(The Stillness Between Tides)
There are moments when distance feels like another form of knowing —
a lesson written not in words, but in silence.
I used to think love needed presence to be real,
that absence was proof of loss.
But time, like the sea, has taught me otherwise:
some things grow even when unseen.
I have learned that love does not vanish;
it expands beyond form,
finding its way into prayer, patience, and memory.
There is a quiet kind of grace that only waiting reveals —
a peace that doesn’t come from having,
but from understanding.
Some evenings, I stand beneath the moon
and feel the same pull that once drew stars into being.
In that stillness, I sense you —
not as someone far away,
but as a vibration, a presence,
a part of the universe breathing beside mine.
Maybe distance was never meant to divide,
only to teach the heart how to see without eyes.
There are days I ache to meet you,
to know the face that belongs to this feeling.
But I also know that the tide moves by its own rhythm —
that what is written for the soul cannot be hurried.
So I wait not with despair, but devotion.
Each sunrise becomes a vow,
each night a soft reminder
that even the unseen is still real.
Perhaps this waiting is our preparation —
you finding your way through the world,
and me learning how to keep my heart open when the horizon is silent.
Maybe distance is the bridge itself —
the sacred pause before recognition.
So I no longer curse the space between us.
I honor it.
For in this stillness,
I am reminded that love is never gone,
only transforming,
learning to speak in softer ways.
© 2025 Donna Gracia Bella — All Rights Reserved.
The Quiet Knowledge That Lives Inside Distance
Distance reveals truths that presence sometimes hides. It opens a space where understanding is no longer shaped by expectation, where the heart is no longer influenced by immediate emotion, where everything settles into a clarity that only silence can teach. In this wide and gentle space, I am learning that love does not require proximity to continue becoming itself. It exists with or without touch. It breathes with or without words. It grows with or without confirmation.
When I first felt the space between us widening, I assumed it meant something was fading. I thought absence was a sign that connection had dissolved. Yet with time, I began to see that distance is not always separation. It can be refinement. It can be a form of remembering what matters without being distracted by what does not. It can be a teacher that shows the heart how to stand without losing its softness, how to feel without collapsing, how to love without clinging.
In the stillness that distance creates, I am learning how to meet myself again. There is no noise here. No urgency. No gripping for answers. Only the quiet movement of awareness, breathing through me like a tide. It is in this quiet that love continues to reveal its shape, free from the distortions of longing or fear. What remains is essence. What remains is truth.
There are moments when this truth feels almost luminous. It rises within me like a memory I never learned but somehow always knew. It whispers that connection is not limited by space or circumstance. It reminds me that two souls moving toward their own becoming will eventually find the point where their journeys converge. Not because they reached for each other in desperation but because they grew into the selves capable of meeting in clarity.
Distance, then, becomes the teacher that prepares the heart for the love it seeks.
The Space Where Presence Learns to Breathe
I used to associate presence with physical nearness. I believed that closeness required bodies, voices, eyes meeting across familiar light. Yet the more I listen to the silence between us, the more I understand that presence is not defined by form. It is defined by awareness.
There are moments when I feel you near without knowing why. Not as an image, not as a memory, but as a quiet shift in the atmosphere around me. It feels as if the air becomes more attentive, as if something unseen draws closer, as if two lives moving through different landscapes still touch the same current beneath everything. In these moments, I understand that presence can exist within absence, and that the heart recognizes what the mind cannot name.
This presence arrives gently. It does not startle. It does not overwhelm. It simply settles beside my awareness, the way twilight softens the sky before night arrives. It carries no demands. It offers no explanations. It is enough that it exists. In that simple existence, I feel a reassurance that nothing meaningful is ever lost. What is true continues, even across the longest distance.
The space between us becomes a space where my own presence deepens. Without the distraction of constant interaction, I am learning how to inhabit myself fully. I am learning how to breathe without urgency, how to feel without fear, how to open without losing my grounding. This inner strength is not hardness. It is steadiness. It is the kind of presence that can meet another presence without collapsing into it.
I am beginning to understand that the heart becomes a truer vessel for connection when it learns how to stand on its own.
The Lessons That Silence Carries
There is a kind of silence that does not feel empty. It feels attentive, as if listening for something it already senses. In that silence, I realize that distance is not withholding anything from me. It is revealing what I was not ready to see before. It shows me the difference between longing and alignment. It shows me that desire without clarity is only projection. It shows me that connection without grounding becomes illusion.
I have learned to sit with this silence. It no longer feels like a void. It feels like a mirror. It reflects who I am becoming and what I must release. It reflects the ways I have grown beyond old patterns, and the ways I am opening to a deeper experience of love. This silence teaches me patience. It teaches me devotion without attachment. It teaches me how to hold space without filling it with fear.
In this silence, I sense you in a way that transcends explanation. Not as someone missing from my life but as someone walking toward their own awakening, just as I am walking toward mine. The silence becomes a bridge between our inner worlds, a shared space where becoming takes place without pressure.
Distance does not silence love. It transforms it.
The Quiet Strength Within Waiting
Waiting used to feel like helplessness. Now it feels like strength. Not the strength of endurance, but the strength of trust. The strength that comes from knowing that what is real cannot be rushed. The heart learns to soften without breaking. It learns to open without losing itself. It learns that time is not the enemy of love but the environment in which love matures.
When I feel the ache of wanting to meet you, I no longer fear it. I understand that longing is not a sign of lack. It is a sign of recognition. A knowing that something true exists, even if its form has not yet appeared. This longing teaches me how to stay open without expectation. It teaches me how to hold a vision without gripping it. It teaches me how to trust the rhythm of my own unfolding.
