When the Waterfall Cries Out the Forsaken

This piece began as forgotten journal entries written during the hardest rupture of my life.

When one experiences a sudden loss, they experience a sense of shock. It’s like the floor underneath you is being pulled. What comes after unfolds as resilience and strength, not by fighting but instead learning to stay even in darkest storms that hits like a rupture. To keep choosing yourself each and every day, even if you don’t want to.

The moment one allows themselves to be unsteady, fear cracks and loses its throne. The essence stops proving, stops performing. And in the hush that follows, the storm kneels, and a new self steps forward from the quiet.

Now, I’m standing where the tide carries me instead of pulling me under.

08.08.2023

My life came undone, facing problems with no answers, events so large they overturned everything I thought I could hold. The uncertainty feels unbearable, the quiet work of holding myself together while everything else is falling apart.

What is a waterfall
if it does not cry out the forsaken?

What do tears stand for
if one is meant to remain iron?

15.08.2023

I don’t know who I am, and the loneliness of that feels sharp. It’s a life far beyond anything I’ve ever known, and stepping into it means leaving everyone I love behind, one by one.

There are so many thoughts closing in on me at once. I don’t know where I’m meant to go or where I might land, if anywhere. I feel as if I’m chasing something that has already ended, as if everything around me has quietly worn itself out.

I keep arriving at these quiet endings within, feeling like I’ve moved out of alignment with my own truths. The disappointment is nothing but a quiet truth I have no choice but to face myself. And in the end, it is the self I abandoned that stands quietly on the other side.

In truth, my battle has always been with myself.

Change is an escape
from what no longer evolves—
an essence changing shape,
becoming another form.

One may escape
the unmasked core,
but the essence knows
that even in silence
its soul is suffering.

03.09.2023

I’m getting better now, but I can’t help wondering what’s at stake if the same rupture hits me again.

What if life brings me back to the version of myself whose presence feels like a quiet betrayal?

Standing under the weight of gazes where judgement disguises itself behind the mask of sympathy, how would each dawn arrive as a new beginning?

But what of the silent screams
that one buries inward?
Their echo grows louder
in the darkest corners of one’s soul.

Shame turns into hypocrisy
when a life is spent
not with joy
but with endurance.

10.09.2023

When everything fell apart, I had nothing left but to look fear in the eye and admit my defeat.

In the place where everything felt impossible to untangle, where it seemed nothing would ever get better, something shifted. Air found my lungs again the moment I stopped fighting the storm and quietly accepted it.

Not all at once, but slowly, life began to find its way back to me in its own rhythm.

Even the caterpillar transforms
in a quiet shelter from the world.
What once was
deserves a farewell,
a shield made of gentleness.
Only then can a butterfly is born,
beautifully anew.

09.10.2025

When the biggest rupture of my life hit me, it wasn’t only my health I lost but the sense of self that I deeply admired. When the ground beneath me disappeared, the shock of life collapsing suddenly left me without anything solid to hold.

Today someone asked me, if I had a magic wand, what would I change?

I thought I’d give up anything to reverse my condition, so why not a wish from a magic wand?

Yet somehow that didn’t feel right. I realised that through all the ruptures my health put me through, I owe it a quiet kind of gratitude, because if it weren’t for Parkinson’s, I would have never become the person I am today.

The one who can stand in her truth and say, I am proud.

The light that survives the shadows,
the flame beneath illusion,
the peace of one’s inner oracle,
the thread that holds
everything together—

the quiet fact beneath the noise
is the pulse beneath appearances.

If the legacy of what once was
is forsaken not with compassion
but with a bruise that still burns
Birds can still fly
but the essence remains imprisoned.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Below is the full poem:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhen the Waterfall Cries Out the Forsaken

What is a waterfall
if it does not cry out the forsaken?

What do tears stand for
if one is meant to remain iron?

Change is an escape
from what no longer evolves—
an essence changing shape,
becoming another form.

One may escape
the unmasked core,
but the essence knows
that even in silence
its soul is suffering.

But what of the silent screams
that one buries inward?
Their echo grows louder
in the darkest corners of one’s soul.

Shame turns into hypocrisy
when a life is spent
not with joy
but with endurance.

Even the caterpillar transforms
in a quiet shelter from the world.
What once was
deserves a farewell,
a shield made of gentleness.
Only then can a butterfly is born,
beautifully anew.

The light that survives the shadows,
the flame beneath illusion,
the peace of one’s inner oracle,
the thread that holds
everything together—

the quiet fact beneath the noise
is the pulse beneath appearances.

If the legacy of what once was
is forsaken not with compassion
but with a bruise that still burns
Birds can still fly
but the essence remains imprisoned.

Author’s note:

The journal entries above are all direct quotes from forgotten pages I once avoided returning to. Going back to them wasn’t easy. I met each of them with tears. If it touched you, if it made you pause, I’d be genuinely appreciate your support as a paid subscriber. It helps me keep showing up and sharing honestly, even when it’s not easy.

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