There are profound reasons to contemplate the immortality of our souls and the mortality of our physical body. Whether we’re aware of it or not, our relationship with aging and dying does affect our relationship with life and the way we live it every day. Do we receive each day as a gift? Do we live in fear? Do we use our time wisely?

And yet, we rarely take time for such contemplations. Perhaps because our culture doesn’t quite encourage us to do so. Or perhaps because matters of life and death are impossible to grasp with our rational mind.

But then we have poetry. Here, there is a tradition to explore these ultimate themes of our existence. With its freedom of language and perception, poetry seems like just the right window through which we can look and see what escapes our awareness otherwise.

Welcome to a poetry collection and a special journey into the nature of aging and dying, and at the same time, into a celebration of life and the joy of living.

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Excerpts

Dancing

music is moving my body
in ways I don’t recognize
as me

oh
this
is how I want to leave

perhaps by then
all that you will see
will be some last minuscule gestures
of feet hands breath eyes
or not even that

so remember
I told you this
while my mouth could still make words

I am not going to rest in peace
I will be dancing my way out

Grateful

for light becoming Earth
for joy becoming song
for keeping the greatest gifts secret

for resting at the river
before I get to cross it
for Earth becoming light

Gone

humming myself to sleep
flipping through the images
of this long day

and then gone
gone gone to the other shore
I am

What readers say

The Lightness of Leaving will take you on a moving, intimate, yet universal spiritual journey. It is a soul’s sacred journey filled with personal depth and bursting with wisdom. Halina captures this well-lived journey with the perfect blend of struggle, surrender, heartbreak and laughter, resistance and acceptance. As I moved through the seasons of life, I experienced the beautiful lightness and joy within the poems and the bittersweet sense of impermanence and inevitability. Her poetic style evokes pure presence and quiet contemplation. This body of work honors for all of us the sacredness of life’s journey.
—Wendy Mackowski

Two days after the sudden loss of my dearest friend, I opened this book and felt an unexpected calm wash over me. Each poem invited me to rest in the quiet celebration of her ongoing presence. If you are navigating grief or exploring the mysteries of life beyond the physical, The Lightness of Leaving is a tender invitation to journey into the heart of remembrance.
—Sheila Applegate

I love your poetry. There is playfulness in the words, while gazing at all the magnificence of life. Even when you are journeying through the last stage of life on Earth, it’s so free, there’s no heaviness. There’s gratitude for the journey, a sense of relief and also anticipation. The poems feel like intimate conversations with the wonders of life lived. I believe this book will bring lightness and it will help the readers cast aside some of the fear that they may associate with aging and dying.
—Helle True