Stay, love, and be willing to breathe in the storm. Stay, love, and let the tears come. Sometimes pain comes like a wave. It builds into a terrible peak and then crashes, threatening to drown you, over and over again. Sometimes pain gathers and moves in like thick clouds. Pain can be sharp and bright, achey and dull, immediate like lightning or creeping like fog. It can be sticky, heavy, and thick. Or so thin and cold that it burns.
Feel the pain move through you. Breathe deeply, let your mind, heart, body, and soul be easy.
The impulse is to run.
The impulse is to contract, to draw inward, to fight it or throw a wall up and defend.
Can you allow yourself to be with yourself, and the pain?
This is not easy. I won’t pretend that it is.
Can you let it be like weather? Let it come, and let it go.
You will feel alone.
And in a sense, you are. Yet also: you are never apart from the whole. You are whole. You are always connected. Your life is woven into the fabric of this Life. You are a beloved thread.
I grew up in a redwood forest, on the side of a mountain that looked out to sea. There is a beautiful feeling of being alone, yet profoundly connected, when you walk through a redwood forest.
I met a wonderful artist. Her name is Elizabeth Beier. She made a book called The Silver Forest: A Meditation to Ease Physical Pain. She was inspired to make it for a friend who has Cancer. I fell in love with the book. And so we got together and made this short film version. I narrated the story. It was made with love, and is offered to anyone who is in pain.
Kim Nicol 