Posts Tagged with courage

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resilience

You tried to rip my heart out but I moved too fast. I sealed the gash with worthiness and love for who I am now, and for who I used to be. I used the silken threads of friendship and the reassurance of my own inner voice. I spread the balm of singing late into the darkest hours with a resonate instrument against my chest. I bathed in the warmth of self kindness, of compassion, of hot spicy tea and a fire in my little enamel stove. I breathed deeply into the knowing that my beauty, my courage, my passion for life are inner and eternal. That these few holes in my heart will heal, that I will expand, and radiate, and trust again.

— heidi kalyani, 2019 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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no longer, not yet

I have arrived — ripe — with both feet dancing in this place of no longer and not yet. I am making friends with uncertainty. Listening deeply. Loving enormously. Wrapping myself in vulnerability and answering yes. I’m bathing in transformation — rediscovering how to be soft and wise, curious and strong. My eyes are shining and my breath is deep. With courage as my companion, I’m ready to celebrate my full being again. No more silence to protect another’s comfort zone. My heart is alive, and my voice is my own.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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imperfect

I lie here nurturing my imperfect self, with my imperfect bear (worn thin from so many years of silent giving). Sometimes the tears puddle like a lake on my pillow (and Bear’s ears get wet), and sometimes I laugh so hard my body shakes. Freedom after so many years of suppression actually hurts. I’m unaccustomed to taking up so much space, to breathing so deeply, to expressing myself so fully. I know I’ve made mistakes, hurt others when I didn’t intend to, misunderstood, miscalculated, fallen down and hit my head so hard my jaw slammed shut. I know that. The reminders are everywhere for me to see (and sometimes shouted at me). What I forget is how resilient I am, how much courage and flexibility I’ve cultivated. How much awareness. I’m relearning how to love my imperfect self, as I love my imperfect bear — with curiosity, compassion, kindness and warmth.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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gram

Every time I saw her she told me her heart ached — though, of course, she never said so in words. Born on a cold corner in Winnipeg, watching siblings multiple on the Prairies, growing up too fast on a train ride to Ontario — her father dead before he could fetch them at the station. The play of her hands in her lap, her not-so-gentle smack a “love-pat”. A serious oldest sister, the only one with work during the long depression, waiting for marriage, waiting for children, already forty-six when her baby turned five. Patience and perseverance knitted and twirled into dog blankets, shawls and slippers in colours all longing for spring. Widowed early — outliving family, dogs and flimsy tin houses. Creases at the edges of her lips, a rough tremor in her voice, a distance in her eyes like waiting for things to die.

— heidi kalyani, 2018 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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untitled

I feel emboldened
by the astonishing courage of plants
as they poke their tiny green heads
above the soil

Is it faith,
habit,
instinct,
that allows them to burst forth
with such boldness?

It seems a mad disregard for safety,
and a deep embracing of vulnerability,
to come into a Northern spring
tender, naked and green

— heidi kalyani, 2017

{Thanks to the lovely folks at Open Heart Forgery for publishing these words in the Open Heart Farming 2017 issue!}

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longing

Your eyes are burning with a longing most of us are afraid to see — we turn away, drown in distraction, pretend it’s imaginary, try to protect our own disappointment with the way things are. Your longing is a fire that emits intense heat. It’s raw and visceral and inflames each draw of breath so that you gasp on your inhales and pour out great plumes of fire on your exhales. It’s a longing for wholeness, for depth, for connection, for a kind of beauty you thought was natural until you were taught that no one else believed it was true. But I believe in it. And I’ve been dreaming of finding you. As I drift into sleep, lie on warm grass gazing at clouds, or scratch words into a notebook as fast as my hand will allow, I whisper softly to the universe, “I am here! I am alive! I want to build a new world with you!”

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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being with water

Perched on the edge of the dock, the smallest amount of my flesh possible in contact with the wood, I try to appear casual, as if slipping into the water below is as routine and natural as drinking tea. A thing to do alone or with company. A commonplace activity we all learned to be comfortable with long ago. But it’s not. The tightness in my stomach tells me so. There are too many unknowns, suffocating memories, habitually reactivated fears. There is clearly a way to be with water that I haven’t discovered yet. An ease that exists, is present in those near me, but rushes into dark corners whenever I’m around. It’s not a thing to fake; “Look at me jumping, splashing, diving in!” Choking. Gasping. Drowning. Dead. Not a game of “breathe and push through it”, although I’ve played that one before and enjoyed the outcome. Sometimes fear is fear. The knot in my stomach tells me so. So I sit, chatting with the nearest soul, sunning myself, counting minutes off like elongated years, hoping no one will notice that I’m not yet wet.

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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alternate realities

In the middle of the night when I’m not sleeping, I imagine other realities that might have been if I’d expressed my attraction to this person or that one, or run off to live in the woods or on an organic farm, or if I’d never been told that I couldn’t sing or that my legs were too short and my thighs too wide. What if I’d gone to art school instead of travelling the country, or taken my clothes off that night by the river, or said “yes, but…” instead of just “yes”? What if I’d business-partnered with my boss, closed doors as I walked out of rooms rather than letting the people I was walking away from follow me? What if I had done everything differently? Turned it all upside down? The number of possible worlds I could be living in is overwhelming. And in some ways, under the cover of darkness, and with the delirium that comes with too much raw energy and not enough sleep, each of them seems not only plausible, but real. I can feel the baby at my breast, I can see the bass-string-sized blisters on my plucking hand, I can hear the seductive laugh of the roommate I was too afraid to kiss, I can taste the fresh sweetness of the mangoes and avocados that grow in my backyard. And after a time of revelling in the realness of what might have been, I slip out from under the blankets and begin work on what might still be!

— heidi kalyani, 2017 
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line

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project 139 – four

as you ran fingers along my spine, you asked, how did you get such strong muscles here? from carrying the weight of the world, i said.

heidi kalyani, 2016, from *project 139 (or less)*

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offering to the wind

Let me take some of your pain ― I won’t ingest it, or digest it, or claim it as my own, but I will hold it long enough to see it and feel it and know it. Then, if you want, I’ll raise my arms and offer it to the wind, where it will swirl around us and depart, unable to re-enter us because we’re no longer porous when we stand together. So tell me what’s in the bottom of your heart ― in the hardest, darkest, most guarded layers of feeling. In the place where you pile all the things you think you can’t handle ― the hurts, the betrayals, the guilt, the perceived failures. I know those layers are still tender on the inside, even if they’ve scabbed over on the surface. I know it’s painful to dislodge them, and that it might feel like removing even one of them will rip your entire heart open. And, my lovely friend, it might. It might also sting like hell. And it might cause a spaciousness that is foreign and terrifying since you’ve grown so accustomed to how a heavy, damaged heart feels. You might grieve the loss of the solidity, the familiarity, the constancy of the pain you’ve been carrying for so long. And as you remove the rocks and walls of the fortress you’ve built to protect your innermost self, you might also discover a capacity for love, for healing, for lightness you didn’t know you had. You might wonder how you ever lifted your body through the day with so much weight attached to it. You might feel suddenly dizzy and free and wild with possibility. You might cry. Or laugh. Or sleep. You might scream for hours or sing from the highest hill you can climb. So, I invite you to dig out your doubts, your fears, your shame, your confusion. And together, we’ll hold them up, honour them, and offer them to the wind.

— heidi kalyani, 2016
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line