I think light and dark are in each of us and we can tap into either avenue at any point in time.

When I was expecting my son years ago, I prayed every day: “Please give me a happy, healthy, well-adjusted son with a strong backbone and a mind of his own.”

As in, make him all the things I’m not.

Instead of creating another human being and making him a repository for all my neuroses and flaws, perhaps I should have started working on myself. It took me many years to reach the point where I was able to honestly examine where I was in life.

It wasn’t until I saw the tail-end of an Oprah show about the new-age film, the Secret, that I started to wonder how much of this I had done to myself. And I was shocked at the answer. Every time I said, “I’ll stay in this job, for now”, or “I’ll keep the status quo of this dysfunctional marriage,” I made my choice. Each interim measure that lasted for years had my fingerprints all over it.

So I opened up to the notion of possibility. Hope. Grace. And found that I could turn the light on in my own life if I just had a little faith.

-Ruth Williams