this can't be it. can it?

the world got loud. so i got quiet.

there has to be more than all this noise.
the endless projection into a world that rarely reflects anything real.

💌 this is my first letter from the stillroom.
read it here when you’re ready to return to yourself.
your presence is the only thing asked of you.

i know what it costs to stay open in this world. i know what it takes to keep feeling, keep listening, keep aching for what’s real.
you’re not broken for wanting something different.
you’re not behind for craving slower, deeper, truer things.

there’s a particular kind of ache that doesn’t scream — it hums.
it’s the ache that shows up at the end of a scroll, when the last thing you read left you empty. it’s the ache in your chest when you’re surrounded by people but still feel like no one sees the real you. it’s the quiet grief of living in a world that’s louder, faster, shinier than your spirit ever wanted to be. you try to stay open. you try to care.
but under all the stimulation and strategy, something in you is whispering:
this isn’t it. this can’t be it.

we live in a time where presence has been replaced by performance. where depth has been drowned in algorithmic demand. where everything moves at a pace that leaves no room for tenderness. we’ve been taught how to be visible, but not how to be known.
how to market, but not how to mean.

and so — even the most tender among us have started to flatten. we’ve become thumbnails. reels. headlines. personas. and the parts of us that are still breathing, still longing for something real, begin to ache.

that ache isn’t a flaw. it’s a signal. you’re bound for more than what this world has tried to make you settle for.

---

i’ve been living with this ache for years. sometimes it took the form of creative burnout. sometimes it felt like a kind of spiritual anemia — that sensation of going through the motions while some part of you quietly starves. I didn’t know what i was missing, exactly. only that the world i was supposed to be building my life within felt too noisy for my soul to sing in. I could succeed in it. i just couldn’t feel myself in it.

and when i looked into the eyes of the people i photographed — across hundreds of sessions, across years of intimacy with strangers — i saw it in them, too. the soft ache behind the smile. the flicker of grief beneath the polished surface.even the most radiant, successful, outwardly clear people — when met with real presence — would soften. they would say something like: “i didn’t know i needed this.” “i feel like i can finally breathe.”

and some — the ones with packed calendars, rehearsed angles, perfectly edited timelines — would sit down in front of my lens and whisper, almost ashamed: "i hate this. let’s be quick." it’s not me they’re afraid of. it’s the performance they’ve grown used to — the endless projection into a world that rarely reflects anything real.

i watch the dread rise in their posture before we even begin, and i think: imagine what they’ve been asked to perform into every day — for their job, their image, their livelihood — for this moment to feel like yet another stage they can’t wait to exit.

but then something shifts. always.
we move slowly. we drop the angles.
i hold them, not with direction, but with deep presence.
sometimes i wrap early, even when the light is still good — because their nervous system is more important than the frame.

they shake out the pressure, exhale in ways that feel almost holy. and then they say the words that still ring in my chest: “let’s get coffee.” “i need more of this.” like a flip switched. like they remembered something. not about me — about themselves. and that, i think, is the ache for something real.

we descend before we rise. always. this is the shape of real becoming — not a straight line, but a spiral. a soft descent into what we buried, so we can return with something honest in our hands.

maybe it didn’t even start with us. maybe it’s older than that — passed down in glances, in silences, in the way our mothers taught us to endure more than they ever questioned. maybe this ache lives in the marrow of those who had to trade their softness for survival — and now we are the ones remembering.

it isn’t just about truth. it’s about touch. it’s about presence, resonance, ritual, remembering. it’s the ache to be met without performance — and to still be loved.

---

the stillroom was never part of a master plan.
i didn’t build this because i had something to teach.
i built it because i was listening — and i kept hearing the same longing, again and again, behind the eyes of those i met:

please… let something real find me.
something that doesn’t ask me to pretend.
something that doesn’t flatten my tenderness into strategy.
something that doesn’t call my softness weakness.
something that knows what i mean before i have words.
something that doesn’t rush me past myself.

and so i began to imagine:
what would it feel like to enter a room — even just a virtual one — and exhale completely? what would it feel like to read something that wasn’t trying to sell you anything? to listen to a voice that didn’t want to be followed, just felt? what would it feel like to be met with presence, not pressure?

that’s the room i wanted to create. not a platform. not a brand. a stillroom. a place to return to, not scroll past. a room for words with weight. for letters that feel like mirrors. for rituals that feel like memory. for stories that help you find your pulse again. before i ever wrote these letters, i was a listener. before i became a mother, i was a mirror. this gift — if i have one — isn’t my insight. it’s my presence. i’ve always had the ability to feel what others couldn’t name. to sit in a room and sense the unspoken.
to hold a space long enough for someone to hear their own truth ripple back toward them.

in human design, i’m what’s called a Reflector — an archetype that absorbs the energy of others and the environment, and reflects it back with clarity, compassion, and attunement. we’re only 1% of the population. lunar beings, deeply cyclical, porous, and fluid.

and while i won’t spend much time here teaching systems or tools, i share this because it shaped how this space came to be. this isn’t a place of fixed answers. it’s a space of reflection, rhythm, remembering.

i want the stillroom to feel less like a newsletter and more like a threshold. a moment of return. a breath that doesn’t ask for more than your presence.

---

so if you’re reading this — wherever you are in your life, whatever version of yourself is showing up today — know this:

you don’t have to prove your worth here.
you don’t have to rush your clarity.
you don’t have to explain your ache to be allowed to have it.

this room was made for the sensitive ones. the tired ones. the attuned ones. the not-sure-what’s-next ones. the ones who’ve outgrown old selves and don’t want to optimize their way into a new one.

each week, i’ll be writing to you. some weeks, it will be a story. other weeks, a remembering. one part will be a letter — an invocation. the other part will be a practice — an integration. a tool, a question, a ritual to help you walk it home. you don’t have to read everything. you don’t have to keep up. this space honors your pauses.

some of us are just now learning to land gently, after years of performing flight. others are still crawling out of the ache. but we all carry the shimmer. we all carry the wings. and when we remember how to feel again — truly feel — that’s when the light softly returns to the body. and that’s what this room is for.

stay open.
the ache is proof you’re bound for something more.
x
cibelle

i hope this letter found you in the exact moment you needed it... consider this a warm hug from me. please let me know what this brought up for you, even just word. it tells me who’s in the room with me :)

💌 if you want to keep walking with me, experience my first breath here. it’s free to subscribe. it’s soft. it’s sacred. and i’ll meet you there with letters like this every week.

---

what to expect in upcoming letters:

☼ visibility and the fear of being fully seen
☼ post-relationship clarity and self-choosing
☼ burnout and rebuilding from the inside out
☼ identity shifts in early motherhood
☼ ancestral strength and silenced women
☼ self-abandonment and the rise after
☼ resonance, risk, and saying yes to what you deeply feel

if there is something you’d love me to reflect on, in a future letter, reply to this email or: