As the nights draw in across the U.K., light takes on a new kind of meaning. Candles flicker in windows, the air smells faintly of woodsmoke, and there’s a hush that seems to settle over everything. Today marks Diwali, the festival of lights, one of the most cherished celebrations in Hindu culture. Across the world, homes and temples will shine with rows of small lamps, or diyas, lit to honour the victory of light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance.

Traditionally, Diwali is a time to welcome the goddess Lakshmi, bringer of abundance and prosperity. Families clean and decorate their homes, draw rangoli patterns at their doorways, and light lamps so that Lakshmi might find her way in. In northern India, it also marks the homecoming of Rama and Sita after years of exile and struggle, greeted by lamps lit in love and recognition. In southern stories, it celebrates Krishna’s victory over the demon Narakasura, the triumph of divine light over the shadow of ignorance.

Though the stories vary, the heart of Diwali is constant: illumination, renewal, and belonging. It reminds us that light isn’t the denial of darkness but its companion, that both are part of the rhythm of life.

For me, this season always brings a quiet sense of reflection. After months of movement and striving, autumn slows everything down. The trees loosen their leaves, the earth exhales, and what has been hidden in the bright pace of summer begins to show itself. It is, in every sense, a time of inner seeing.

In therapy and in life, we often enter this season inwardly: the darker places of the psyche where old pain and forgotten parts of ourselves live. To “call in the light” is not to drive out darkness but to meet it with warmth and awareness.

There’s a subtle difference between banishing darkness and illuminating it. The first divides the world; the second heals it. The light that truly transforms isn’t harsh or absolute, it’s gentle, like dawn finding its way through mist. It reveals without judgment. It shows what’s been waiting to be seen so it can rejoin the whole.

In psychotherapy, moments of light often arrive quietly. A sudden clarity in the middle of a conversation. A breath of compassion where once there was defence. The awareness that a part of us we thought was broken is simply asking to be met. These are small festivals of light in the therapy room, moments when two people sit together and presence itself does the healing.

The festival of lights is, in that sense, both outer and inner. The lamps and fireworks, the gatherings and prayers, echo an inner movement that all human beings recognise: the wish to remember what is luminous within us. The flame that never fully goes out, even when life feels heavy or uncertain.

When I think of calling in the light, I imagine it less as summoning something from beyond and more as allowing what is already here to be visible. It might appear through breath, through music, through the kindness of a stranger, or through a tear that finally falls after years of holding back. In those moments, we rediscover that the light isn’t elsewhere — it’s woven through the very fabric of being alive.

As Diwali lamps burn and the long nights settle in, I find myself quietly grateful — not just for the light itself, but for the path that led to needing it. The times of shadow, uncertainty, and loss have all prepared the way for the heart to open to brightness without fear.

So I light a candle on my desk tonight, a small gesture, nothing grand. Its flame dances in the still air, fragile and steady all at once. Around it, the darkness gathers, soft and alive. And for a moment, there is no separation between them, only the quiet rhythm of breath, of being, of light returning.