The Key to Freedom Is Hiding in Your Darkest Moments
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[Applause]
i want you to remember a moment in your
life
when the darkness was so complete and
overwhelming
you felt it swallow you up
moments like this
stick with us
years later we still get that pit in our
stomach
when we remember and think
i don’t ever
want to suffer like that again
but
what if that darkness
is the exact environment that you need
to become
who you were meant to be
and for your true purpose to take root
like a seed
in the earth
years later
and i can still picture my darkest day
if you’ve ever spent the night in a
hospital room then you know
it’s never fully dark
never quiet
there are always fluorescent lights
glowing
doors opening and shutting
and monitors beeping
until you feel like the sounds are
coming from behind your own eyes
with a two-year-old and newborn twins at
home
even those lights and sounds
felt eerily calm
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and quiet
as i watched my husband’s
slow
rasping breaths
what had once been a strong and muscled
chest
now looked like a deflated balloon
we were at the hospital again
for the morphine that would give him a
short break from the pain that had
hounded him
day and night for months
i knew the doctors wouldn’t give us any
answers but
they could give us temporary relief
because on that day i realized
what the doctors were too afraid to tell
me
maybe the one thing we actually agreed
on
that my husband was dying
in front of me
and that is when fear
took over
my entire body
and all i could think was
i will save him
if it kills me
a doctor walked in the room
and echoed my suspicion
they had one option left
to remove
this 33 year old man’s colon
and that’s when it hit me
you see
all they ever knew to do was treat the
symptom
they never had any intention
of digging a little deeper
to discover the cause of the symptoms
the root issue
and if they can’t explain it
they’ll just eliminate it
it was the strangest feeling because it
was it was as if time slowed down
but something in my body
was quickly waking up
through my ears i heard the doctor give
us our next steps like they were written
in stone
but deep in my gut
i heard this small
voice
whisper to me another path
one that was risky
and untested
but hopeful
and brave
and in that moment
i knew exactly what to do
i was gonna listen to the small quiet
voice
i’d been ignoring her for way too long
you see
i believe that each of us has a true
self
the person that we were designed to be
and most of us
we spend our lives running from that
true self
allowing the world and our fear to
dictate and cover up our truth
but what i’ve come to realize is that
these seasons of cold lonely darkness
can wake up our true self
and foster it into beautiful fruition
the truth is
pain
it comes to all of us
i know you didn’t ask for it but it’s
here
and it chose you
and you won’t grow in it
or move through it
until you choose it right back
because pain is part of your story
whether you want it or not
it’s the one thing in life that we are
guaranteed
but you do have a choice
you can let it destroy you
or you can let it save you
pain
actually
isn’t the enemy here
maybe you didn’t cause the pain but by
avoiding it
you’re creating the suffering
because
when you accept the darkness
and embrace it
instead of trying to avoid and escape it
you’re doing what i call
the underground work
and it will teach you
it will empower you
and it will guide you
to your truest self
because in the hospital that day
it was the true me speaking up
and i listened
i demanded release papers and i drove us
home from the hospital for the very last
time
i wanted real healing
instead of temporary solutions
even if it meant doing the digging all
on my own
and slowly
after several months of questions and
trails of cookie crumb answers from
arkansan medicine men australian gut
experts and west coast functional
medicine doctors
my husband was healed and his life was
saved
and so was mine
because
my darkest day
was also the day that i came home to
myself for the first time
in a long time
and i made room for all of me
i gave voice to my fear
i felt my pain
i sat
in the darkness
seeing
some part of us
is going to demand that we become our
true self
even if we keep squashing it down so
instead of like me
letting catastrophe force you kicking
and screaming like someone being buried
alive into the underground work
what if you
turned toward
the darkness
daily
and did a little gardening
it’s not easy
but it is simple
and it starts with waking up to the ways
that you are
are
constantly doing distracting yourself
with busyness and distraction in an
effort to avoid your pain
let me share with you what this might
look like
in full disclosure
it’s probably going to get uncomfortable
maybe you’re struggling with addiction
drugs
porn
alcohol
your phone
approval
maybe you let everyone but you
call the shots in your life
your parents your job
your friends your partner
or maybe maybe you’re the one
calling the shots in other people’s
lives
like your kids
you try to control their friends
their grades their activities
their
future
and while we’re on the subject of
control
maybe you carefully curate your physical
appearance
your online presence
maybe none of this rings true to you
because you are so stuck
in a comparison loop
losing precious hours of your life
in being someone else’s house
their job
their relationship
could it be that
all of these are just
ways to avoid our pain
to silence our fear
because
we’re afraid
that the people who mean the most to us
won’t love us
or they’ll leave us
or they’ll judge
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all our ugliness
we are so desperate
to avoid any potential hurt
and in the process
we’re the ones hurting ourselves
pain
is a teacher
and it won’t leave you
until it teaches you
and you can’t teach an empty chair
so you got to stop running
stop avoiding
and get to digging
and look
i get it
the underground work
it
sucks it’s hard
it’s lonely
it’s certainly not post-worthy and there
will come a point where you feel like
you cannot do the underground work any
longer
you will feel like you are at your
breaking point
because you are
in order for a seed to grow
it must first break
through the soil
the breaking point means you are all
most
there
sunlight and freedom
are just inches away
and after you’ve broken through the
darkness
you aren’t afraid of it anymore
because you know it birthed you into
life
your life
and it probably won’t look anything like
the life your family
your fear
or the world told you to live
and you start to attract other people
who have already broken through the soil
they see your oak tree
you see their rose garden and you both
realize
there was never anything to compare
in the first place
but here’s the thing about the
underground work
it’s not a one and done thing
it’s something you have to remind
yourself of every single day
for me
i like to wake up with darkness itself
in the quiet morning hours
and i sit
and i breathe deeply
and i wait
and i listen
and i look into my own darkness
and i wait for a quiet voice to fill it
that voice
is familiar to me now
and after years of meeting the darkness
and let’s be honest
hundreds of hours in therapy
i can recognize
that my childhood trauma
my adult trauma
all the things that happened to me
actually happened for me
i stopped viewing myself as a victim who
survived and started knowing
i’m a survivor
who inspires
and that’s a voice
i can’t ignore
when i sat in the hospital room that day
it felt like a tomb
and i thought i would give absolutely
anything
to never have to face the darkness again
but now i see the fruit of the seed that
was planted inside of me
and that’s what keeps me turning toward
the darkness every single morning
you see
darkness isn’t a tomb
it’s a womb
that births something new
and now
i want us to end this the way we started
i want you to go back
to that moment of pain and fear
that swallowed you up whole
and i want you to wonder
what if that darkness wasn’t the end of
something
but the beginning
what if it wasn’t trying to suffocate
you but
just hold you
who could you become
if you let yourself grow
are you willing to embrace the darkness
and find out
thank you
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