“Come stand in the clearing where pain cannot last.

Come weep with the weeping and endure what is past.

Welcome the nightingale singing again

Of the place where the truth can be seen as a friend.”

This is from a longer poem I wrote called “Healing Again.” This clearing is vital for me. I quickly forget that it exists and I begin to doubt every good thing I ever knew. The pain pins me to the floor of doubt and I begin to wrestle with it. I lose every time.

But at some point in my day I remember the clearing and I find myself there. And I am befriended by the silence.

I know you have had your heart broken and felt the world turn gray with despair. That is the nature of this world. It is not a breeding ground for happiness, for happiness is only found within.

I was lucky to find teachers and books that I could draw wisdom from as I recovered from my years of grief. I never minded spending money on the piles of spiritual books I bought. But at some point I begin writing my own. They were about my own dark life in a world I couldn’t manage. But the people that found them liked them. And I liked writing. It was my way of being creative.

I begin writing humor before I turned to writing about spirituality. Occasionally I still write a funny piece that makes people laugh and I love that. But the silence beckons me back again regardless of how good or bad my day has been.

The silence is the clearing where pain cannot last. I now write from that. I am older and wiser and spend most of my time alone. My house is a citadel, an ashram, a place where I find myself renewed.

These notes are from the old Vicki and the new Vicki and honest to God, I cannot tell them apart. They are intermingled, darkness and light, pessimism and truth in all its power. The truth wins, of course. And then love rushes in and sweeps me off my feet. And my absent loves smile in their heaven and life goes on.

Vicki Woodyard