Naming Shadows

Breathing love.

Dear Reader, 

I turned 38 this week. The greatest gift was time spent by the stream, surrounded by my boy and my family, held in the arms of nature.

Lately, death has been an ever-present companion in my thoughts—motherhood does that. It sharpens your awareness of life's impermanence, our mortality, and the fragility that hums beneath the surface. As a maiden, I moved through the world in the language of metaphors, light, and untethered, living in the space between symbols and dreams. But in motherhood, everything has weight. Life becomes factual, tangible, and lived through the body—each moment inscribed in flesh and bone. The fear I now carry is real, palpable, woven into the rhythm of my breath. I don't miss my maiden self, but sometimes I long for her fearlessness, the ease with which she walked, untouched by the burden of knowing how fragile life truly is.

I have found no better way to meet this fear than to write. To put pen to paper is to name it, to give it shape, and in doing so, I begin to free myself from the superstition that silence keeps me safe. Writing is the act of release—unburdening my heart and letting go. Words become my offering to the world, a way to transform fear into something I can hold and understand so that I might release it, like seeds into the wind, trusting they will grow into something new.

I've been thinking about how many times I've held onto things I wanted to share—only to be silenced by the deep, ingrained trauma response. This was the same response many in my family and community carried after the war. The war, a period of almost five years of nonstop violence and death, left us deeply scarred and fearful. No one in my family ever talked about what happened to us. No one processed it, and no one sought help or support. The fear of death became a taboo, and we moved on as if it had never happened.

Somewhere along the line, I learned to carry the weight of silence. I believed that if I brought up death—or anything resembling it—I might summon it back into my life. This belief, rooted in the collective trauma of my people, has stayed with me unspoken but heavy, shaping how I navigate the world, how I handle fear, and how I protect those I love. This collective trauma, a result of the war that ravaged my community, has deeply influenced our beliefs and behaviors, instilling in us a fear of acknowledging and discussing death. But I'm beginning to understand that speaking these truths might be the only way to finally set them down.

When I studied Vipassanā, meditating for days, it felt like time unraveled, stretching into an eternity of stillness and insight. I often return to those days to ground myself, breathe, and remember how to be rooted in the truth of impermanence. 

The devastation in Gaza pulls this awareness of death even closer, stirring a deep and primal fear. But it also presses upon me the urgency to love more fiercely, to pour every ounce of care and tenderness into each moment. It becomes clear that life is too brief and precious to be anything but a vessel for love.

Grasping is a futile endeavor. This birthday, I gift myself the release—not from the inevitability of death, but from the burden of fear. I allow it to dissipate like morning mist under the gentle warmth of the sun.

Motherhood, like the natural world, teaches reciprocity. To receive life, we must also give back to it, tending to it with the same hands that cradle our children. In a world scarred by grief, the only response that makes sense is love—a love that is boundless, relentless, as real and necessary as breath. Love that is put into action.

Otherwise, why are we here?

With love,

Vanja

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