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