While the World Slept
Reflections on the split feminine, and the psyche's mysterious ways of preservation
When I was a teenager, I struggled to understand my identity because every version of the feminine I encountered seemed strangely incomplete. Women were often presented as singular things — the good girl, the artist, the romantic, the rebel, the intellectual. Yet none of those images felt large enough to hold the entirety of my experience.
At fifteen, I knew myself deeply, yet I often felt divided by circumstance. Certain parts of me emerged naturally in the presence of others, while other parts only revealed themselves in solitude. I couldn’t understand why some of my deepest thoughts, creativity, and authenticity seemed to arrive after midnight, when the rest of the world was asleep. I often wondered if that meant I was being inauthentic during the day, or if there was something wrong with me for containing such different expressions of self.
Yet I continued trusting the experience. Something inside felt intelligent, even when it appeared strange or contradictory. I accepted that I very well could be crazy. Yet there seemed little point in denying my inner reality simply to be perceived as normal. Whatever was happening inside me felt alive. And over time, I began to realize I wasn’t witnessing a fracture at all. I was witnessing a relationship.
In my psyche there were teenage twins. One light, one dark. I would often refer to them as light teenager and dark teenager. Dark teenager revealed herself to me in grief. Deeply connected to my inner muse. Perhaps, she is my muse. She collapses into destruction as an act of creating. She breaks down, deconstructs, dies, and decomposes in order to be born again. She is honest, raw. Fearless and unstoppable. Like a force of nature. She is wild, unapologetic, untamed. She is blood and bones. Dirt and grit. She represents night — when the soul is free to live without being tamed or censored by society.
Then there’s light teenager, who is deeply connected to my inner artist. And perhaps, she is both my inner artist and lover. She is my inner child preserved. She is life fully inhabited. She’s deeply connected to the beauty and romance that is all around. She holds her heart close to animals and often greets the sun with a kiss. She is amazed by all of life which keeps her humbly and utterly human. To be human is to be nature. To recognize the plants and rocks as beautiful kin. She represents day — the color, the magic, the awe, the wonder when realized, felt. She often embodies presence, gratitude, peace, empathy, and joy.
Together, they feel whole. One cannot live without the other. And it fascinates me they have always lived as twins within my psyche. Two parts of a whole. Dark teenager feels like vitality, blood, bones. Like the pulse of truth running through my flesh. Without her, depth and truth would cease to exist. And within depth lives possibility, growth, awe, and wonder. Light teenager wouldn’t be able to fully receive life. To make love with it. To create. She would have no seed, no potential, no expansion.
The religious community I was raised in would have never approved of dark teenager. To exile her for survival would have costed my connection to my own soul. So I paused time. As a 15 year old girl I waited patiently for night time. Specifically, three to five am. When the world felt silent and still. And she would pilot our body. She would create and sing. She would reorganize the room and hang up new art. Usually the art she created the night before. She would stargaze and engage in free thinking. She saw the philosophy in everything. She would witness life in inanimate objects. Feel wisdom in her pain. She created, uncensored. But for her eyes only. She lived in the shadows, simply grateful to breathe.
When the sun would rise, its as if the twins sat side by side together. Admiring the relationship between the sun and moon. The moments where they both lived together in the sky. And light teenager would listen to the morning bird song. She’d find romance in her first cup of tea. Joy in playing with her animals. Peace when playing her guitar on the slope of a tree. Alive when singing her songs to the flowers. She witnessed and noticed both the silent and grand beauty all around, and picked up her camera to preserve it.
I didn’t have the language to name what they were, only the instinct to let them live. An act of quiet defiance, a devotional kind of survival. Perhaps they were the map back home to my soul, again and again.
In 2023 I rebirthed my photography business with the wish to integrate all parts of myself into one offering, one space. Like a mandala. I realized light teenager had been running the artistic show for decades. She made the creative decisions. She connected with clients. She held space.
Yet my deepest art — the work that always rearranged me — lived unseen. Expressions of dark teenager. To truly integrate her meant allowing her to live under the sun. To take up space. To stop hiding to protect others. So I moved all creative and business decisions to her: the rebrand, the creative direction, the color palette, the body of work we would carry forward. Photography became depth work — a space to unearth, witness, attune, express, and make the unconscious conscious.
To move forward in life from my deepest alignment feels like a blessing. Not because the twins disappeared, but because they no longer live in separate worlds. They sit at the same table now. The artist and the muse. The girl who greets the sun and the girl who waits patiently for midnight. Neither one asks the other to shrink.
And since then, I haven’t had a single creative block. Creative energy feels accessible, like an underground spring I no longer have to search for. The work arrives when it wants to. Sometimes through grief. Sometimes through wonder. Sometimes through a bird song at dawn. Sometimes through a sleepless night.
When I look back now, I don’t think those girls were evidence of fragmentation. I think they were the earliest evidence of feminine wholeness.