SPEAKER_01: 0:46

Hi, I'm Malcolm Stern, and in conjunction with my friends John and Sandra Wilson from Online Events, we're creating a series of podcasts called Slay Your Dragons with Compassion. My book of the same name was conceived and inspired by the suicide of my daughter Melissa and the journey that took me on and the internal resources that I found. All of my guests will have a story to tell around overcoming and ultimately thriving through adversity. Special thanks to the band Stairway, Jim McCarty, and Louis Chenamo for the use of theme music from their album Medicine Dance, and my engineer Owen Santiago. I hope you enjoy this series, and thanks for listening. Welcome to my podcast, Slay Your Dragons with Compassion, done in conjunction with my good friends John and Sandra Wilson at online events. And this is a range of podcasts which are exploring how adversity shapes us as human beings, how the overcoming of adversity is often the thing that takes us to the next level of who we are and how we function. And my guest today is uh um Fiona Robertson. And um Fiona, you've written a um a book called The Dark Night of the Soul, and and that's sort of what drew me to exploring with you because that's very much in alignment with the theme of of um of of this podcast. And and in order to have written a book called The Dark Knight of the Soul, presumably you have travelled through the dark night of the soul yourself. So perhaps we can start there and have you share with us a bit.

SPEAKER_02: 2:24

Yeah. Thank you, Malcolm. Yes, absolutely. So I wrote the book in 2018, seven years out of seven years past. I mean, I used the word emergence loosely, and maybe we can dig into that a bit bit more later. But in 20 uh 2011, I felt like my life was going really well. I'd um set up and been been co-directing um a health project for for several years, and that had recently won a national NHS award. Um, I was in a new relationship, um, I'd got really fit. You know, there were a number of things that I felt like, okay, you know, this is finally into my 40s, I'm now the person that I feel like I should be. And within a number of months from thinking that, that all started to fall apart pretty catastrophically. At the time I described the the early part of that is as a crash. It felt like I was crashing, it felt like I'd hit the wall at 100 miles an hour, and everything within me, around me, started to unravel um very quickly.

SPEAKER_01: 3:57

It's interesting because we often um we often feel like we've arrived somewhere, and of course, we never arrive anywhere. We we yeah, life will will flow on and take us in all sorts of different directions. But it sounds like it was a major crash for you that actually you were flowing very easily and then bang. And so what was the what what triggered the crash? What did the crash actually look like?

SPEAKER_02: 4:19

Well, I think in reality things weren't flowing really easily. I mean, that's how it might have looked on the surface, but actually that that wasn't really the case. I think it's quite difficult to say what what triggered it. I mean, I think there are various strands in that, some of which were to do with hormones, both perimenopausal hormones and an oncoming thyroid condition. Some of it was, I think, around being in a fairly new relationship, which in retrospect very neatly replayed certain childhood dynamics. And I think there's something more than that in this. I mean, I had a sense, even at the time, that there was something very faint somewhere in the background calling me. And I was I was too busy, I was too on it, I I didn't have the capacity at that point to to really consciously stop and until I was stopped. So I think it was it was coming in from different places.

SPEAKER_01: 5:37

And and how did that play out? So you you went from being feeling pretty alright with your life to um suddenly things starting to fall apart. What are the falling apart actually look like in its different stages?

SPEAKER_02: 5:53

So at the beginning there was um pretty much a complete incapacity came upon me. I mean, I I'd felt like I'd been really capable, albeit there were there were a number of sort of cracks in the in the edifice. And and maybe one of the metaphors that came up is most useful in this. I had this really strong sense that the dam had burst. And I think that sort of encapsulated the various elements of this, that not only was the the structure breaking, but the everything that had been held behind the structure was suddenly flooding in. So I ceased to be able to function at work. It became really difficult to do even the basic things in life, and there was an there was an unstoppable uh flow of emotion, memory, um, all sorts of basically fragments of the past coming in in an incredibly visceral raw way. So this is happening very much on the on a on a deep physical level as every other level.

SPEAKER_01: 7:19

And and did you have, I mean, obviously there's a lot of confusion around that from the sound of it as well. And I'm wondering whether you had support. Did you have a therapist? Did you have friends who were able to get you? Did you have a some sort of support group that you were part of?

SPEAKER_02: 7:36

So for me, I mean, it isn't that there wasn't confusion in the mix of everything else, but very fortunately I came across this phrase, dark night of the soul, very early on. And as soon as I saw that, even though I didn't really know what that meant, there was an instant recognition and resonance with that, because I knew that there was something very profound happening, which wasn't solely about my psyche. Um, in short, nobody nobody else around me knew what was going on, understood what that terrain is.

SPEAKER_01: 8:18

Um so did you wonder if you were going crazy at some point in time as well?

SPEAKER_02: 8:22

Again, I think all of that was in the mix. I mean, there's so many things coming in, terror, grief, a whole range of emotion. And I think more than anything else, I think there was a along with that, there was a there was a deep shame that everything I had previously kind of successfully, and I use that term extremely loosely, held at bay, was now coming to the fore. You know, the mask was coming off, all of that was falling apart.

SPEAKER_01: 8:57

Yes. Well, Jung's got this saying that everything is synchronicity, and and since I first heard that, I'm so aware of it. And it sounds like this phrase dark night of soul popped up into your consciousness in whatever way it did, and actually gave you some sort of a an anchor to be able to understand what was happening for you.

SPEAKER_02: 9:21

Yeah, I mean, of course, all these years later, I'm what I'm acutely aware of when I'm working with people in this place is that there's something about the recognition and validation of that from outside. Somebody else saying, Yeah, absolutely, this is what you're in. And there is this this terrain of whether we call that existential crisis or the dark night of the soul of spiritual emergency, which which is this, and it's a it's a very human, very um natural place to be, actually. It's just that it's not talked about very often, it's not recognized.

SPEAKER_01: 10:06

Yeah, I've just been reading a book by um Francis Weller called The The Wild Edge of Sorrow, and uh, and there's something in that about that we go through sorrow is a natural part of our human makeup, and the avoidance of it is is only the avoidance of life. And what I'm hearing is that you couldn't avoid completely.

SPEAKER_02: 10:29

This is completely unavoidable, and of course, at the beginning there was huge shame in that, because like so many of us, you know, we we grow up and we're taught, and you know, this is encouraged often in therapeutic and spiritual circles, often, that if you just do the right thing, if you just do the right practice or the right meditation or whatever it is, that these things are somehow controllable. And I and I love that phrase, the wild edge, because that's very much where we are in in the dark night of the soul, and often you know, subsequently we we become wilder or you know, more able to be in the wildness through this process. Because I think all of the things that we've held at bay are actually natural, the the sorrow, the the rage, the the terror, all you know, so many things come through that have been treated as taboo in some way, and all these things that we're kind of not really supposed to feel.

SPEAKER_01: 11:33

Well, we're supposed to be able to control our lives as well, and of course, you know, ultimately we're we're not even control of our own death either. So it's um unless we choose to take our life, but but there is something about the the releasing of control or the the surrendering, I suppose, to to what it is that draws us into a much larger reality than we'd known existed for us.

SPEAKER_02: 11:57

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it became really clear to me very early on that I had no control over it, and and of course that's terrifying at the beginning, and I think you know, when we talk about surrender, I think we have a tendency to talk about things in in absolutes, and so there are that slowly, slowly there were more moments of surrender, and I came to understand what that actually meant, that it wasn't some sort of capitulation or giving up, it was something much softer, more gentle, kinder than than that, and that the fighting and resisting also wasn't wrong, you know, that that there was there was something really valuable in that. So it isn't about saying, I don't think, oh, so the solution is you just surrender. I think there's something and understanding that there's something that we start to touch into very gradually in this place, which is so much deeper than anything that we could have imagined.

SPEAKER_01: 13:10

Yeah, that's very important that the um the struggle and the and the fighting that goes with that are part of this process. And and so just surrendering and going, oh, well, I'll roll over and play dead is not what you're talking about at all, is it?

SPEAKER_02: 13:23

So um no, not at all. I mean, I think it's quite difficult to convey the flavor of this kind of surrender because because we're so used to the idea of winning and losing, or overcoming, or not being able to overcome, although there's the sort of binary of this. And I think the kind of surrender that we're talking about is is beyond that. It it isn't it doesn't really fit within that binary.

SPEAKER_01: 13:54

And so would you say it has a a spiritual component to it?

SPEAKER_02: 13:59

Massively. I mean, I think it there's no, you know, it's called Dark Knight of the Soul, because I think it's deeply soul related. And the spiritual component, I think, really comes about in very different ways depending on what our previous experience has been. I think very often, and certainly for me, it was simultaneously both the the falling apart of all of the ideas about spirituality that I had, and a coming into connection a little bit like we were just saying with the surrender surrendering, a coming into contact with a with a sense of something, and I hesitate to use words, but you know, sense of deep love or kindness or something that starts to gradually seep into us as we're willing to I mean, not even willing, often, you know, as we're just in this place, that there is something of a reconnecting, a reclamation, uh, a coming into contact with something that we've previously been separated from in some way, and yet something that feels deeply known when we come into contact with it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:27

So it sounds like from um what you've been saying so far that um your your precept is that our lives are guided, and uh and actually it's not so much about surrendering to the guidance, but it's about actually finding our way to it's almost like fit into the slipstream that we're drawn into. And and obviously that's something that you have managed. You must have had some resources, you know. Very much when I when I lost my daughter, which was the inspiration for uh the show and also the the books there, Your Dragons with Compassion. Um, I realized I had some resources, and without those resources, I would have been adrift, and and it took quite a while to land the resources. So I'm wondering about your resources in this journey through the dark night of the soul.

SPEAKER_02: 16:17

Yeah, I think that's a really good question because I think at the beginning it feels like they're pretty scant, because the resources that we've tended to rely on prior to this are those of what we might call the survival self or the adapted self or whatever words we put to that. And so when it first starts to happen, we're trying to throw all our own our old kind of coping strategies at it and and they just don't work. So I think there is a period of time where it it's inevitable and natural that we feel really resourceless, almost abandoned by life, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 17:03

Sorry, say that again almost abandoned by life.

SPEAKER_02: 17:06

Absolutely, you know, that sense of there there being nothing, you know, everything falling away being being very common. And I think often the little moments of resource that come in aren't necessarily in internal, so they might be a moment in nature or music was really important for me. You know, just just I would find a a song or a track that really resonated in in the moment and play that endlessly, or just a word might come in. So I think rather than this idea of somehow we had to find resources within us, and I'm I'm not saying they don't exist entirely, but I think so much then came in in really unexpected ways and could be really momentary, just a tiny, tiny little glimpse in in the darkness, as it were.

SPEAKER_01: 18:08

Yeah, I think it's for me, it's it's it's about a mix that some of the resources are internal and and can be found by nature, music, literature, or art, all that sort of thing. And but then some of the resources are also external, which are things like creating a sangha, which is very much my my um practice in in my in my life, which is a community of like-minded others and creating environments where that can happen. So I I run, for example, a local therapy group which meets once a fortnight, and and people can open up and and actually don't feel like they're crazy anymore because they're just they're able to be understood, and we practice deep listening, we practice reflective feedback. And I'm wondering what your external resources look like at that time, uh not a great deal.

SPEAKER_02: 19:05

I mean, all of I mean it's interesting hearing you describe all that because that's those are the kinds of things that I've created subsequently and and come upon, you know, in different ways since then. At that time, for the four years that I was most intensely in the dark night, um I did see a therapist for the latter part of that for a little while. Um but beyond that, there wasn't a sense of some sort of community or anything of that ilk, and I and I think it is something that's I find really quite common in the dark night that actually finding something like that is quite hard. Something is a place in which it's possible to be as we are in that moment, yeah, because the intensity of it is such that actually a lot of you know that the intensity is such that it's difficult to hold unless there's connection with somebody who knows what it is to be in that place.

