6. "Once you unlayer all the layers, you start to see yourself as you are." With Hany Ezzat

Hany’s dark night began in earnest in his forties, although he’d been aware of feeling different since he was eight. As a child, he’d tried to express to the adults around him what he was experiencing, but it wasn’t until a therapist suggested many years later that he was in a dark night that he began to understand what might have been happening throughout his life. After going through countless rock bottoms and navigating blindly in the dark, he started to follow his own river and found himself gradually coming back to his life.

Amongst other things, we talk about how we experienced words in whole new ways during the dark night, and how our understanding of them continually evolves; how the dark night is a process of shedding layers that often weren’t ours in the first place; and how there are days when getting out of bed counts as an achievement. We also discuss how our intellects had to begin to follow rather than leading; the loneliness of being unmet or misunderstood; how the unravelling of layers, both personal and collective, is not a linear process; and how writing can play an essential role in our emergence.

Hany Ezzat has walked through the dark night of the soul and come out writing. A storyteller at his core, he crafts narratives that connect, challenge, and stay. With twenty-six years in branding and creative strategy, he builds with meaning. R.A.W. is the work shaped from his own process — a way of witnessing people return to themselves without theatrics. The rest is still unfolding.

Connect with Hany

Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops and a reflective space for therapists and counsellors.

Connect with Fiona

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.

You’re welcome to contact The Dark Night of the Soul Unwrapped via email: [email protected]

Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit