Posts Tagged with transformation

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sprouts

In the kitchen, I stand with my hands in the sink, rinsing seeds, tending sprouts. There is a freshness that I love — a smell, a brightness, a burst of energy — a willingness to be transformed. I run a little more water over them, shake the jar to drain it, watch the tiny seeds slide down the sides of the glass, and place it back on the ledge where it soaks up the sun. The sprouts are at the little-tail-peeking-out-of-the-ball stage, babies really, so near the beginning of their new journey. With my hands still wet, I wonder if I’m so different from those little specks of green. Am I not also a bright ball of energy, soaking up nourishment, and bursting into the world in a brave new form?

— 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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becoming

If I knew my name, I’d tell you. I’d whisper it in your ear, my lips brushing the skin of your face, my breath warming the space between us. Or I’d yell it from the top of the hill everyone calls a mountain, my voice reaching the top branches of the trees where the ravens circle. I’d tell you other things about me too, if I knew. I’d place words on leaves in the splashing stream, waiting until you’d read one to send another. I’d fold sentences into pieces of scrap paper and fly them to you on gusts of wind. I’d share everything with a handful of dried grasses, light a fire, and let you read the smoke messages that curled through the night air. I’d introduce you to who I am about to become… if I thought I was done.

— 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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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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taking up space

 

Safety is knowing that I can breathe fully without the fear of taking up too much space. It’s knowing that your arms are open to me when I’m shining or when I’m a mess. It’s knowing that I can say no when I want to without suffocating under a mountain of guilt or shame. It’s being able to gently stretch into my full size with pride, finally seeing that someone else’s discomfort is their own challenge, not mine.

 

— 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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gifts of imperfection

This second hand dress, with its tiny tear along the hemline and extra threads where the hook and eye have been reinforced more than once, fits me perfectly in size and character. A new dress with this many details and such beautiful but delicate material would go around and around in circles from my closet to a test-fitting in front of the mirror and back again, destined to never be worn for fear of damaging it. But I can slide into an already used dress, with its gifts of imperfection, on the same day it comes home with me. I can take it for a gentle walk in the woods, wear it while practicing harmonium sitting cross legged on the floor, stuff it into a knapsack and fly it across the world. It’s the fear of the first fluff ball, the first pull, the first hint of a sweat stain that relegates a dress to life in my cupboard. But a second hand dress is already free. Already beautiful in it’s own unique way. Already broken in. Like me.

— 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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quietly now

Step closer, she said, if you want to hear my soul speak. It shares quietly now — through masks and mirrors and false self-doubt. It’s been startled, mis-heard and put down so many times that it no longer shares freely what it used to share so fiercely.

— 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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rewind

Thank you for helping me end the deep aching aloneness I have known for so long. The kind of aloneness that comes from not being heard, from believing in shades of grey others see as black or white, from being on the edge of no longer trusting my own intuition. The kind of aloneness that permeates so fully it becomes a surface, a skin, something that sheds kindness and human contact even when I want it more than anything. The kind of aloneness that is amplified by large crowds, and the quietest, darkest hours of the night. These are the kinds of aloneness that had become so ingrained, so habitual, so conditioned, that no matter how hard I tried to move forward, I always seemed to rewind.

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