How to Find Your Balance When Everything Goes Dark
- Michelle Porter
- Aug 3
- 6 min read
Well, that happened.
Last weekend started out lovely, with multiple get-togethers with friends, enjoying the beautiful weather despite the oppressive heat. But by the time I came home, I felt very uncomfortable and itchy. When I looked closer, I noticed it was worse than a few bug bites—I had hives all over my torso.
When I woke up Sunday, the hives were still there, still itching, but I had a workshop to lead that afternoon. I prepared as best I could, grateful that staying busy kept my mind off the discomfort. The workshop went well, and I settled into a relaxing evening in our cool, air-conditioned house. We'd just gotten our AC back after it had been dead for a while, so I was particularly appreciative of that comfort.
Then the storm hit. We knew bad weather had been predicted, and we were anticipating it. But as the storm was moving through, we thought we had missed the worst of it. Just when we let down our guard a little, the wind whipped through—huge broken branches were thrown against a window, and we lost power. The next day we discovered seven trees had been knocked down on our property. Good metaphor for life, isn't it? It always happens when you let your guard down.
Now I was hot, itchy, AND stressed. No power meant no water either—we're on a well pump. Monday came with slightly fewer hives but still no power. I started picking up branches, hopeful the power company was making progress. Then Monday night brought another storm that knocked out all their gains and left even more people without power.
Tuesday: still no power. Frustration was setting in. Wednesday afternoon, we finally got electricity back.
We'd managed to save our food thanks to one gas generator that could run our refrigerator and two chest freezers—when it cooperated. It wasn't working great and would cut out, so we used it judiciously, grateful when it ran for several hours, then giving it a break. Plus it was loud, which meant being mindful of the neighbors. We also had two solar generators: one small one that could charge our phones and laptops (essential since we were using hotspots with no internet), and a slightly bigger one that could make a couple pots of tea. But they took all day to charge in the sun, and obviously we couldn't recharge them with electricity. As the days progressed, we developed a routine to make better use of all our little power supplies.
The whole experience reminded me just how much easier our lives are with reliable electricity, and how much we take for granted.
Here's the irony: this happened almost exactly a year after I first articulated what I now call the "Vibrant Middle" approach. Life, it seems, has a sense of timing.
Two Keystones, One Laboratory
A year ago, I was wrestling with an idea that started as a simple frustration: I was continually driven crazy by fads and extremes. Not just in wellness, but in how we approach everything—how we judge things and people as good or bad, right or wrong, how we think we need to optimize every aspect of our lives or eliminate anything uncomfortable. We're also looking for easy answers and quick solutions, often told we can get those answers faster in the extremes.
That frustration led me to two realizations that have become keystones of my message—and that both emerged naturally, working beautifully together.
First, the Vibrant Middle approach to thinking—being in that colorful middle where there's so much more than we see on the extreme black and white ends of the light spectrum. Life is rarely about choosing between two options; usually the richest possibilities live in between.
Second, that we are more than wellness. True wellbeing includes all aspects of our lives—our relationships, our values, how we navigate challenges, how we show up in the world. My experience, both personally and with clients, kept pointing toward something different: a more nuanced, flexible way of working with life's inevitable complexities.
That power outage became an unexpected laboratory for testing this approach in real time.
When you're hot, itchy, and without power for four days, you have choices about how to meet that stress. The extremes would be either complete overwhelm—panic mode, frustration, or anger taking over—or forced acceptance, spiritual bypassing the very real difficulty. Neither works well when you need to be in "survival" mode. Being hyper focused on the problems or completely in the clouds doesn't help; you need to be present and focus on what's actually important.
That presence, that ability to stay grounded, creates space for something in between—where you can acknowledge the frustration while also finding moments of genuine gratitude. Where you can take practical action (cleaning up branches, checking in with neighbors) without needing to control everything. Where you can laugh at the absurdity of the timing while still honoring that it genuinely sucked. Where maybe you lighten up about your self-imposed deadlines—the daily routines that just might not get done, like running the dishwasher or getting a blog out on time. Where you choose takeout over another bowl of cereal for dinner because you want someone else to make you a warm meal rather than eating more cold food. And where you recognize that true wellbeing touches on so many aspects—safety, environment, community, comfort—and that we're meant to care for ourselves while also accepting help from others.
This is what I mean by the Vibrant Middle with stress. Not the absence of stress, and not being crushed by it either. Something more alive and responsive than that.
One thing I noticed during those four days was how different types of stress felt in my body and required different responses: The itchy-hives stress needed distraction and comfort—staying busy during the workshop, cool baths when possible, loose clothing. The no-power frustration needed both action and acceptance—cleaning up what I could, then letting go of what I couldn't control. The "when will this end?" stress needed perspective—remembering that power outages are temporary, that we had generators for the essentials, that this was inconvenient but not actually dangerous.
I realized stress was giving me information about what mattered most and what I could actually influence.
What the Darkness Taught Me
Here's what surprised me: by Wednesday, when the power finally came back, I felt more resilient than I had before the outage. Not because I'd "conquered" stress, but because I'd practiced working with it skillfully. I'd found my footing in that space between being overwhelmed and pretending everything was fine.
The hives taught me about accepting discomfort I couldn't immediately fix. The power outage taught me about taking practical action while releasing the need to control outcomes. The whole experience taught me about finding genuine gratitude alongside real frustration—not instead of it, but alongside it.
And I discovered some very practical things that will serve me well when the next outage inevitably happens: our little solar generators can actually power a lamp so we don't have to rely only on headlamps in the dark, and they let us selectively turn on the TV for weather updates. Pool water works great for flushing toilets. When we used water judiciously, we were still able to drink enough and clean some dishes so we could maintain clean surfaces in the kitchen—it reminded us to be a little less excessive, a little more selective about what we truly need when we're not taking abundance for granted.
Perhaps most importantly, it made me deeply grateful for any normal day when I flip a switch and lights come on, when water flows from the tap, when the refrigerator hums quietly in the background. These things I take for granted are still luxuries in many parts of the world.
Finding Your Own Laboratory
Life gives us these unexpected laboratories all the time. The project that goes sideways, the conversation that doesn't go as planned, the day when everything seems to happen at once.
"What if, instead of viewing these moments as problems to be solved or tests to be passed, we saw them as opportunities to practice finding our own sweet spot with stress?"
The next time you find yourself in your own version of a power outage—literal or metaphorical—you might ask: What is this stress actually telling me? What can I influence here, and what do I need to release? How can I honor both the difficulty and the gifts of this situation? Where's my Vibrant Middle in this moment?
That space between panic and zen? It's bigger than you might think. And it's where real resilience lives.
A year ago, I was just beginning to understand what the Vibrant Middle might mean. This week, I got to live it. Sometimes the best teachers are the most unexpected ones.
What unexpected situations have taught you the most about finding your own balance with stress?