SPEAKER_01: 20:16

Yes. Well, I found that um, for example, uh when I used to work with people who had had um experienced suicide in their lives, I was much more of a philosopher and much less able to tread the path with them. And it was only after I that was the place I went to that I I became a very different person to work with. I'm also wondering whether your fledgling relationship survived this because um it's almost like the the reality changes. And can your partner could your partner change along with it? Do they want to change along with it? Did you want them to change along with it?

SPEAKER_02: 20:54

Uh no, it didn't survive. It it didn't survive past the end of that time. Um I think there was something about actually coming into that as a last, almost a some sort of last-ditch attempt to create in my life what I thought I should have. Yes. And actually, subsequently, I realized that I'd probably uh come into a relationship with somebody who would have been my mother's choice of uh relationship. Yes, it was a good girl relationship, so uh to yes, just to some extent, it felt like some kind of a rival in some way, which was actually um on a deeper level not the case at all.

SPEAKER_01: 21:48

Yes. And and um was there a lot of confusion around that that uh that that period?

SPEAKER_02: 21:55

Presumably there there would have been confusion around the relationship or around the dog?

SPEAKER_01: 22:01

Yes. Um it might have felt like the relationship was going to be a resource as you entered into difficult realms, and that's what we often feel feel that our partner will be able to come with us, and then and then when they can't, it's a shock as well.

SPEAKER_02: 22:18

Yes, I think there was definitely some of that in there. I think it it looking back, it's difficult to get a sense of exactly how it was at the beginning, but I certainly was holding out, I think, hope when I went into it. And what what was there was a degree of practical support, which was something I'd not actually had before in my life. So I think there was something about that in the timing as well, that that I could fall apart in some ways, that there was something in my system that knew you know the practicalities in life wouldn't wouldn't completely fall apart if if I did. And of course, none of that was none of that was conscious, of course. So whilst there was some measure of practical support, any kind of understanding on on a on other levels wasn't the case, and I think there was a period of feeling around that, and then there was clarity.

SPEAKER_01: 23:30

Yes, yes. And um what did it look like coming out of or going through the dark night of the soul? What what what happened for you? Have you arrived somewhere? Uh are you in a place of potential arrival? What's what's happening as we look now in the in the in the present at this?

SPEAKER_02: 23:54

So for those four years, it it looked as I described really that there were various waves of intensity, and and I think it does have a kind of arc to it. It's also cyclical within that. So, you know, I described the the chapter headings of things like crushing, falling, you know, being in the underworld, transmuting our pain, being with ourselves. So there's a kind of as I say, a kind of arc, although I use that word very loosely. And emerging out of it for me was very slow, almost imperceptible, just finding things happening. It it wasn't as as I imagined it at the beginning, I would I think we often have this notion like we'll do X and then we'll feel better and then we'll go and do Y. And I don't think that's how it happens at all. I think that after a certain I don't know, I don't know what it is, and I can't lay claim to sort of having done anything that took me out of that. But I think there was something about just finding myself starting to starting to do little things. The day came when I left that relationship and moved house. The day came when that necessitated going and getting a job. You know, so there was this very slow movement. And for me, I don't think this is about overcoming or arrival. I think there's something much more profound happening in a way that there's a when we we mentioned the the wild edge before, you know, I think we I think we become different in this in a way that um I think we can't then kind of claim any sort of arrival because because the whole notion of arrival has fallen apart in in the un the un in the unfolding of this.

SPEAKER_01: 26:18

Yes, I'm reminded of um the the Judy Tsuke song, um stop chasing shadows, just enjoy the ride. And there's something about you are taken on a ride, and there isn't a specific sort of set of rules for where this ride may go, and it's almost like you have to learn to um manage the territory that you're in.

SPEAKER_02: 26:40

I was just gonna say, I think there's something really helpful in seeing this almost geographically, that it is terrain or territory, and I think after a while we can get more familiar with it as we could with any territory, any any terrain, right? That we know what it is to be in the the bog or the the rapids or the nice sunny hills, what what whatever we're in in the moment. And so I think there is something about the you know, you talked about resources earlier. I think there's something of capacity that builds over time that we are more able to be with the sorrow or the rage or the terror or whatever it happens to be, and that the unfolding absolutely it has no rules, it has no. I don't think we can really build some sort of ideological framework around it. The unfolding takes us where it takes us, and I and I think it is evolutionary, you know. I think it's an I think it's a natural evolutionary process that that happens in this, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 27:58

So um you came through something, so clearly you're you're functioning in a very different way in your in your life now. And you said um you um you got a job, and and it's always it almost feels like wow, how are you able to get a job having been in the the the sort of the terrain of that? What did you have to do in order to be able to function back into the earth plane in that way?

SPEAKER_02: 28:25

Um I think it was about taking it really slowly. I mean, I had the job that I referred to, I had for a couple of years as I came out of the dark night that was working as a as a receptionist in a well-being and counseling clinic.

SPEAKER_01: 28:43

So you were in a wholesome environment, presumably.

SPEAKER_02: 28:48

Yeah, yeah, I I was absolutely. And I think the ability to, as I said, you know, the capacity grows. There's other things I think that begin to come in as as we begin to come out of the intensity of of that terrain. That things become more normal for more of the time, I guess you could say. And I think there's something then about as the as we have more capacity, the intensity, the sort of amplitude of things comes down a bit because there's more space for for what's coming in. Yes. And so again, I think it was just very small movements over time. And and that's still going on now. You know, I don't think this is about being then free of all of those things, as I was saying, and then being able to sort of go, da da, I'm out in the world again. I think it's much more subtle than than that.

SPEAKER_01: 29:58

Well, in some ways, it it's uh it also feels like when we go on a journey of discovery in the way that you did and the way that I have also, that we it's almost like we then have a sacred task to in to enable others. In some ways, we become way showers for others to go on a similar who are going on a similar journey, and that we've actually mapped some of the terrain. So presumably the reason you wrote your book was in order to map the terrain and to to make sense of what what the journey was like for you.

SPEAKER_02: 30:32

Yeah, absolutely. I love that term wayfarers. I mean, I I like the um you know the Celtic phrase anumkara, a similar sort of idea, and uh and I think I really Wrote the book that I would have wanted to read when I was most in it. Yes. Um, I've I've always been a diary keeper, a journal keeper since I was really young. So part of what was natural to me in the dark night was to write as I was experiencing. And so I was able to use the the original material as it were, woven in with you know what I was writing in 2018. And and I hear from people a lot saying, Oh wow, that's so you know, thank you because what you've described is what I'm experiencing, or I haven't heard somebody else describe it like this in other places, or and I and I think there is something about I mean I'm sure this might be similar for you, but when I was when I was deeply in it for those years, I would have had absolutely no idea that I could have ended up doing what I've done. I mean, that would have been so far out of my range of possibilities. And I think it's precisely that that somehow means that we we are then able to be wayfarers for other people. Because I think if we if we'd stayed, you know, I mean I was working with people before my dark night began, and so I think you know, we if we hadn't lost that ability, I don't think we would have the ability to do what we do now, actually, because we wouldn't have the falling would not have been a falling as I understand it.

SPEAKER_01: 32:31

And so you you are a therapist as well.

SPEAKER_02: 32:34

No, I'm I'm not a therapist. I was originally um a homeopath, and I am a philosopher. I did a philosophy master's a few years ago, and I work with um uh what I loosely call somatic inquiry. So it's a kind of very, very loosely speaking inquiry that's deeply embodied and imaginal.

SPEAKER_01: 33:05

How has this affected your your homeopathy practice, for example?

SPEAKER_02: 33:09

Oh, I st I mean that was it it stopped on the first day of the dark night and and that never resumed.

SPEAKER_01: 33:18

And so where do you go from here? What's what's what's what does the journey look like going forwards, or do you not know at this stage?

SPEAKER_02: 33:27

I think I think there's a degree of n not knowing.

SPEAKER_00: 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:33

I think ultimately, you know, the the unfolding continues, and I think there's what that means, I guess, is the there's the deeper and deeper seeing of internal structures, internal patterning, especially on on a visceral, energetic, sort of structural level. So I'm not really talking about thinking or thought patterns or necessarily emotion, particularly, but these these deeper kind of tendencies, and and I think it's important to say that what happens in the dark night, what we touch into is not purely personal. So there are the layers of the familial or the cultural that that are coming in more and more over time. You know, there's there's less and less, in a sense, about my personal history and my childhood, and more and more these deeper patterns. And of course, there's nothing exclusive in that. You know, I might sit down today and a bunch of things come up about my childhood. I don't I don't know. Yes, but I think as that happens simultaneously, there's a there's more and more of a touching into what we were talking about before, this kind of love or whatever it is that comes in. I sometimes I think of it as this space of unconditionality, which is has a profound kindness in it. And it isn't that we're doing it isn't that we're doing it, you know, it's that we're that we're we're being touched by it or moving into it or whatever direction that that goes exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 35:31

I guess that goes along with the surrender as well, isn't it? That we we we're becoming it as we as we we we let go into whatever's happening for us.

SPEAKER_02: 35:40

Yes, yes, exactly. And I think we can't, it's really difficult. I mean, there's no way of anticipating that, right? I mean, I'm sure we've both had loads of experiences where we've been really in the depths of deep, deep pain and then connected with something that five minutes before we had no idea about.

SPEAKER_00: 36:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 36:05

And I don't think that can happen when we're holding ourselves into something in some way. You know, I think if we we sit down with some intention to, I don't know, whatever it is, I think that kind of impedes our ability to really go where we're being taken.

SPEAKER_01: 36:29

Yes, yeah. So we're coming towards the end of our of our podcast, and um, the question I always ask at the end is is what particular dragon have you had to slay? What's the particular obstacle you've had to overcome in order to be who you are right now?

SPEAKER_02: 36:47

Well, uh at the risk of you know going into something longer, uh for me the whole notion of dragons and slaying has also fallen apart. So for me, there's something about I guess for me, this is about becoming aware of what's here, of seeing what's here in a way that we haven't seen before. So the first step in that I think is is simply the noticing, the seeing that there is something here of whatever description, yeah, and then a kind of a natural naming or identifying process of of that, where it it's almost like it lets us know what it is, yes, yeah, and then a being with it such that we start to come into relationship with it in some way. So for me, so it's difficult to answer the question because I because I struggle with the notion of, like I say, slaying or or dragons. But I think for me the biggest thing in this is um I I guess there is something in this about having the grit, and I don't know if this is a choice or not. I mean, I suspect it's probably not, but something in us builds that does have some kind of resolve and some I think a deep willingness builds to say yes to to being with what's here. And I and I don't think that needs to be 100%. I mean, we're absolutely not talking about all of the time, and often what we're here with is our own willingness to be here or to to you know, we might what we're willing to be with might be our avoidance or our distraction, or but I think there's I think there is something in in that in terms of coming through and and then being a kind of commitment to the unfolding, that sense of yeah, wherever it takes me, however raw, however painful, however deep this goes, yes, and and it is something that you know a couple of weeks ago I had a profound experience of being so so grateful that that the dark night of the soul happened to me.

SPEAKER_01: 39:32

Yeah, that's lovely. So in some ways it sounds um, it sounds like it's almost like a drug experience. Of course, it's not a drug experience, but but people often want to experience something much bigger than themselves and will find ways of doing that. Or life wants you to experience something much bigger than yourself, and it's found ways of using you as a vessel for that to happen as well.

SPEAKER_02: 39:55

Yeah, I think the latter definitely resonates, you know, this idea that we're we're also being called in this, you know, we're going down and in, but there is something of a calling happening that that life wants us to to come out of whatever it's been in and and and experience this in some way. And of course, when we're deeply in it, we're absolutely not grateful for it, and it it feels like a calamity, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 40:25

So effectively, we're agents of evolution, I think, at some at some level as well.

SPEAKER_02: 40:30

So uh that's yeah, yeah, I'll go with that.

SPEAKER_01: 40:35

Thank you so much, Fiana. It's been really, really lovely talking to you and an enjoyable unraveling of this uh this this very big subject as well. So appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: 40:45

Thank you, Malcolm. A real pleasure.

SPEAKER_01: 40:47

Yeah, thank you.