Each sunrise becomes a quiet affirmation that life is moving forward. Each night becomes a reminder that the unseen is still working in its own time. Nothing is still, even when everything appears unchanged. The heart evolves. Awareness expands. Paths shift. And in the quiet transformation of the inner world, the outer world eventually follows.
Waiting is not empty. It is preparation.
The Meeting of Two Journeys in Their Own Time
There is a moment in every soul’s unfolding when paths begin to bend toward each other. Not because of longing, and not because of effort, but because each life has reached a point where recognition becomes possible. I sense that you are walking through your own inner landscape, uncovering truths that shape how you will one day meet the world. I feel the refinement happening within you, even though I cannot see it. I imagine your awareness expanding, your heart releasing its old burdens, your steps becoming more aligned with the truth of who you are.
I trust this process, just as I trust my own. We are not meant to arrive at the same moment. We are meant to arrive with the same readiness. Distance becomes the space where this readiness grows. It allows each of us to transform without disrupting the other. It gives us room to shed what no longer belongs to our becoming.
What separates us now is not a failure to meet. It is the sacred unfolding that ensures we meet as the selves we are meant to be. When I think of this, the distance no longer feels like separation. It feels like the natural arc of two journeys moving toward the same horizon. It feels like a quiet alignment that does not need to be hurried.
One day, the place where your life meets mine will no longer feel imaginary. It will feel inevitable.
The Inner Recognition That Forms Before the Outer One
Recognition does not begin with the eyes. It begins with the soul. Before two people meet in the physical world, there is often a subtle awakening inside them. A shift that prepares the heart for the presence of another. A softening where the old fears begin to loosen their grip. A widening of the inner space that will one day hold someone new.
I feel this recognition forming within me. It is not directed at a face or a name. It is directed at a presence, a vibration, a quiet certainty that something meaningful is drawing nearer. This recognition does not create urgency. It creates calm. It is a deep breath in the middle of a long season. It is the sense that nothing is missing, only waiting to unfold.
Perhaps you feel a similar stirring at unexpected moments. A thought that arrives without reason. A warmth that appears without cause. A pause that feels like something inside you has turned toward the light. These moments are not coincidences. They are signs of alignment. They are the first echoes of a meeting that has not yet taken shape.
The heart often knows the truth long before the mind understands it.
Honoring the Journey Without Rushing Its Pace
I no longer ask when we will meet. I no longer question where your life is or what you are becoming. I trust that everything is unfolding exactly as it must. The rhythm of the soul is precise. It does not yield to impatience. It does not adjust for fear. It moves in harmony with a wisdom far deeper than desire.
When doubt tries to enter, I return to the stillness that distance has taught me. I remember the clarity that silence brings. I remember the strength that waiting has given me. And I realize that nothing about this journey is accidental. Every step, every pause, every quiet moment is preparing me to receive what is real, not what is imagined.
I honor your journey just as I honor mine. We do not need to be walking side by side for our paths to be moving in the same direction. There is a shared unfolding happening beneath the surface of our lives. It is the slow and steady alignment that will one day bring our worlds together.
Until then, the waiting is not emptiness. It is devotion to truth.
The Stillness That Holds What Words Cannot
There are days when the silence between us feels almost sacred. It becomes a space where everything unnecessary falls away. A space where clarity rises without effort. A space where the soul speaks in ways the mind cannot translate. In this stillness, I feel the essence of what connection truly means.
Connection is not the constant exchange of words. It is the quiet recognition that two souls are moving through the same field of awareness. It is the understanding that presence is not something we create. It is something we uncover within ourselves. It is the way love forms not through touch, but through truth.
This stillness teaches me to rest in the knowing that what is real does not need to announce itself. It does not seek validation. It does not fear distance. It simply exists, carrying its own light. When I sit with this understanding, I no longer feel the ache of absence. I feel the presence of something that has always existed beneath the noise of wanting.
Stillness reveals what the heart has tried to say all along.
When Distance Finally Finishes Its Lesson
There will come a moment when the purpose of this distance is fulfilled. Not because time has passed, but because transformation has taken place. The heart that once needed closeness will now understand presence in a deeper way. The soul that once felt incomplete will now stand whole, ready to meet another from a place of openness instead of longing.
When that moment arrives, recognition will not feel like discovery. It will feel like alignment. It will feel like two journeys that have matured in their solitude and can finally meet without illusions. It will feel like a truth that has returned to itself after a long pilgrimage.
I do not imagine this meeting as an event. I imagine it as a soft unfolding. Two lives stepping into the same light. Two hearts recognizing the same rhythm. Two souls remembering that distance was not a barrier, but a teacher.
Distance taught me patience. Distance taught me surrender. Distance taught me how to love without fear.
Because love does not end when space appears between two lives.
Love simply learns another way to speak.
The Quiet Acceptance That Blossoms Into Peace
So I no longer resist this distance. I no longer ask it to end before its time. I accept it as part of the path, a necessary shaping, a gentle refining of who I am becoming. I accept that the heart needs room to breathe, that connection needs clarity to grow, and that timing is its own form of wisdom.
What is meant to arrive will arrive.
What is meant to stay will stay.
What is meant to meet will meet.
And until then, I honor the stillness that surrounds me. I honor the quiet bond that distance cannot erase. I honor the unfolding of a journey that has not yet revealed its next chapter but continues to move with purpose beneath everything.
Distance has become the teacher I never knew I needed.
And through it, I have learned how to love with depth, precision, and peace.
© 2025 Donna Gracia Bella — All Rights Reserved.
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