What if the worst season of your life wasn’t evidence that you’ve lost your way but an ancient passage that countless mystics have walked before you?
In this luminous and deeply personal conversation, Mirabai Starr, translator of Dark Night of the Soul and author of Ordinary Mysticism and I explore the Dark Night of the Soul: what it is, what it isn’t, and why experiences like heartbreak, divorce, grief, and profound loss can become unexpected doorways into a more intimate relationship with ourselves, with love, and with what is sacred.
This is a conversation about surrender, soul, and the mysterious grace that sometimes arrives only after everything we thought would save us has fallen away.
In this episode, look and listen for:
- What the mystics knew about heartbreak.
- What the “Dark Night of the Soul” actually is and why it’s far more than simply going through a hard time.
- Why divorce can become one of life’s deepest spiritual initiations, whether you left or were left.
- The surprising difference between suffering that breaks us and suffering that transforms us.
- The moment when the spiritual practices, beliefs, and certainties that once sustained us sometimes stop working, and why that’s not failure.
- Understanding grief not as weakness but as evidence of our capacity to love.
- Why authenticity, not positivity, is the most healing companion during heartbreak.
- Mirabai’s own extraordinary story of love, loss, spiritual abuse, divorce, and the death of her daughter Jenny, and how those experiences reshaped her understanding of the sacred.
- What the mystics mean when they say that something in us must die before something truer can be born.
- Why there isn’t just one dark night but many, and how each one invites us into a deeper intimacy with life.
I hope this conversation meets you in your own dark night of heartbreak, reminding you that you are not lost, even if everything familiar has fallen away.
Sometimes the deepest transformation begins precisely where certainty ends.
About Mirabai Starr
Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and interspiritual teacher. In 2020, she was honored on Watkins’ list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Drawing from 20 years of teaching Philosophy and World Religions and a lifetime of practice, Mirabai shares her wisdom worldwide on contemplative living, writing as a spiritual practice, and the transformational power of grief and loss.
Mirabai has authored over a dozen books including Wild Mercy, Caravan of No Despair, and renowned translations of sacred literature, including Dark Night of the Soul. Her most recent book, Ordinary Mysticism, has been praised by Anne Lamott as “a gorgeous, transformative, welcoming book is for anyone who longs to feel more present, more alive, more joyful and aware of the holiness of daily life”.
She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico.
For more, visit www.mirabaistarr.com.
Connect with Mirabai
Website: mirabaistarr.com
Mirabai’s books: mirabaistarr.com/books/
Instagram: instagram.com/mirabaistarr
Substack: mirabaistarr.substack.com
Books & resources mentioned in the episode
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
Caravan of No Despair by Mirabai Starr
Dark Night of the Soul (Mirabai Starr’s translation of St. John of the Cross)
About LiYana Silver
Relationship coach and author of Waking Up in The Dark Night of Divorce and Feminine Genius, LiYana works with women at the knife’s edge of heartbreak — reckoning with divorce, breakup, and heartbreak so complex it feels like a dark night of the soul.
LiYana guides women (and their partners) through (not around) the darkest passages of their lives. Through her transformational methodology, LiYana helps individuals, couples, and groups reclaim what they lost in the relationship, break repeating patterns, and emerge awake, aligned, and lit-up.
A former professional dancer and lover of painting with oils, LiYana lives in Asheville, NC with her son, their two cats, and a frankly impressive number of houseplants.
Connect with LiYana
Website: liyanasilver.com
Waking Up in The Dark Night of Divorce book: liyanasilver.com/wakingup
Feminine Genius book: liyanasilver.com/femininegenius
The Heartbreak Transformation Map: liyanasilver.com/map
Fresh From The Fire newsletter: liyanasilver.com/newsletter
Waking Up in The Dark Night of Divorce substack: liyanasilver.substack.com/
Pre-order Waking Up in the Dark Night of Divorce by LiYana Silver
And receive two beautiful book bonuses:
- The Waking Up Workbook to accompany the book, with all the practices from the book plus space for you to write and draw; and
- Book Club with LiYana: 3 weekly meetings in which I’ll read from the book, we’ll practice together, discuss, and have Q+A.
Order Waking Up in the Dark Night of Divorce+ book bonuses:liyanasilver.com/wakingup