Sometimes the Perfect Darkness Is the Light You Need
Staying close-in during the chrysalis of change is a radical act of love
Original photograph, Tofino, BC by B. Littleton
From my Sunday Notes:
When I think about relationships rooted in love, I think about the kind of space where each person can be seen and accepted over long stretches of time. These stretches aren’t static. They contain layers and levels of change: subtle shifts, bold turns, and the quiet transformations born from grief, joy, longing, adventure, and disappointment.
Within that evolving terrain, there’s still something constant—a steady foundation of deep acceptance. A sacred ground where each person chooses, again and again, to stay close-in. Not because it’s easy, but because the connection matters.
This kind of love doesn’t rely on old promises. It doesn’t leave one person wondering if the bond still holds. Instead, it becomes a living tide. A movement of exposure and return, of flow and repair.
From what I’ve lived and witnessed, this deep staying can be surprisingly subjective. When change brings brightness—like creative success, financial relief, or even the joy of a new puppy—it’s easier to say, “I accept you.”
But when change shows up wrapped in darkness—like the grief that reshapes us, or the painful unlearning of inherited patterns—the staying becomes more difficult. The partner undergoing change might be moving toward the light, but they are in the darkness now. They’re in the chrysalis phase, dissolving into something unknown.
They may be seeking sobriety, returning to school, speaking truths that were once silenced, or letting grief take up necessary space. These changes don’t just ask something of the individual. They also ask something of the relationship. They ask the other partner to grow, too. To reflect. To hold steady.
But not everyone wants to be reshaped in the mirror of someone else’s transformation. Sometimes the fear of change—or the longing for what was—leads a partner to walk away.
I often hear the sentiment:
“Yes, I said I’d do the work. But I never thought I’d be asked to do this. What happened to the person I fell in love with?”
What happened is: they grew.
Heidi Priebe speaks to this beautifully:
“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.
The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.”
—Heidi Priebe, Instagram @heidipriebe
John O’Donohue once wrote:
“When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning. It opens up new possibilities of connection and compassion. Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting.”
—John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
When we love someone who is changing, we are asked to pay exquisite attention—not to the past version of them, but to what is emerging now. Sometimes that asks us to loosen our grip on the old shape and gently trust the soul that is becoming.
David Whyte reminds us:
“The courageous conversation is the one you don’t want to have. The one where you stay close to what is real—even if it breaks your heart. Especially if it breaks your heart.”
—David Whyte, Consolations
Sometimes, staying close-in is the act of faith. A devotion not just to a person, but to something greater. A higher presence moving within them, between you, and through the quiet dark spaces where something sacred is trying to take root.
See what rises in you as you read.
Maybe you’ve been the one dissolving.
Maybe you’ve been asked to stay close to someone who is.
Maybe you’re in the mystery of both.
With tenderness,
Bren Littleton
Original photograph, Tofino, BC by B. Littleton
Tin Flea Press c 2025