This month, I was asked to introduce the Spirituality Panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. Author and activist Gail Straub moderated a conversation with writers Clark Strand and Mark Matousek. Their topic was the role of darkness in life. This was the perfect panel for me, I thought, as I created Karmic to help pull me up from a dark point in my life. But as I stood on stage, people in the audience began to hold up their phones, showing me their Karmic app screens. As I stood there about to kick off a panel that would discuss darkness in both literal and metaphorical terms, all I saw was light. The panel discussion began and Mark Matousek quoted Rumi, the 13th century mystic poet, saying, “The wound is the place where light enters you.” This quote simply says that if we can embrace our dark places – our wounds – then we have the ability to let in some light and heal. It’s easy to focus on the light in our lives, on the happy and uplifting moments and brush the unhappy or unpleasant parts under the carpet in the name of staying positive. This, however, can result in a false-happy. You have to let in the dark parts in order to see the light. Open your wounds. It’s the only way to heal.

"Those Who Wish to Sing, Will Always Find a Song" – Plato