Week two. The fallen. When we are broken open so fully that our soul cannot do the healing it needs to do fully here… I believe a part of us goes somewhere else – perhaps back its origin, or somewhere amongst the stars, to be reborn. Over the past year and a half, I have imagined this as what I am going through. It was as if a large part of my soul was ripped right out of me, just the way his entire soul was from him.

When this image first formed in my mind, just months after his death, I imagined what it would be like to be pulled out of this physical world and all its tangible familiarities. I thought of the sheer terror of being dropped into a totally alien world, a world where even your arms and legs were no longer there… but only your essence and the silence around you. Sounds pretty horrific to me. And that is exactly how the earliest months felt. I constantly imagined myself in a dark void… a black ocean of silence.

I tried many times to run from this place, only to fall there again. And then one day, I finally realized that this wasn’t a place to run away from… this was the place I was taken to – a sanctuary – in which to heal and become strong enough to re-enter into the new life I was left with. Sometimes, the only way to survive is to fall.

About the Series: Through 40 weekly photos and accompanying essays, 'Still, Life' captures a deeply emotional and psychological journey of what it means to grieve, to heal, and to live on.

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