Today marks winter solstice, shortest day of year in Northern Hemisphere. Winter begins on this day.

Many of us seek abundance and we seek to live enlightened lives. And yet, on this time of solstice I want to celebrate darkness as an essential part of abundance. What if hidden obstacle standing between you and living an “Abundantly Alive Now!” life is that you don’t have enough darkness in your life?

Darkness and Light Throughout nature, life is a balance between night and day, dark and light. And yet, many of us live as if balance of dark and light doesn’t matter. Nothing has thrown us off balance more than machine called computer and invention called internet. There is no darkness in cyberspace. In earlier times, people used winter as a time to prepare for coming growing season. Farmers took care of their tools, fishermen tended their nets. Women spun wool. People used winter as a time of retreat.

Not us. Not when we can have lights blazing 24 hours each day. Not when internet never quits. Not when business is open somewhere 24 hours a day in our global economy. Not when we are told that we have to adapt to a world that never sleeps.

Yet our effort to live in light without respite sets us at odds with nature itself. Nature demands periods of darkness alternating with light.

I sometimes wonder about health of trees in store parking lots. Have you seen them? The basic plant process of photosynthesis requires a dark phase. Plants take energy of sun and transform it into food for plant. Yet, well-lit trees in parking lots across land are exposed to light all night long, night after night. At a time when a tree needs darkness to create energy for itself, sodium lights cast a weird orange glow over tree.

Don’t Snooze, You Lose

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Change your choices, change your life!

Women erroneously think that a dangerous man is only a violent man. While violent man is indeed one of categories of dangerous men, there are seven others that are often overlooked. These omitted categories are exactly how women get into dangerous relationships. These lapses in information leave women without knowledge to respond to face of dangerousness when he is in their life. Since much of information about ‘what’ makes a man dangerous has not been taught to women, they do not recognize and respond to dangerousness.

Most women have learned to ignore their red flags—their biological response system that tells them that something is not quite right. Our research indicated that 100% of women understand red flags, have red flags, and many of them go on to ignore very red flags that can alert them to unsafe relationships. Women sited various reasons for ignoring red flags which included societal training that women should be polite, gender differences that taught them that women are to be hyper-tolerant to less than appealing male behavior, and female role modeling in their childhoods where women in their families tolerated dangerous male behavior, renamed behavior to something less threatening, and then stayed.

Overtly lacking in today’s women’s programs are outright names of dangerous diagnosis, labeling of specific dangerous behaviors, and teaching of why dangerousness is not something that can be treated, more less cured. Most women cannot site any elements that make a man ‘incurable.’ They don’t understand that issue of dangerousness is based on a person’s inability to grow or change. And furthermore, they do not know what ‘an inability to grow or change’ looks like or acts like.