Homecoming

By Louise Sutherland-Hoyt
There are times the soul doesn’t speak, doesn’t shimmer, doesn’t show up for the performance of self.
It vanishes—not to punish, but to deepen us.

The dark night isn’t the absence of soul.
It’s the soul going underground.
A sacred refusal to participate in surfaces.

But when it returns—quietly, bodily—it doesn’t announce itself with fireworks.
It comes as a pulse that dared remember what it left.

You don’t think your way into that return.
You feel it:

• A spine that uncoils.
• A jaw that releases.
• A warmth behind your ribs that wasn’t there yesterday.

The dark night is not a detour. It’s the path.
And the dawn we long for?
It begins inside the skin.

Your soul hasn’t abandoned you.
It’s becoming something deeper than light:
a quiet, embodied presence.

Somatic Reflection Prompts: Take a moment.

• Where in my body do I feel the soul’s return—not as light, but as a deeper quiet?
• What does familiar but different feel like in my bones?
• Is there a place in me that still waits for the soul to come home—and could I meet it with presence, not pressure?