25 August 2022

Dear Cristina,

I hope you're well, that you had a good trip back and that you were able to recover from all those wonderful Breton emotions.

I realise that I've already been trying to write to you for several days about the incredible, overwhelming experience that you so sweetly and generously gave me. Let's face it, I'm not going to be able to do it perfectly or in the most minute detail, but I'm at least going to try!

After hearing you talk about your work on bereavement, your discussions and your discoveries, you told me there was a choice of two kinds of experiences, the first as part of a group, the second being a solo experience. I don't know what made me want to go for the solo experience. I think this was more than just curiosity, it was more out of a desire to discover something new. It was like my instincts were kicking in. I wasn't afraid, I didn't need to think, I just wanted to let myself be carried away and I trusted you implicitly. I feel like this trust was essential, in the sense that you exuded such goodwill and respect that it was difficult to be afraid of anything.

I was moved by the way you were able to really be present, without penetrating into the sometimes painfully personal grief of the people involved. I waited for you for a few minutes with a smile on my face, without having any idea of what was waiting for me, and without wanting to know. You came back with a big canvas bag and beckoned me to follow you. You asked me if I was allergic to insects and straw. I told you I wasn’t. And we smiled as we walked in silence, but in togetherness. I chose to let you guide me without thinking, and I think that was already the beginning of the experience and a form of ‘letting go’. You took me to a large field a little way off, in front of a sort of niche in the foliage. You lifted the branches and started to prepare a nest for me. Then you invited me to slip into it.

You left quietly, and the tears were already rolling down my cheeks. It wasn't anything painful, quite the opposite, it was very gentle and quite natural. As if I could open myself up completely without any pain or difficulty. So even if rationally I don't believe in it, I chose to believe in it during this moment of suspended time. I chose to allow myself to tell myself stories, to feel ‘signs’, to see where it would take me. I was rooted to the ground, inert, as though I were no longer alive, and yet I felt a serenity stronger than anything I'd ever felt in my life before. And paradoxically, I was profoundly alive and open to the sky. I breathed in deeply and, like the tree, I was growing. “Is this what it feels like when you die? Silly question, you don't feel anything when you die.

Yes, but just imagine...” So if that's how you feel, I'm glad that people are able to go to their rest in such a beautiful way, which made my whole body shiver with emotion. Suddenly I felt like all my ghosts were joining me. Like they never really left, but that they were there, in the trees, in the grasses, in the ground and in the sky. In the gentleness of nature surrounding me. So I let them come to me, take me in their arms.

I smiled, because I didn't really believe in it, but it was so good to tell myself these stories. It was so healing. I wept with a smile on my face as I embraced all this love that I was giving myself. Suddenly I felt like I was in my grandfather's arms. Like in the photo of me as a baby. There was the warmth of the blanket on my back, but it felt like the warmth of his arms holding me close.

I smiled, and maybe he smiled too. I felt so good, so safe. I felt like nothing could happen to me, I was there and time had stopped so that the poetry could take over. My tears continued to flow, I was happy to know that he felt what I felt. I was happy to be in his arms and feel all this tenderness.

I think he was proud of me, looking at me with his sparkling eyes and wry smile. You don't really need words, you don't really talk about these things, you feel them with your whole body. And I felt it so intensely.

I didn't want to move; I knew this moment wouldn't last forever, but it would last in my memory. I didn't move, I didn't want to move, but I breathed in and out and I cried and I felt more alive by the minute. It was the first time since he died that I’d felt like I was in his arms again, and I didn't want to open my eyes for fear of losing him. There was the warmth of childhood, the sweetness of long summer evenings spent talking on the terrace. This awareness of doing something a little for you, and a lot for life. There was nothing fanciful about this moment, I felt free to leave, and I felt that all I wanted was to continue to live, to live even more intensely. To make trees breathe and tears glisten on my cheeks and on my smile. As someone who doesn't believe in signs, it's a good thing Jung explains them in terms of synchronicity, because when I felt it was time to get up, a gust of wind lifted part of the branch that covered and protected me.

I slowly slipped out of my story hut. It was like waking up from a dream. I was smiling even wider, feeling the sun on my skin, the straw under my legs, the wind in my hair, and I was so happy to feel so alive, so at peace. I wanted to keep feeling that way for as long as possible. The ghosts vanished to make way for the magnificent landscape around me, the cries of children in the distance and the sound of a ball dropping to the ground. I gently emerged from my stories, and smiled with amusement and wonder at the fact that I'd managed to give myself permission to believe all of this for such a long space of time.

Even despite these beliefs seemingly evaporating the moment I left this space that I'd had all to myself. I pondered on what these beliefs of a short space of time said about me. And I realised that I'm the person who was proud of myself, that I was the one who showed myself all this love and allowed myself to let go. And I was even prouder of it. So now I feel even more alive, and I love the power of these stories that we tell ourselves so that we can see things that have happened and those we are missing in a gentle, poignant way.

I don't think anything magical happened under those leaves in the field. I think I was on my own, but the stories we choose to believe in, for the space of a moment or a lifetime, have a power that we often underestimate. And even if nothing tangible or concrete happened, in my own artistic reality, this encounter really did take place, and it made me feel wonderful, special and rare things. It enabled me to transcend myself and experience the world and nature so strongly that I don't want to stop telling myself these stories for anything in the world.

Smiling, I got up to find the whole team, to feel life this intensely a little longer before the night put an end to this incredible day.

I know that I haven't managed to convey absolutely everything in this email, that everything needs clarifying and that words don't seem to be adequate enough to describe the power of these sensations and the stories we tell ourselves... But it's a desperate attempt to thank you profoundly for enabling me to experience this. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thanks for the feelings and the insights this experience gave me into beliefs. Thank you for your sweetness and tenderness...

All my warmest regards,

Bleuenn