that the word itself snaps together from pieces, but in the fluid slide from one state into another.

I grieve the darkness. That grief cannot be rushed.

I express my gratitude to the universe for showing me once again that darkness is not optional. I give thanks for my rekindled hope and the reminder that light is not optional either.

The wheel turns. Change comes, although never on my timeline.

I give thanks for friends who grieve with me, for my choice to face this grief, for the crows who called me out to see the beauty of this particular sunrise. For being part of the wheel that turns, antelucan to dawn and back again. For recognizing my limitations with acceptance.

One thing I can do is offer you a free resource for sitting with your grief.

You can download ​Grieving Hidden Losses​ to give you some structured reflections on how to grieve the kinds of losses that don't fit neatly into a Hallmark card. It's ideal for these times.

The format is still taking shape, but I'm planning to offer some kind of grief ritual later this summer. It will be more than a class or a workshop; something experiential and done in a community of kindred spirits who are feeling the weight of these antelucan times as well. I'm offering it because I need community just as much as you. I'd love to hear what would be helpful to you as you grieve, so send me an email.

In solidarity as we await the brighter light to come,

Lori