Blog intro: a jarful of fireflies

But in the darkness, there is light.
—Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

I’ve only seen fireflies once in real life. It was September 2005, and my roommate, Summer, and I were on an East Coast road trip to our friends’ wedding in Chicago. On the way, we stopped for a night at Summer’s family farm in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia.

As we made our way down the long, dusty road that finally ended in front of her parents’ small yellow farmhouse, Summer spoke about some of her favorite things from the farm: dinners straight from the abundant garden, an absence of city sounds, like the car alarms that would frequently awaken us in the middle of the night, and fireflies.

As a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, fireflies were elusive and ephemeral, magical things I’d only seen in animated movies.

After dinner with her parents, Summer and I donned mud boots and stepped out the back screen door, setting out on a quest to what her family called the Upper Meadow. We’d missed the fireflies’ peak season (and even back then their numbers were declining due to climate change), but the Upper Meadow would be our best bet at seeing the last of these creatures for the season. 

Before we left, Summer grabbed a Mason jar with a wire handle affixed to the lid.

We reached our destination as dusk approached, but the Upper Meadow was growing dark. As we stood looking out over the great expanse of grassy meadow, I felt unreasonably disappointed. My hopes of having a transcendent experience with these elusive and magical beings were fading in the gloaming’s gathering shadows.

But then, we began to see them. 

At first, their illumination was so brief it was almost like trying to see a shooting star—if you didn’t look fast enough, you’d surely miss it. And then there were more. And more. Pretty soon, the Upper Meadow was fully illuminated with the soft, winking lights of these bioluminescent creatures that have been lighting up the night since the late Mesozoic period.

We ran through the meadow, catching fireflies and gently placing them in the jar. 

As we made our way back down the forest pathway to the house, it became darker and harder to see the uneven ground under our feet. But our makeshift lantern created a soft glow that spread out around us. Suddenly, the ephemeral had become practical.

When we reached the house, we released the glowing bugs, and I watched as they winked on and off, finally disappearing back into the dark night.

Fast forward to the present: December 2024. In the 19 years since that magical night catching fireflies in the meadow, I’ve accomplished a lot and have so much to be grateful for, both personally and professionally including a beautiful family, a large and supportive community, and a master’s degree in mental health counseling followed by 12 years in private practice as a therapist.

But for me and many others, 2024 has also been a banner year in terms of grief. In August, I observed the 10-year anniversary of my brother’s death; in September, my publisher informed me that the book I’d been working on for two plus years had been cut from the pipeline; October marked the one-year anniversary of the horrific events of October 7th and Israel’s ensuing genocide in Gaza. Although it certainly was not the only violence unfolding in 2024, it was particularly painful to witness as a first-generation Palestinian-American. In November, our beloved family dog reached the end of his long life and we said goodbye to him. And finally, well, the election.

As I look back over the past year and ahead into the next, it feels . . . dark. But it occurs to me that there is something universal in many of these experiences: the death of a loved one, the loss of a dream, hopelessness in the face of violence—these are all experiences I have helped many of my clients journey through over the years.

I’ve walked with others in dark times and offered some perspectives and practices that (I hope) have been helpful. And this prompted me to wonder: what are some of the best practices I know for illuminating the path when it’s dark? 

This is the initial inquiry that led me to create this blog—a grief container, a digital alchemical vessel born out of my desire to turn loss into something that may be helpful, in some small way, to others.

Over the next twelve months, I will write about twelve topics, one for each month of the year. You may notice that I will begin with philosophies and practices that focus more on the individual, and in later posts, I will focus on the collective. I want to clarify that I believe both individual and collective work are each important and necessary. If the order of these posts implies a preference for one over the other, that is not my intention. Any amount of individual or collective healing work we are able to do is valuable. And, I believe that if we are able to do both, our individual and collective healing begin to strengthen each other, intimately intertwined and interdependent. Each one amplifies, accelerates, and assists the other. 

This blog is a container—a jarful of fireflies. It’s a makeshift lantern to hold some of the most illuminating ideas for individual and collective healing that I have come across in my time as a therapist in private practice (although my first post will actually be about something I learned in graduate school). 

These ideas can sometimes seem ephemeral, but I hope, when put into practice, they’ll be as practical and helpful for you as they have been for me and others.

It might seem silly, since this lantern is metaphorical and not actual, but I feel compelled to say: let’s imagine this lantern has a loose-fitting lid or perhaps a lid with holes in it so the fireflies can come and go. This would be kinder to our imaginary fireflies, but it also represents flexibility and impermanence, two practices that have helped me to balance my propensities toward rigidity and resistance to change. This is something I’ll write more about in a later blog post.

If we practice fluidity with this metaphor, then it can become more alive, more dynamic—even more embodied—all attributes I believe we can cultivate to access the healthiest versions of ourselves.

So as we move into 2025 and beyond, I hope these ideas I’ll be writing about will help to light your path—wherever you’ve been, wherever you are, and wherever you’re going.

I hope you’ll come back in January to read my first post about the mindful pause. Until then, take good care.