Healing Lights

We're Two Years Old! + Our Second Guest Post

Howdy, people! Announcement time:

We’re two years old!

Boy, it’s been a wild ride so far. I can honestly say that my time on Substack has changed me for the better, as a writer and even as a person. If you won’t believe me, believe my wife. I’m a calmer, more confident and assertive version of the guy who started this newsletter on November 18, 2022, a month after we got married.

Just like last year, I thought that the best way to communicate my continued excitement for this newsletter project and the platform as a whole was to invite a fellow writer, whose work I admire, to pen a guest post for me.

Today, I bring you

Nadia Gerassimenko

, a wonderfully poetic writer and friend whose prose never fails to move me.

She wrote a brave, vulnerable essay about coming to terms with her feelings at the end of a bad relationship with the help of music.

I hope you find the following piece as wonderful as I did.

Cover art for Elisapie’s single Forefathers

It was 2010 and my heart was broken, my body in flames, my soul misplaced. I didn’t know who I was anymore, the child in me slipping away, only a fragmented ‘I’ remained.

Mentally I was suffering from trauma of a former unhealthy relationship, physically from initial symptoms of Lyme Disease.

Only in retrospect did I understand how dealing with both, departure and disease, impacted the way I experienced life at the time. Almost each day felt like a spiral of stress, grief, isolation, rage, agony, and sickness.   

I didn’t know how to cope. I didn’t understand how I could suffer so much from a break up when others seemed to carry on so painlessly, so effortlessly, if not expressing to my face, then with their eyes that I should get over my pain already. Or so was my perception, naively not realizing everyone suffers from something or other, some all by their lonesome.

I didn’t understand how and why every fiber of my being was on fire, and nothing could put it out. One cold winter night, I swear, I wanted take a ball of snow and press it to my heart to chill the heat.

Instead I sometimes drank—alone, at night. To not feel, at least for a little bit. But the numbness only masked, and felt as terrible.

The infernal feeling was inflammation, a word foreign to me then. There were fleeting moments of freedom and peace—almost no ache, no fire—at least I had that.

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One November evening my now belated grandmother invited me to a concert at a local community establishment. I didn’t know who the performer was, I didn’t know what to expect. I was hesitating to attend it, my body feeling heavy—an immovable rock—but a little light part of me propelled me to go.

As if the child in me crawled her way through and whispered gently, tonight there will be stars—healing lights.

Before the concert started, I found out the performer was Elisapie Isaac—a singer and songwriter from Salluit, Québec, birthed from Inuk mother and father from Newfoundland.

As Elisapie came out into the dark-lit stage and spoke in a tender voice, introducing herself and her first song, a little part of me sparked, that part kept sparking exponentially all through the starry night.  

When Elisapie sang, she was like a soft sparrow. I could feel myself taking flight and being transported to a northern starlit winter landscape where snow was shimmering and crisp, where humans and animals and wildlings co-existed in respect and harmony, where light and love reigned. Where my heart felt warm despite the cold.

I looked to my neighbors and I could sense they too were spellbound; she was an immersive storyteller.  

After the concert ended, I felt so much—catharsis, healing, euphoria—my body could explode with fireworks. I absolutely had to buy Elisapie’s album There Will Be Stars.

When I returned home, I burst out to my mother, “I’ve healed, mama!” It was a premature thought, considering it took me more years of emotional healing and re-healing after that. By re-healing, I mean the process is non-linear and chaotic and can often feel regressive although progress is still made.  

(And spoiler alert: I’m still chronically ill, but at least in remission from Lyme. I’ll take it.)

Nonetheless I had hope that night, and that was a good start.

Since then, I had There Will Be Stars playing on repeat.

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There are several songs from this melancholy yet uplifting folk-pop album that resonate with how I felt at the time. Elisapie’s words were mirroring my life experiences, and it was somehow comforting; I didn’t feel as isolated anymore.

In the album’s second—rather bouncy—song, “Butterfly,” Elisapie coos delicately, a lament:

In my life there’s a dark hole
In that hole there’s a future butterfly
I become a shelter of fear and desire
Why, why why, I don’ know why
I just end up crawling when I try
To say the simple words kiss me goodbye
Why, why, why, I don’t know why
Always end up crawling when I try
To fly, to fly

For me, it was difficult to part ways with the former boyfriend. It was first love, and there was still love. But more importantly, the dynamics became unwholesome with manipulation being a commonly used tactic. Power and control, too. 

