Camille (1921) Dir. Ray C. Smallwood

Hannah Borger Overbeck, Holly, c.1915 (source).

good morning world   :)    ♥

Art by Lucy Grossmith

Edward Gorey's wonderfully odd Christmas illustration

this encounter seems very intimate and magical, like a moment in a dream

This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. The end of it omfg

It should also be noted that in the original post of this that I saw on FB, it’s remarked upon that the cat is stealing this stuffed tiger from the neighbor’s house. This is not his stuffed animal. He has stolen it multiple times apparently.

Sounds to me like it IS his stuffed animal.

The Shape of Grief

When the rhythm of your days,

your every thought,

and the smallest, most ordinary moments

were shared with a loved one, a presence now gone,

the absence becomes a shadow that follows,

subtle, unrelenting,

a quiet companion

bending around every corner of your life.

People speak of closure

as if it were a door to be shut,

a chapter to be neatly finished,

but grief does not respect such tidy conclusions.

It lingers in the quiet rooms of your home,

in the places where laughter once lived,

in the way sunlight falls

on the chair they no longer occupy,

in the hush that settles

after a voice you loved

no longer fills the air.

Grief is not a line to be crossed,

nor a mountain to be climbed,

it is a tide, an undercurrent

reshaping itself with the years.

Some days it rises sharply,

crashing against the fragile walls you’ve built;

other days it recedes,

leaving only a soft ache

that hums beneath the surface.

There come moments when the pain softens,

when the raw edge dulls to a quiet throb,

when memory brings a smile

instead of a wound.

And yet, even in those moments,

the shape of your life

remains forever altered.

The world moves on,

relentless and unknowing,

and you carry within you

a piece of what was lost,

an invisible weight,

both burden and balm.

Perhaps this is the truth:

there is no end to grief,

no forgetting, no real moving on.

Only the learning,

to live with it,

to breathe through it,

to hold love and loss

in the same trembling hands

without breaking.

Grief does not vanish; it changes, it reshapes you,

becoming a witness

to the depth of your love

and the vastness of the void left behind

And in this reshaping,

you find a quiet companionship,

a thread that binds you

to what was,

to what still matters,

to the fragile, beautiful persistence

of the heart itself.

~ 'The Shape of Grief' by Spirit of a Hippie

✍️ Mary Anne Byrne

~ Art by Olamik

Closer Than We Think

Our departed loved ones

are closer than we think.

Not gone,

but transformed,

woven into the quiet moments

of our lives.

Love, once given,

does not disappear.

It changes form,

softens,

and lives within

the spaces between us.

If we grow quiet enough,

if we let the world rest

for a moment,

we can feel it,

not as memory,

but as presence.

They are here,

just beyond the veil of sight,

breathing through the spaces

love once opened,

reminding us,

with every stillness,

that nothing truly loved

is ever lost.

~ 'Closer Than We Think' by Spirit of a Hippie

✍️ Mary Anne Byrne

~ Art by Olamik

via https://www.pinterest.com/pin/211174978580631/ on rubydusted

Rosa Chacel, from a diary entry featured in Diario, originally published in 1993

by Tom Hill