Darkness.  My city began this year plunged into darkness by a horror no one anticipated.  The sun never rose here for some of us on New Year’s Day, and for those who are now grieving the deaths of children, siblings, lovers and friends, it feels as though it will never rise again.  In these first few days of a new year, days many people find significant as a new beginning, it feels like we are thrown to the ground before we took the first step in this year’s journey.  

Twenty years ago, this city taught me a huge lesson about loss, love, grief and recovery.  Just a year after I moved here, Katrina took most of my belongings, many of my friends, and my way of life as I knew it.  We trauma bonded, New Orleans and me.  I loved the city before, but after I saw her in the dark night of grief, I loved her even more.  There’s something about the joie de vivre in this place, its penchant for silliness, its abandonment to pleasure, that gives permission and even points to the wisdom of never allowing the worst of life to totally eclipse the best.  

Darkness has a weakness, you know:  it’s Light.  In the depths of the earth, where there is utter darkness, the tiniest match light changes everything.  There is no dark so dark that it can’t be broken by the smallest glimmer of light.   Some of us, right now, are feeling the kind of pain that renders us immobile.  There is a dark, heavy crushing of the heart when someone we love is snatched away.  The crushed heart can’t move for a while.  It can’t think.  It can’t speak or make sense of anything.  It cannot turn on the light for itself.  When my own heart has experienced such a shattering, there were people… people in this very city… who turned on the light for me.  

How do we salvage a year that seems ruined before it began?  How do we keep our hope alive?  Those of us who can move, who can think, who have even the smallest ability, must let in the light.  For some, that has meant chest compressions, running toward danger, and the actual neutralization of the evil threat.  For some, it meant street cleaning, hand holding, song playing, or second line organizing.  Others are feeding police and EMS workers, bringing flowers, paying tribute to those lost.  Not everyone is at ground zero, but we can still let in the light.  For us, that might mean refusing to let fear keep us away.  It might mean the forgiving of a long held grudge.  It might be as simple as letting someone go first in the post office line, or as risky as deciding to let ourselves love again.  

Our beloved friends who cannot see through their grief right now will eventually see light again.  They will honor their loves, they will take action, they will emerge from the paralysis of this loss forever changed, but able to move once again.  The rest of us who’ve lost our sense of safety, our hope of a new beginning, we must realize that there is nothing stopping us from contributing our light to this dark situation.  For those who cannot turn on the light for themselves right now, and for all of us, since none are spared from deep grief at some point in life, we must get good at shining the light.  New Orleans is experiencing darkness right now, but she will never be defined by darkness because she is full of light.  I see it every day and I am determined to let myself be one of her glittery accessories, contributing whatever light I can in this place.  

Light.  It’s a weapon undefeated, a force unstoppable, and every one of us has access to it.  Sure, some days all we can muster is a spark, but a spark is all that’s needed, really.  Letting in the light is how we will defeat the dark that has tried to steal the hope of a new year, the joy of a celebration, and the essence of a special city.  I write this to remind myself, and hope to remind us all, that dark never had a chance of winning because there is light in each of us.  This year must be far more than the moments of carnage on New Year’s morning, for the city of New Orleans, and for each of us personally.  Every chance you get, every time you can, keep letting in the light.