It is natural to consider “darkness” and “light” to be separate experiences. “Darkness” generally refers to more “negative” or painful emotions, such as sadness, anger, fear, emptiness or shame. In contrast, “light” often refers to more “positive” emotions such as happiness, joy, connection and empowerment. And for the most part, we tend to experience “darkness” and “light” independently and at different moments. And it is natural for us to assume that life will have some of both, with the hope that we will experience more light than darkness over time.
The problem is that oftentimes we feel that in order to feel the light, we need to vanquish the darkness. Worse, we feel that we have to choose – between being a “happy” or a “sad” person, or an “optimist” as compared to a “pessimist.” While perhaps well-intended, that approach can be incredibly damaging if we attempt to suppress or avoid our darkest feelings. Research suggests that avoiding our darker feelings like depression and anxiety worsens them rather than minimizes them.
Amy Lee – founding member, musician and singer-songwriter of the band Evanescence – takes a distinctly different approach to understanding “darkness” and “light” in her life. Lee’s music is steeped in an exploration of darkness not as a method of losing oneself, but rather finding oneself. Even the title of Evanescence’s new album The Bitter Truth presents the paradox of the bitterness of darkness being inextricably linked to the light of truth. And during our conversation on the Hardcore Humanism Podcast, Lee explained that we need not only to be comfortable with darkness, but also embrace our darkness if we want to stay connected to the light.
One of the most transformative experiences that shaped Lee’s perspective is the loss of both her sister and brother. She lost her sister when she was six then her brother more recently in 2018. What Lee feared most was not letting go of the pain of loss, but rather forgetting the pain of loss. In this way, Lee felt that letting go of darkness would undermine her ability to feel connected to her authentic self. Rather, she wanted to embrace her darkness in order to feel whole. “The worst thing, the time that I feel the most afraid or alone … is when it’s like, it didn’t happen. It’s like the world just went on living like nothing ever went wrong,” Lee told me. “I remember sometimes feeling really weird on like, beautiful sunny days, when I was a kid. Because I felt like it should always be raining when I was grieving my sister. It’s kind of the same thing, to be able to talk about it, to be able to admit it, to be able to face it and say, ‘Okay, it hurts this much and I’m thinking about this stuff.’”
Lee found a natural vehicle to explore her darkness in her music. For Lee, expressing rather than avoiding her darkness is what simultaneously made her loss and pain real and therefore not as scary. It became a vehicle for exploration and connection to herself and to others rather than simply a re-experiencing of pain. “To be able to spill my guts is the thing that makes it better, and especially to be able to share it with other people. That’s why music started for me in the first place. Processing like the biggest wounds and the biggest challenges I’ve been through in my life and in my heart, being able to make that into music that I love,” she explained. “And then in turn, the even greater gift is to be able to see other people love that music and have it speak to them on a level where they feel that it’s doing something good for them to not feel alone in that moment too is such a blessing — something so healthy and so good. I think it’s important to face the darkness. Because it’s real. It’s really there. And if we can’t face it, then we’re just living a lie and letting that stuff bubble under the surface.”
One of the reasons that avoiding our darker and more painful emotions is so damaging is that we lose the opportunity to become more familiar with our pain and the reasons behind it. Thus, we cannot habituate to our negative emotions which causes them to become bigger, darker, scarier and more mystifying. Lee explained how exploring her darker feelings in her music creates a cycle in which she learns about and becomes less frightened of her own experience. “It feels like being able to just get something out of your system and face it to not be afraid of it anymore. Things feel scarier, when they’re locked up inside, you know, like the unspeakable,” Lee described. “When you talk about it, it’s just not as scary anymore.”
Another reason Lee explores the darkness of loss, grief and sadness is to be able to preserve a strong and authentic connection to the memories of her siblings. And this allows her to preserve the light – the good and heartwarming feelings that she had while they were alive and the memories of them since they’ve passed. “I don’t want to move past it, I will always be their sister,” Lee said. “It’s not that I ever want to completely get over it. Because I’m never gonna let them go. They’re always going to be with me really literally. And part of that is feeling the pain of losing them, because I still love them so much. But the other part of it is laughing at memories and remembering like, the fun that we have too. I don’t want to just remember the people that I’ve lost by their death. I want to remember their life.”
Part of what remembering death and celebrating life does for Lee is give her a greater perspective on the world. While the joy of life and the pain of death feel very differently, they both represent deep and meaningful experiences. And a focus on deeper and more meaningful experiences – such as the birth of her son Jack and the death of her siblings — allows Lee to keep her eye on what is most important to her more generally in her life. “Perspective is something that really shifts in those big moments in your life. Good and bad, not just the grieving, but also like giving birth. Having Jack, it blew my mind,” Lee explained. “It really opened my mind, the big things like that in your life…our perception is maybe just one little tiny piece of something so much bigger.”
Ultimately, through exploring both the darkness and light, the common denominator becomes feelings of love. Love that she had as well as love that was lost. Thus, Lee emerges with a feeling of gratitude for being able to feel love through the better and more difficult times. “There have been major struggles and losses and all that in my life. But there have also been so many moments of beauty and love and I am grateful, I am able to kind of be in a place of peace. Now for the most part, because I see all that being able to appreciate, like, the incredible life I’ve already lived. That helps. It really does,” she described. “I’m absolutely just grateful for the love, grateful for the love. And I think that when I think about what’s beyond and life after death and what it all means and all that, it always comes back to love. That is what it is – the bigger thing, the thing that I can’t quite define, the thing that makes a soul a soul is love … Why don’t we just eat and reproduce? Like, there has to be something more because we love.”
Lee explained how the song “Broken Pieces Shine” is a reflection of her belief that when we feel the darkness, even to the point of feeling broken – that is where we are most able to feel the light and the love. “On ‘Broken Pieces Shine’ … what I’m saying is … It’s one thing to survive. But it’s another thing to live. And that’s the real goal. The initial thing is just to breathe in and out, you know, after something. But then after that, it’s like, how can I live? How do I really live the way that they would have wanted me to live up to my full potential? And the music is this beautiful place where I get to do what I do.
“You know … shine a light, maybe?”
