#33
on tending to the grief of being alive
dear you,
i hope you are finding moments of peace and tenderness these days.
i wish you a calm end to the year, full of warmth, joy, and gratitude <3
golden mornings in late autumn make life worth living.
i was sitting in one of my favourite cafes with the autumn sun shining through the windows on the most crisp morning a few weeks ago, and it felt like the first time in a very long time that i could just breathe a bit and feel somewhat myself.
this autumn has been incredibly difficult for everyone i know. we are living in terrible times, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to feel a sense of affinity and love for a world that time and time again reveals just how horrific it can be. i’m trying to forgive the small talk on a train or at the supermarket. i know many of us feel invisible and tired and alone. connection and acknowledgment can make us feel seen, and the fraying threads of our lives can be sewn together and made whole.
“i never have been in despair about the world. i’ve been enraged by it. i don’t think i’m in despair. i can’t afford despair. i can’t tell my nephew, my niece. you can’t tell the children there’s no hope”
james baldwin
the world is bizarre and beautiful. there is so much resilience and beauty in the midst of brutality. i feel that vulnerability and connection are the only things that really mean anything, and i’m at a point in my life where i just want to inhabit my life entirely and take care of myself the best i can. to listen to my body. to spend my days doing things that make me happy. to spend time with people who fill my cup. to honour the things that ease my heart. to not let hopelessness poison me.
love, faith, and joy are political. kindness, empathy, and community are radical. anger and love should carry and motivate us to call for liberation. a well-lived life includes a duty to one another and a sense of community with resistance to oppression.
“we belong to long, gorgeous lineages of endurance. we are all here because someone, somewhere, endured. when it feels impossible, find land. find breath. find each other. find songs and poems of endurance. seek out the journalists, the healers, the historians. this feeling (of despair, of rage, of unreality) is what helps us seek and preserve truth. this feeling doesn’t have to be turned into anything other than what it is to be endured”
“bearing witness is an honour. it is a commitment to truth-seeking. especially in the face of distortion, erasure, blackout, censorship”
@hala.n.alyan on instagram
i’ve been thinking about how our bodies protect us from things. how we often cry but don’t know why. how the early hours make everything feel heavier and more palpable. how we don’t even realise that things and people that used to be so big to us can seem like specks now. it doesn’t necessarily mean it all wasn’t once something big and important and precious though. it was my childhood best friend’s birthday last month and it made me think about how things don’t always work out and that is okay; the way friendships and relationships can end sometimes isn’t necessarily always good or bad, it just is.
“how was i supposed to feel then? about moving in the world? how could i touch anything or anyone without the weight of all of time shifting through us?”
ada limon, the endlessness
love finds you in a multitude of forms. if you’re like me, sometimes you feel like perhaps people can’t always meet you emotionally and make you feel loved at the level you deserve, and you blame yourself for this like ‘i’m asking for too much’, ‘i have too high expectations’, etc. but real, true love comes when you least expect it. it reassures you when you feel like you’re taking up too much space. you don’t have to question it because it is affirmed and reaffirmed until you internalise it. your needs and boundaries are respected, and it makes you realise everything you thought love was until then was a silhouette of what it truly is and can be.
“it’s a brutal and beautiful autumn”
alex dimitrov, together and by ourselves
i get so emotional when people acknowledge me when they don’t need to, and i realise i am a part of people’s lives. i tend to spend a lot of time in my head and by myself and i forget myself with others sometimes. i get so consumed by others and struggle to advocate for myself in any way. it’s so lovely then, when people send me a little text randomly. i love it when my friends send me things that remind them of me, like pictures of the moon or poetry or art or strawberry-related things or flowers or ceramics or animals or nature. or just when they ask me questions and listen to what i say. i’ve never had these things before. there’s so much love in the little things. it is consistent and enduring. the acknowledgment that i am thinking of you, i hope you’re well, i hope you’re thinking of me.
i was making plans with a friend last week, and we were looking at her calendar and talking about our birthdays that are coming up, and i saw that she had put my birthday onto her calendar and it made me so happy. we’ve only really known each other for a year but the fact that i had mentioned it in passing recently and she had then done that to let her remember, i honestly could have cried right then.
i think the purest form of love is consideration. when someone thinks about how things would make you feel, and acts according to that. when someone pays attention to you and holds you in regard when making decisions. when someone translates their love and care for you into the way you like to receive it. how much someone cares about you can be found in how much they consider you.
i had a lovely moment recently where the sun was setting on the river, the evening light was so beautiful, the birds were swooping in a group above me, and the soft sound of someone singing on the street enveloped me like a hug. something i truly cherish about this time of the year is my walk home at dusk with all the warm lights in houses and the company of my autumn playlists. it’s a nice moment with myself after the busyness of the day to just breathe and let myself be. it was raining in little drops when i walked home in the dark on the first day after daylight savings and i put my face up to the sky to feel it and i felt so free.
we can look at the multitude of the universe and our small place within it and feel so unimportant. but we exist within that vastness. you can stand and watch the trees shivering in the morning wind. you might be the only one around. but still, it dances. and still, you are here. and you can notice the way the sun slants through your windows throughout the day. how the rain falls from your roof. we get to observe the world and celebrate ourselves alongside it. the earth is capable of holding all of us and at the same time, keep spinning, keep giving us a new day.
“turning toward home, / i bend to collect a wrinkled postcard at the curb: / an advertisement for the monet exhibit. how i loved / those paintings when i was younger, all of them nearly / the same: / haystack, haystack, haystack. the only difference / the season and time of day, which is to say / they are like this grief these months later: / all the same but for the light”
amanda moore, from ‘everything is a sign today’, requeening
there is honestly just nothing better than laughing with friends until you can’t breathe and seeing pretty sunsets and strangers being kind to you and being cosy on a cold day. i love finding little things in books, like train tickets, postcards, and museum tickets. recently i found one for the musee toulouse lautrec from 1999 with a little illustration of one of his works. things can be so difficult but these little moments are like a love letter from the earth.
“i love october when the veil between the world is thinnest.
i love how at any moment i could forgive someone from the past”
alex dimitrov, love
the year is ending. i’ve been finding myself thinking a lot about last autumn and winter. it can be frustrating to think about the past, and how you could have done things differently with what you know now, but not knowing is part of growing, and experiencing discomfort is part of learning. anything i have ever lost has come around in another form, and when i move with purpose and love, nothing is ever really a loss.
there are no alternative paths except for the path we are in now. i had a conversation with a friend recently who was worried about the future, and what it holds for them. it can be terrifying to think about the decisions we have to make and the paths we can take. but it can also be pleasurable to know that there is so much that is being offered, and we have the opportunity to go one way or another.
don’t borrow grief from later in life, just enjoy the minute you are in. you can feel good knowing everything is out there, but for now i think it’s about enjoying and appreciating what we can and enjoying the mystery of what we can’t. it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the future, lately i feel like time is flowing like sand slipping through my fingers and i am terrified for what comes after this phase of my life, but for now, there are people to love and life to be lived.
how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.
there’s someone who lives near the train station and i pass by his house every day and majority of the time, he’s sat outside smoking and he smiles and waves and says ‘morning’, and it is so lovely. there are quite a few people like that who i see if not every day then very often, and we just intersect in each other’s lives in this small way which is so sweet to me. i don’t know who they are, and we might just smile and leave it at that, but it’s incredibly endearing. strangers truly do have an impact on our lives and we are those strangers to other people too.
clinging to the little moments that make me feel grateful to be alive lately. i love watching people running with the train and waving at their loved ones. i love laughing with friends. i love seeing wholesome encounters with strangers. i love the feeling in my tummy of a hot drink on a cold day. i love people who automatically smile at you when they walk past. i love watching children be children. i love seeing humans do silly little things like dance along to street musicians even if it’s a cold windy morning.
“hope is the hardest love we carry”
jane hirshfield, hope and love
i hope winter will be kind.
“i could say: it is not love that makes my heart pound, but my pounding heart - that makes love"
marina tsvetaeva, earthly signs: moscow diaries (1917-1922) (trans. jamey gambrell)
“today i heard my heart screeching like a subway train loudly enough to remind me it was still human loudly enough to hurt”
audre lorde, ‘hard love rock’ from the collected poems of audre lorde
i love being alive. i’m sorry for forgetting sometimes.
such a heart warming piece 💕 made my morning!