Dancing between light and shadow
An invitation to sit with the shadows — and remember your own light.
There’s something about spring light in Corsica. It somehow has a way of bringing things into focus. These past few days I’ve realized that this season makes me pay attention differently, not just to what’s visible, but to what’s revealed.
When I walk in the streets, I often find myself reaching for my camera, almost instinctively, even when I don’t carry it with me. It’s something I used to do often, especially during the first weeks after our move to the island, when everything felt luminous and new.
This month marks eight years since my partner and I left mainland France and crossed the sea to settle in Corsica — his island.
Eight years since I first set foot in my new home, sea breeze on my skin, heart full of uncertainty and wonder. I didn’t know then what to expect. I didn’t know how this island would slowly begin to heal my wounds.
And that healing started with me reaching for my camera to capture the spring light.
Eight springs later, I still find myself mesmerized by this light, but I see it differently now.
I’ve changed. The way I look has changed.
I often find myself captivated by a shadow stretching on a wall and revealing details previously unseen, by the mystery a contrast between light and darkness can bring to an ordinary everyday scene, or by how light glimmering on the sea has the power to add depth and contrast to a surface that seemed otherwise calm and peaceful. I used to think I was just chasing beauty. But now I wonder if this fascination doesn’t run deeper.
I've been playing with this subtle dance between light and shadow not just as a photographer but long before that as a dancer.
I started taking dance classes when I was 4 and practiced regularly — though just for fun — until my twenties. If I loved dancing, what I loved even more were the end-of-year dance shows. Dance rehearsals and curtain calls are among my best memories. There was the spotlight, yes — the glow of being seen, the thrill of the performance. But just as vivid in my memory are the shadows: waiting backstage, adjusting costumes in dim dressing rooms, the hush of anticipation before stepping out. This is particularly true for my memories of the two student musicals in which I performed while I was in business school — my last performances on stage. The picture I joined in My Inner Revolution essay comes from one of these musicals, and when I think of it, this specific performance — dressed as an Indian warrior, dancing a contemporary piece set to tribal music — felt, more than anything, like a dance with the shadows.
So that rhythm of stepping into the light, and then slipping back into the dark, felt natural to me for a very long time. Familiar. Safe, even. And I was as comfortable in the spotlight as in the shadows.
Until a different kind of darkness started creeping into my life, until I eventually stopped seeing my own light. From that moment on, I started avoiding the spotlights altogether and stayed hidden in the shadows for many years.
But during that time, the shadows weren’t the safe place I used to enjoy as a dancer — the place filled with anticipation and quiet magic. These shadows felt like a prison I couldn’t free myself from.
Though I didn’t know it at the time, moving to Corsica eight years ago was decisive in breaking free from that prison. Starting chasing the light with my camera was one of the creative paths that helped me on that journey.
This past year — and even more so these past few months — I’ve felt something shifting. As if life were asking me not just to observe the contrast, but to integrate it.
Not just to capture the light, but to understand what gives it meaning, by looking more deeply at the shadows.
A few weeks ago, someone hinted at my ability to navigate the darker side of life, to play with the darkness. At first, I smiled at the poetry of the term they used, the darkness whisperer, linked to my unconscious sun in Gate 28 in Human Design. But the more I sat with it, the more it resonated.
Darkness has been a constant in my life. Not only because of the many deaths I’ve had to mourn over the years, but also because I’ve always been drawn to certain conversations, certain films, certain pieces of music or art, and certain patterns in people’s voices or behaviors. I don’t flinch at the dark, I lean in. Not to satisfy a creepy attraction or morbid curiosity, but to understand it. To sit beside it long enough for light to begin tracing its edges, like in photography.
Darkness and shadows have always fascinated me because they are a reflection of the human soul.
I deeply believe we all carry a darker side, some of us are just more or less comfortable letting it be seen. And I don’t think that this darker side should be feared. For me, it’s part of what makes us human. That’s probably why this recent reflection about the darkness whisperer and the idea of playing with the darkness resonated so much with me.
This light and shadow thread has been showing up in my work, too.
For years, I stayed mostly in the dark, behind the scenes — shaping messages, fine-tuning strategies, and doing the quiet execution work that rarely gets the spotlight, especially when you write for others. It was safe. Familiar. Useful. But something in me knew I wasn’t meant to stay in the shadows forever.
And as I began looking more deeply at my own shadows, something inside me started stirring these past few months. A quiet nudge to stop dimming myself. To trust my voice. To use this darkness. To claim my own light, not to satisfy my ego but to guide others toward their light.
The darkness whisperer idea pointed to something I hadn’t fully owned: my own capacity to hold space for what others hide, to be comfortable enough with my shadows to somehow give others permission to face their own, but also to hold the mirror and reflect back what they struggle to see on their own. To bring them the perspective they’ve lost sight of.
Recently, as I’ve embraced more my own shadows and started stepping out and using my experience and perspective to help others, I’ve come to realize that this is what moves me. Not just light itself, but the moment someone sees their own light again.
Through my communication work, my role is not to drag people into the light. I’m here to sit beside them in the dark and create the conditions where their own light can begin to return. Not in loud declarations, but in quiet recognitions: when they remember who they are or speak something they’ve never said aloud, when they start to see their own strengths or reclaim a part of themselves they thought had gone dim.
And I know I’m able to see my own light now because this reflection has been offered to me, too.
These past few months, I’ve surrounded myself with people who were not expecting perfection from me. People who encouraged me instead to slowly embrace the flaws, the doubts, the failures, the fears that have crippled me for so many years. People who mirrored things I couldn’t see anymore or hadn’t yet seen in myself. People who slowly reminded me of my own rhythm, my own light, when I was lost in the in-between and the comparison.
I’m starting to see that this is how light moves, not in grand beams, but in quiet reflections. Someone holds it up for you when you’ve forgotten how to see it. And one day, without even trying, you do the same for someone else.
Light cannot exist without darkness.
To be in the light doesn’t mean fleeing the dark, it means learning to hold both, and to dance with them. To create, to guide, to remember who you are.
And maybe that’s what this season is asking of me. And maybe of you too?
What has light revealed to you lately — or what shadow have you come to see with new eyes?
I’d love to hear what this brings up for you.
As it’s National Poetry Month in the U.S., I leave you with this beautiful haiku
wrote me with the word “shadow” I gave her - before even reading this essay! Perfect for it, don’t you think?
Gorgeous words and photos. When I see that you have posted, I know that reading it is going to make my day (which it did)!
Beautiful, Maïlys. Your photos are stunning, as are your words. I love the concept of holding space for others to see their own light. What a wonderful way to support and empower. Thank you so much for sharing this piece!