Dear Lenka and Tomáš, I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it, so only now. I’m sending my story to everyone who wants to go on a dark retreat but is still hesitating.
I’ve known about darkness therapy for years
I’d been sort of flirting with the idea for a good few years, but it was more out of curiosity. Then over the last two years, as my life and some of the problems in it were picking up speed, about six months in something inside me said “go into the dark”, but then it faded again, the time wasn’t right yet. Only at the end of the year, when the crisis with my husband was coming to a head, did it speak up again, much more urgently, and I knew that now was the right moment. I sat down straight away and booked a date, but the first free one wasn’t until July. Well, fine, I told myself, it’s as it should be. In January I decided to deal with my crisis by moving out from my husband, at least for a while. Just to explain: after 42 years I felt somehow drained, with no joy in life, we were more or less living side by side rather than together, and I felt this was wrong, that we surely couldn’t go on living like this for another 10 or 20 years, but I couldn’t change it, even though I’d worked on myself a lot. The moment I made that decision, a date on 13 February came free. By then I’d already been moved out for a week and my husband was going through a total breakdown, because he himself didn’t feel anything was wrong. But I have to say we kept talking to each other the whole time; my husband went through several stages, from me throwing him out for good, to divorce, to coming to terms with the situation. He knew I was going into the dark and expected a lot from it, how I’d sort us out in there.
And then the dark retreat began
And then D-day came, and after those tense days I was looking forward to it. Tomáš showed me into the cabin, explained everything, and when he left I piled my things together, had a shower, switched off my phone and – turned out the light. I lay down on the bed and the darkness was wonderful. After a while I got so used to it that it didn’t even seem that dark to me; above all it felt somehow round, the space embraced me beautifully. I slept through most of the first two days too, but already on the second day my soul started to speak up, thoughts came, but not about my husband – I didn’t think of him once the whole week. My soul wanted to deal with more urgent things: my need to have things under control, my relationship with money, my relationship with myself as a woman. I’ll admit that while I was working through the first of these, my body joined in too, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant. I went through quite a painful process, but I came through it, and thanks to talking things over with Tomáš every time he brought me food, I kept moving further and further, until I got back to my childhood and to my dad. And what I hadn’t managed in years, I resolved in a single day in the dark, when I understood how terribly I had missed being loved as a girl, because my parents had wanted a boy. And how I, as a girl, had suppressed myself my whole life right up until now, and how that was where my problems with men in general came from, and so with my own husband too. Not loving myself – my lifelong problem.
And then I simply enjoyed the dark retreat
Friday came and from then on I just enjoyed it. I have to say I really don’t know whether I slept at all those last 2 days; it was more something between sleeping, dreaming and being awake. All kinds of images often came to me, it was really interesting. I’d set myself up for 7 days, so for me it was just right, but if I hadn’t limited myself like that, I could certainly have stayed longer. Why not – the raw food was excellent, I didn’t miss anything. The morning was amazing, even though dawn came earlier than I expected, so I came out into the light, but I still savoured the sunrise from beginning to end.
And the return to reality?
The next day my husband came to see me with a bouquet of red roses and thanked me for moving out, because only now did he understand how we had been living and what really matters. He was a bit disappointed when I told him what I’d been working through in the dark. But only over many more conversations did he understand that to sort out my share in our relationship, I had to sort out my dad and other relationships too.
Whenever anyone asks me what the dark retreat gave me, I say: there’s life before and life after. It brought me real joy into every day, self-love, and above all I now live in the here and now. And my husband? I can’t stop marvelling at where all of it – the way he thinks today – came from in him. In the deepest part of the crisis before the dark, my middle son asked me: Mum, is it worth it to you, putting Dad and yourself through this at your age, when you don’t know how much longer you’ll be here? After so many years of life together? I told him yes, it’s worth it to me, because I want to live my life, not just scrape through it. And today my husband and I agree that it really was worth it, even if it were only for one single year.
From the bottom of my heart I thank you, Tomáš and Lenka – thank you for being here and for helping people. Even though today I know that the “miracle” that happened is the sum of the energies of many, many people.
Thank you all, and thank you to God for giving me this experience.
Milena
