Into The Void
Being present to transformation.
Once a week, a friend and I meet on FaceTime to sit with grief. To feel it. To listen. To collaborate and create with it. It calls to us, this personal and collective grief is drawing us into a wider container of expansion, of dissolution, of embodiment. Grief to me right now is a presence, not something to overcome or move through, but a companion to know, to build a lifelong relationship with.
Most of the time, when I grieve openly, I’m met with compassionate consolations, hesitant hearts, and a subtle unease. This is love in motion. It’s the default expression of people’s hearts, empathy, and sometimes their inability to sit fully with grief, to witness and honor it, to be still alongside it, or their urge to fill it with familiar gestures. I know this because I’ve lived it.
Sitting with grief is learning its language that’s constantly shapeshifting. Feeling its weight without trying to fix it. Letting it move through the body and mind until it becomes a part of the living rhythm of our days.
So last week during our call, I expressed how my grief feels like I’m inside the void.
You may feel a flutter of fear at this word or at the feeling it awakens, and that’s okay. Each of us carries our own quilt of associations and experiences. Perhaps you’re not a Scorpio rising, with Pluto, Venus, and Mercury all in Scorpio. And, also, your story is entirely different from mine. And yet, beyond stories, placements, and the weight of associations, here we are together in this.
At its core, the void in Zen and existential philosophies is emptiness. It’s the recognition that all things are impermanent, interdependent, and without fixed essence.
What I’ve come to experience is that the void is not emptiness as a loss or lack; it’s the openness that allows reality to appear as it truly is, free from our projections. It’s a fertile space from which creation emerges.
When I was alone in Wild Cat Canyons during Covid, just after my womb surgery, I was in a void. I walked day and night across the hills, with no light but the moon. Owls and coyotes and quails moved beside me, my sweet companions in the dark. At nightfall, I stepped into the shadows without knowing what I’d find. I was afraid, but my curiosity and my instinct to be in the wild were stronger than my fear. Every dawn, when I returned home, I carried gifts. A stick shaped like a face. Pebbles that, when I held them, felt like holding my grandmother’s hand. An owl’s hoot that still lives in me, five years later. And the gift of walking itself, of being present to what the void holds, of moving through emptiness and finding it alive, fertile, and generous. It was only years later that I realized this had been my initiation into motherhood. Not while I walked, not while I grieved, not while I prayed, not while I danced. I had no idea at the time.
When I was living in Chapada Diamantina, I’d walk into the night while the village slept. I needed to be close to the wild animals, to breathe their scent, to feel the rhythm of their bodies in the shadows. I would crawl and howl and dance with them, alive in the heartbeat of the nocturnal world. That too was an encounter with the void, a voluntary step inside one, a step away from the structures of daily life. Years later, I’d see these void walks as an initiation into being an artist. The wild reminded me that I’m here to create.
To leave the familiar world and dissolve into the wild is a void.
A blank page is a void.
A womb is a void.
The soil in winter is a void.
A cave is a void.
A pause in breath is a void.
The desert is a void.
A river running under ice is a void.
A hollow tree is a void.
Losing a home is a void.
Losing a loved one is a void.
Moving to a new place is a void.
Leaving a job or career path is a void.
A relationship ending is a void.
Time alone in nature is a void.
Meditation is a void.
Motherhood is a void.
Love of all forms is a void.
The void is not still. It moves. It hums under the skin, behind the eyes, in the hollow of the chest. It’s the brush of an owl’s feathers in the dark, the howl of a coyote that shakes something ancient awake. It’s in the ache of loss. In the experience that seems unbearable and yet full of life.
The grief, the void, and creation are inseparable. To grieve is to enter the void, to sit in that space where the old self, the old story, the old way of being dissolves. And it’s here, in the surrender, that creation stirs. From the hollow, new forms emerge. Art, insight, love, and courage are born in the dark spaces we thought were empty. Every tear, every heartbeat, every echo in the chest feeds the seeds of something alive, something waiting.
Some days I feel my grief as the ink pressed into the brush, the void as the empty page that waits, and creation as the story that emerges, stroke by stroke, from their encounter.
Whatever void you’re in right now—and so many of us are moving through massive shifts, rebirths, and transformations—trust the timing. We hear it all the time: ‘trust the timing.’ But this is the void speaking. When grief, fear, or emptiness addresses you, do not interrupt. Lean in. Listen. Feel the tremor beneath your bones. Let it move through you.
Be present to your transformation. I would never have received the gifts of the void if I had drowned out its voice with headphones, missed the coyote’s howl, or ignored the whisper of intuition on my nature walks. If I had filled the emptiness with scrolling, distractions, or numbing, I would have missed it all. Society trains us to turn away from grief, to flee the discomfort of the void. But it’s in that void that you meet yourself: raw, unpolished, real. You feel the scent of the wild on your skin. This is what I want. This is my prayer. To constantly be reminded of the wild, running and pulsing and burning within.
Even the word avoid contains the void. No matter how much we try to escape its discomfort, it will pull us in.
And when things get hard, you let yourself break down in the presence of your friends. You cry the messy, full-bodied tears and feel it all. You descend, you shed, you let the old wash away like a snake shedding its skin. A year of these tears becomes a river, carrying you forward.
And when you reach the void so deep, even to your own surprise, only more love rises to meet you. You never know what it will bring: a stick that wears the shape of a face, a lesson, a new life, or simply the acceptance of what is.
Love,
Vanja
Thank you so much for collecting a painting or a print. This watercolor style has emerged through my practice this year, marking a new direction in my work. All of me is in these paintings. Their mythic imagery, feminine divination, and dream-language have guided and informed me so tenderly, and I feel honored that they now bring that presence and energy into your life.
If you’d like a gift for yourself or a loved one, whether for the holiday season or to mark the turning of the Year of the Serpent, I have 15 original paintings and a few limited-edition prints left. Please place your orders in the next few days to ensure they arrive in time. If you’d like any further information on a painting that resonates with you, please feel free to email me.
Thank you for this. In my own void now, nighttime is the hardest time to be with it. Perhaps I need to rise earlier and go walk around in it.
Reading this post was such an affirming nod to my soul, thank you.