…. a friend of mine told me in graduate school. She had suffered trauma as a young child, and, as an adult, found her body retained that trauma – silently all those years, as if in a repository.

This afternoon, with no one around but my children and friends, a loon and a handful of low-flying, squawking gulls, we swam in Greensboro’s Lake Caspian after a thunderstorm. The cool water held the dark blue of the stormy sky, reflecting the tempestuous, infinite sky above.

All this evening, while painting my daughter’s room three complementary shades of blue, I listened to NPR pour out a stream of collective body wound: a whole nation writhing in myriad variations of misery.

My teenage daughter asks question after question, and I go back to that afternoon sky, where the water and sky hold together, reflecting their finer hues.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.