Michael Malis - From Darkness We Awaken (2022)

I composed From Darkness We Awaken in the midst of what was the most chaotic period of time I’ve ever lived through. 2020 was a challenging year for everyone in the world, but against the backdrop of the intersecting crises of that time, a personal paradigm shift occurred for me: in March 2020, my wife and I found out we were expecting our first child.

Of course, we were incredibly excited. But as anyone who had a “pandemic baby” can attest to, that excitement came with a large dose of anxiety. We threw our pent up energy into preparing our home, our hearts, and our lives for the arrival of a new human. It was a strange juxtaposition, to be simultaneously balancing so much joy with so much fear.

The one thing that kept me relatively grounded in that unique moment was writing this piece. I started to notice myself using this piece as a forum for processing these transformative changes that were upon me. From Darkness We Awaken became a proxy for my emotional preparations for the next phase of my life — a diary documenting my personal metamorphosis.

From Darkness We Awaken — not once, but continually, renewing our promises to ourselves every moment of every day, forgiving ourselves when we break them, and trying again and again and again.

- Michael Malis