Every time I tried to walk away from the push, I was pulled back in. As if I was under a spell, thoughts not making sense, me not making sense, staying still and servile only making sense.

For far too long, I had my eyes closed to red flags, including how miserable and hopeless I felt, how I behaved out of the ordinary, how I was losing pieces of me that were good. How my intuition screamed for me to leave.

Disenchantment is inevitable. The veil can’t shroud forever. I finally opened my eyes.    

I felt like Sarah in Labyrinth trying to save her baby brother and escape Jareth’s overwhelming grasp; in my case, I was trying to regain the strength within me to leave a harmful relationship for us both.

Jareth was right to sing to Sarah, “I can’t live within you.” Sarah eventually found her words—her fire and grit—and assertively she uttered, “You have no power over me,” breaking the spell, undermining the Goblin King.

Eventually I also walked away from what seemed like my own Goblin King scenario when I was at my weakest but free from disillusionment. That’s when I recognized I do have fortitude and courage, and I must continue nurturing them to never go back.

“Butterfly” is representative of that looking inward to reclaim your strength and freedom in order to break away outwardly.

Years later, in my heart there’s a butterfly—winged and free.

I hope Elisapie was able to fill her heart with her own metaphorical butterfly.

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“Why Would I Cry” is the seventh song in the album and is slow-paced, orchestral, fluid. Elisapie’s voice is soft but strong when she sings, “Before you take me again / I will run / Before you break me again / I will run.”

Here, she’s the embodiment of a river that is still and gentle but can nevertheless cut through rocks.

I felt such potency when listening to it back then. With every sung line Elisapie was like water collecting itself and rising upwards, boring through all obstructions, untamed and unfettered.

While it’s a sorrowful song, it’s still empowering. To this day, whenever I listen to it, I get teary-eyed—and it feels releasing and healing.    

“Wish Song,” which follows after, is my most beloved track in There Will Be Stars. The refrain goes:

I wish you, I wish you hope,
I wish you love and tenderness
I wish you strength,
I wish you dreams and happiness

Sonically, “Wish Song” sounds similar to “Why Would I Cry” in that it’s also slow-paced and symphonic. Whereas “Why Would I Cry” is escalating at moments, “Wish Song” is even throughout. It fills the listener with peace, comfort, and wisdom.

When I left the relationship, my perspective on love was distorted. I didn’t think I could ever find love again, let alone be worthy of being loved. I know now it’s not true.

This track gave me hope; it murmured to me, you deserve love and joy. In the meantime, I could daydream about finding my significant other while strengthening my resilience and confidence.  

In this song, Elisapie personifies an ancient, sage tree, which—with the rustling of its leaves—passes on truth you knew all along, but it was buried too deep in your gut for too long.

This song awakens love and wonder and fancy—that’s my experience whenever I listen to it.  

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The ninth track, “Nothing In This World Is Free,” is a beautiful merging of two tongues: Inuktitut and English. This song is a perfect summary of the entire album.

The most poignant lines are “In this weary heart / There will be stars” and “Nothing in this world is free / But I will find the way back to me.” Elisapie acknowledges that she’s aching, but she has the knowing that she’ll be all right, she’ll find herself again.

If her spirit is an animal, she starts out like a trusting, vulnerable cub then becomes a fierce, spirited wolf after living through something traumatic but awakening. Her voice sounds brittle in the beginning then soon develops infectious poise.

Having listened to this track the first time, I felt I could heal from my own painful experiences, I felt I could recover my essence, find the child within me again. I truly felt that.

Time, love, compassion, and music did mend my heart. Patience, determination, action, and medicine still mend my body. I’m not the same after the effects of trauma—no one is after theirs. But I carved myself anew, innermost etches awkwardly healed but whole.

I couldn’t find my inner child again; rather, I grew up. But I learned to tap into her virtues—the playfulness, the marvel, humor, curiosity, and such.   

Like sometimes I envision Elisapie and I as two white wolves playfully running alongside each other in the Nunavut snowscape. We reach the deep north where the only sounds we hear are the kaleidoscopic auroras and our echoing heartbeats.

What a sacred place to be, amongst the healing lights.

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Andrei & Nadia hope you have enjoyed this wonderful outpouring of feelings. You can subscribe to Nadia’s newsletter when hope writes here: