Where Silence Continues to Speak

3 February 2026

Beloved Inner Self,

I intended to keep this reply fairly short — though, in every way, I seem to have failed. Please forgive the length.

It has taken some time for me to find the words — not because they were absent, but because they needed to rest in silence before taking shape.

Since your last letter, life has slowly begun to settle, and through that stillness, I’ve started to see the exhibition with a different kind of clarity. Amanda and I have spoken a few times — circling around what Between Now and Forever truly meant, what it revealed of us and to us.

There is a strange sense of understanding — and also of loss — in realizing that the exhibition is no longer there; it existed only for a brief moment in time, and then it was gone.

Or perhaps it isn’t gone at all — perhaps it has simply taken another form, one that continues to move quietly within those who experienced it, and within us.

We tried to find a single thread of meaning, a final understanding — but perhaps that is not ours to find. Maybe what we created was never meant to be concluded, but to remain open — a doorway rather than a statement.
We shared a story, our story, with the wish that others might find echoes of their own within it; that the images and words might awaken feeling, reflection, perhaps even quiet recognition.

And so, I let it remain unwritten — whole in its incompleteness.

Something shifted within me through this realization. I sense that my relationship to photography is changing — or perhaps continuing along the same path, but now carrying an entirely new meaning for me. Since the exhibition, I have found it difficult to do anything together with my camera. For now, I allow it to rest.

From the day I first received the news of Amanda’s illness, something within me shifted — a deep sadness, a quiet ache. It touched me more deeply than I could have imagined, and I now sense that Between Now and Forever may have been one of the reasons I can see and feel with Amanda in a new way.

Her illness remains, and yet I am given the opportunity to walk beside her — even from afar — to be present, to feel, to share my thoughts and emotions, and to offer the warmth I hold for her.
In that, I find a certain calm — a stillness that reminds me of the light that moved, and still flows, between us through image and silence.

I now look forward to continuing to discover, to live, to dive into dark oceans of exploration — to bring light to what hides in the shadows. I hope, and I quietly pray, that I will have the opportunity to explore this together with Amanda.

Life has now taken me into a different rhythm, one grounded in the tenderness of the everyday.

I stood beside my son Sebastian as his exhibition in the Old Town took shape and was realized in November. To be there with him — not as the artist but as the father — felt humbling and full of grace. It filled me with quiet joy to offer what I know, to guide him gently, to witness him shaping his own vision. There is energy in giving — a light that reflects back.

And then there is Christopher. We traveled together to Japan in December, and I joined him at the beginning of his journey, just as instinctively as the wish first arose. To share that time and space — to set out together toward the unknown — awakened something childlike and tender within me, a simple happiness I hold with gratitude.

These moments touch something deep in me — a soft healing. Perhaps because, for so many years, I was the one who was away — traveling, working, always in motion. Now, to simply be with them feels like a quiet redemption.

And yet, even in this joy, a shadow sometimes stirs — a questioning voice that wonders whether I am enough for them, whether my presence can ever balance the absence that once was.

I recognize that voice. It belongs to an older part of me, the one still shaped by early wounds — the longing to be seen, to be worthy, to be loved without condition.

My mind knows these fears are ghosts, that they no longer belong to the truth of who I am. But my body — faithful, ancient — remembers otherwise. It tightens, it trembles, it speaks through unease, through the faint ache of inherited stories.

Perhaps this, too, is part of our practice: to meet the body’s remembering with compassion, to let the mind’s understanding and the heart’s tenderness walk together.

Acceptance, I realize, is not resignation — it is intimacy with what is. To hold the wound without trying to heal it, to breathe into the ache without turning away. In that space, something shifts. The shadow softens, and what remains is love — quiet, grounded, real.

I am learning to trust this simplicity:
the grace of being a father,
the strength of being a man,
the devotion of being a husband,
the humility of being human,
and the beauty of still not knowing.

One question has grown stronger within me — not shaped by outer events nor by passing roles, but emerging from a deeper inner landscape: the question of life between lives.

Recently, I did a Life Between Life session with my dear friend Rita, and in that journey I met a presence — a man on a horse, kind and radiant, his eyes filled with calm invitation. We spoke no words, yet something passed between us, clear and wordless.
From him, I understood that I am on the right path, that there is no need to strive — life itself lays the next step before me. I am gently being led.

These memories, along with my enduring curiosity about near-death experiences, give rise to new questions in me — questions I hold gently, without the need for clarity. If it feels right, perhaps you could explore this with me in your next reply.

Perhaps that, too, is their purpose — not to be answered, but to be lived.

You once wrote that art is not creation but extension — a single inhalation passed from one being to another. Perhaps this is how life itself moves through us now: as breath shared between generations, as tenderness that refuses to end.

Between the seen and unseen, the artist and the father, the giver and the receiver — I stand, listening.

And in that listening, I feel your presence still — patient, luminous, and kind.

Between now and always —
Anand

I remain here, listening — open and receptive to your reply.