Posts Tagged with pain

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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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cut open

I’m being cut like a frozen river by the blade of a skate. It stings and seethes — for awhile — then heals over with fresh snow or the thaw and re-freeze of a sunny afternoon. I’m tracing circles through the layers of my life — trying to make sense of patterns that aren’t clear, or perhaps aren’t there. I’m looking at myself in the mirror, on the shiny surfaces of the technology that surrounds me, in the reflective eyes of the people in my sphere. And I’m seeing a crust, a veneer, a peel. But what am I beneath my outer layers — the ones that I ritually put on for protection when I walk out the door, or that I let others slip over me so that my packaging pleases them more? What leaks through when I’m cut by loss or fear — or love? (For when it’s open and deep, love makes a cut too.) Is it emotion? Vulnerability? Honesty? Integrity? The wildness of possibility? And how beautiful would it be if we let ourselves, and others, bleed our glorious life-juices all over the fresh white snow, instead of trying to pretend that we’re perfectly smooth and together both above and below the surface — especially when there’s a vibrant, messy, unruly fire burning in us!

— 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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project 139 – seven

for years, i was so afraid of being hurt, i hermitted and let only my drawings in — a collection of thin curving lines, my only companions.

heidi kalyani, 2017, from *project 139 (or less)*

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stones

There are parts of our time together that I still remember, and I keep those like stones, in my pocket. Though they are pleasing and sparkly in certain kinds of light, they weigh me down. They rattle when I walk, make my takeoffs and landings heavy when I try to fly, and press painfully against my bones when someone else embraces me.

— 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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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

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night sky

Sometimes when you fall asleep in my arms, I whisper things that I’ve never spoken to you ― or anyone ― out loud before. I speak of how much I love the curvy topography of your ears, and how the distribution of freckles on your back reminds me of drops on a windshield when it first starts to rain. Of how the richness of your voice resonates through my head in the quiet hours of the night, as well as in the loudest moments of the day, warming me from the inside out, and clearing the static from my system with its vibration. I tell you about a pain in my heart that I’ve had as long as I can remember ― a pain that has thick and thin places, a pain of separation that eases when I’m alone in the woods or wrapped around your reciprocating body. I tell you about the visions I have in the middle of the night, when almost every other creature is still and silent, but my mind is racing in circles trying to make sense of the day’s words and images before they fade away. I tell you what it’s like to feel the emotions of everything around me, human and non-human alike, how it overwhelms my internal sensors, fries my nervous system, makes me believe I am someone I’m not. And I whisper that, for years, I’ve looked up at the night sky, hoping to find you, somehow mixed in with the stars.

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

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breaking open

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Today I am a volcano. I am spewing energy, like lava, all over everything. I already set my house on fire. Now I’m making my way through the woods, sparking powerful jolts of flame with every footfall. I leave burn marks on the road. I evaporate puddles from last night’s rain. I overheat the air, causing insects to rise higher to escape me. I am heading for the water, where I hope to temporarily contain my eruptions by throwing myself in. I need a pause in the intensity and speed of these sensations, these revelations. Like this, I’m burning a millennium of fuel every microsecond. Khalil Gibran wrote, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” My shell is broken. And understanding is beginning to illuminate everything.

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

 

 

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learning from difficult situations

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Recently, I was overwhelmed by a confusing and painful situation — trying to see it from all angles, trying on all of the emotions surrounding it, trying to eliminate it with distraction, flush it with tears, disassemble it with logic… but it wouldn’t let go. Then finally, at the point of screaming, “leave me alone!” I came across this quote by Buddhist teacher, Pema Chödrön. “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” So, I’m going to brew another cup of tea and open my heart to hearing what I need to hear… until the tension goes away. Breathe deeply. Listen fully.

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