15 years ago I was thrust into a period of incredible despair and suffering. Through a series of very challenging and even bizarre events, I found myself in the midst of a period of deep emotional suffering that had at its heart coming to terms with the fact that I had been sexually abused when I was a very young child. This was a terrifying revelation to uncover, and it took me years of very intense emotional therapy to come to terms with the trauma that I experienced when I was a boy. I was forced to deal with the fact that all my life I had been living with a horrible secret, and I had to muster the courage to face my wounds and heal from them.

Before beginning this intense period of emotional healing work, I had extreme difficulty with intimate relationships and I was emotionally addicted to Marijuana. When these horrible memories came to the surface, my life collapsed and I was forced to face the wounds that for years I had ignored. This work required my complete commitment and almost all of my energy, and there were times when I did not know that I would make it through alive. Had it not been for a powerful and loving therapist named Barbara, I certainly wouldn't have made it through that horrible darkness.

I hit rock bottom in this process in 1987, when I was facing the deepest wounds and journeying through a period of intense anger and grief. One afternoon I found myself sitting alone on my bed, sobbing uncontrollably about what happened to me when I was a child. It was a cathartic moment of connecting with the deepest suffering I have ever known. As I curled in a ball and sobbed as deeply as I ever have, I heard a huge crash at the window next to my bed. I looked up quickly and saw something fall, and I realized that a bird had just flown into the window. I ran immediately outside into the autumn air and there, on the ground beneath the window, lay the still, lifeless and warm body of a beautiful bluejay.

This was a profound synchronistic moment: as I was touching and grieving my deepest wound, a bluejay -- my favorite bird! -- had sacrificed itself not three feet from me. Overwhelmed by grief for a childhood torn apart by abuse and suffering, I held the bluejay tenderly and cried even more, as my inner child and this bluejay seemed to merge.

I took the bird, wrapped it in a favorite cloth, and drove up to a sacred spot in the mountains, where I buried him. I was crying on and off the entire way, and yet these were cleansing tears and wonderful in a strange sort of way. There is incredible liberation in touching and releasing one's original pain, and this day I knew that my life would be forever changed, that I was healing and cared for by a higher power, and that I was going to be alright.

From that day forward, my life has been a journey forward into the light, a light now that is so bright that I have no words to describe it.

During those years I learned the power of embracing my own wild depths -- and I learned not to run from that which scares me. I was forced to face my deepest fears head on, and in doing so I found that the most horrible darkness was transformed into the brightest light. After years of deep emotional work I had a dream which symbolized to me the fact that I had successfully navigated my own personal dark night of the soul and that I had healed the core wounds that I had carried for so long. In the dream I was speaking to a group of people and I said, "I have transformed the darkest dark into the brightest bright." That says it all: The power of transformation that is available to us is truly limitless if we are willing to face our personal shadow in order to bring light to our deepest suffering.

The changes that have taken place in my outer life since doing that deep emotional work have been profound. I was guided to attend graduate school in spiritual psychology in California in 1989, where on the first day I was blessed to meet a wonderful woman named Mary, who is now my wife of 10 years. It was a miracle to meet a kind and beautiful woman who had traveled a similar path of suffering and healing on her own, and from our first day together our life has been blessed with a love that continues to amaze us and bring us unending joy.

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