Sorrow is quiet and soft.
How strange, that during the saddest times, the quiet is the loudest voice of all.
Tonight, I send my voice into the stillness.
To honour the love and the sorrow that lingers when we lose our most precious hearts.
Quiet, the place where unconditional love floats free.
Peace. Our soft and gentle, forever home.
In the lonely hours
they cry for their humanity.
For the lost past,
for the uncertain present
they wander lost.
Together,
alone.
What is this softness
that takes my heart dancing
beneath the sad moon?
When aching life pours from the sky,
and my heart cries
to be heard
for once
without question.
Will I listen?
No.
I will hear,
but I will not listen, for fear,
of what?
The heart needs too much.
The heart needs too much
that I,
whoever I am,
cannot ask life to give.
Stay.
Listen to this quiet wind
and know:
this too shall pass.
Stay.
Hush.
Hush.
Stay.
Tomorrow,
we begin again.
☀️
Mental health is a very important issue at this time, and precious human lives are the sweetest thing. Including yours. Reach out for help if you need it, beautiful friend. There are people who can help you find your own sun again. Let them. So much love. You’ve got this. You do. ❤️
Reality strikes hard, sometimes.
The pain.
The pain of others: it tears me to the bone.
The delicacy of life, its precious petals.
It all aches within this lithe human frame of mine.
Cold impermanence.
Startling truth.
Fragile life.
Sometimes it tears us.
And I know you don’t want to,
but let yourself see:
sometimes it tears us.
I will hold you when it tears you.
I will hold you.
I will hold you.
Some days I fall. I’m not a good mum. I’m not a good human. I’m not a good me, on those days I fall.
It’s not a consolation to know that I do not fall alone. That humanity itself is in constant fluctuation, that some days we rise and some days we fall. I’ve fallen. Me. The writer of these words, the feeler of these aches. On those days I wish for more, I also wish for peace. The two do not go hand in hand.
But it’s not as easy as finding peace and being happy with that. Without this beautiful depth—without this wild and wistful wind that moves me—there would be no passion to whoosh me along the creative river of life, the river I know and love so well.
Is it about lowering the expectations I have of myself? Or is it about lowering my expectations of life? What, I wonder, would help me to feel at peace in a world that so often clips my wings.
I was given wings to fly.
I long to use them.
Is this me, using them? Right in this moment, is this the way I was meant to fly? To write about love and loss and sorrow and sacrifice? About life at its best and life at its worst and how, at some level, it’s all the same thing, anyway?
What is it all for?
And when will I stop asking: what is it all for?
Today my heart is quiet.
And it knows deeply
that it has lived.
I bounded out of bed. No, really, I bounded out of bed and bounced around my room, arms and legs flailing— a sort of contemporary dance concoction that would have won me the award for the most daggy morning-human, ever. ( Like, ever ever. )
I’m glad I listened to the quiet whisper that asked me to flick Spotify onto a super playlist of YES, and go with it. It started my day beautifully, and had me connecting to my heart and full energetic flow right away, which I struggle with from time to time, I’ll admit.
I’m feeling positive, at the moment, which feels empowering and wonderful on the back of the bouts of depression I’ve found myself wading through over the past couple of years. I’m probably a little odd in my take on the denser human experiences such as depression, but I believe it’s all there to frame life and to, ultimately, make it better. To show us who, how and where we are now, and to teach us who, how and where we would prefer to be.
Without times of imbalance, how can we possibly know and appreciate our body in equilibrium? How can we recognise the things in life we need to shift if we don’t experience a reaction to them? How can we feel deep empathy for others experiencing tough times, if we haven’t stomped through the sludge, ourselves?
Do I like being depressed? Well, no. It’s a journey fraught with many a winding road and impossibly steep hill. But do I see how it has grown me as an empathic human and broadened my perspective for the good of a great deal more people than just me? Absolutely. And I’m so, so grateful.
I am also grateful to able to dance about the house like an absolute loon and, rather than feel silly, fully LOVE the ways this body of mine can be all the magical things.
YES!
But if I was always
happy
how would I know
the absolute beauty
of real
human
connection.
And how would I discover
the strength
I have
inside.
Rainy days,
come find me sweet.
Spill your goodness
into the arms of the day,
until the sun shines on the fields
once more.
brooke-cutler.com 