Living Rootless: Word of the Year 2026: Light: Let in the Light, v.2

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Word of the Year 2026: Light: Let in the Light, v.2

Light enters kitchen window in Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Photo credit: Mzuri

I re-run my 2021 light-therapy post. Today I'm in a different year, a different state, in another small place, that alas, is miserly in its bestowal of light.

Nevertheless, my morning welcoming-in of the light persists, although the stinginess of the light here demands the addition of artificial light, using daylight LED bulbs.

As I write this, I smile, remembering the bleak hotel room in Lalibela, Ethiopia, in which I proclaimed to the hotel clerk during the first of two meltdowns in that city, when he flipped on the room light with no measurable effect: "This is the room you give to someone who no longer has the will to live!" (The Karen designation had not yet been birthed, but, oh yes, Karen was my name in Lalibela.)

As I write this, we live in a time of appalling acts of violence against the bodies, minds, and civil rights - with impunity - against our fellow beings, be they women, men, or children - over which I have so little control, and which can push me into my soul's murkier corners ... But I do have the power to open window blinds, I can turn on lights, and I can pull my eyes away from a device and look out a window.

I do have that power.

Friday, October 1, 2021

Word of the Year: Joy 10: Let in Light

Leaf in light. UTEP campus, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

A morning ritual sends a small joy to my soul.

I open the wide slats of my white window blinds, push the blinds up to the window tops, and let in the light of the day.

My morning ritual also connects me to my mother's morning ritual. She had white, wood window shutters, which she, too, opened each morning, in her bedroom, in her living room, in her dining room, in her tiny kitchen. This daily connection with her pleases me.