The Blizzards' Louize Carroll – Letters From Home: "One day soon, we’ll meet in the place where we will sing again"

This is a letter in light of a global re-set. It is as much a letter to myself as it is to all who have open ears, and to the hearts of those who may not.

If you have spent the last decade tending to your outer definition of success, you might feel lost in the darkness right now. This is a time of being exposed to your own, perhaps strangely unfamiliar, inner voice. A time of not hiding behind the noise of living that can obscure its message.

Don’t be afraid.

It feels uncomfortable. You might start to feel panicked. It might even feel like you’re falling apart, breaking down.

Good. You’re doing it right. We must fall apart before we can build back up again in a way that makes sense. We must fall apart in order to address what we’ve been ignoring in the deepest, quietest parts of ourselves.

We must fall apart in order to re-set to make our lives more meaningful.

We must fall apart in order to reveal within our souls what deeply matters to us.

One day soon, we’ll meet in the place where we will sing again.

Until then, we will remain here and be silent. This being silent business, it’s not easy. There are a lot of unpleasant things in this quiet place. Pain from a million moments ago, old deep hurts long since avoided. How many of your days up until now have been filled with other people’s worlds? You swim in other people’s moments. It helps you to avoid looking at your own.

There can be expectant automaticity to much of life that often manifests as an unexplained melancholy. A sense of ennui as you blindly trudge uphill chasing something, anything, so you won’t feel left behind or inadequate.

The world is concerned with biological contamination now, and it is making you act immediately. But for how long have you been contaminated emotionally? How much of what you chose to do in your life until now was because you were acting out of pain, fear or trying to unconsciously keep up with some false god that told you how to be better, look better, do better?

And the people! You exclude them because they could hurt you. You could move through your whole life in denial of your need for meaningful relationships until something wakes you from your carefully curated substitute reality.

It could be an illness, a heart-break or it could be a global pandemic.

When you strip back the frills that dissolve within minutes when faced with this virus, you are left with the sobering realisation that one of the few values that lies fully within your internal control, a value you can grab a hold of and pull close to the core of who you are, is your capacity to love and to be loved.

I hope you keep this at the core of everything you do, and don’t do, from here on in.

Read more Letters From Home in the new Hot Press 'Stay Safe' Emergency Issue – available to buy in shops and order online now.