Grief, despair, and fear are really neither positive nor negative but simply human emotions; it is our attitude toward them that's negative. The dark emotions can be our best, albeit most demanding, spiritual teachers, when we can get beyond the compulsion to control them. By learning how to attend to, befriend, and surrender to the energies of grief, despair, and fear, we create conditions for something new to arise in ourselves and in the world. We discover an unexpected gateway to healing and transformation. We release ourselves from the strangled grip of pain into an amazing alchemy by which grief, despair, and fear are transmuted to gratitude, faith and joy.
— Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through the Dark Emotions