Doorway Back to Light

By Nathan Getzin

I wrote Doorway Back to Light to process the experience of making peace with silence. I had a lot of big questions and patterns in my life that I didn’t know how to shift. My biggest frustration was falling into the same cycles of hurting people I loved and not knowing how to change my reactions. I felt like I had finally developed the humility and willingness to cry out for help from life, but the answers didn’t seem like they were coming, only silence.

It took me a long time to realize that much of the healing I needed was simply about being willing to lay down the burden of figuring it all out and making it all better, to just be the broken self that I am. The silence I met in that laying down of my worries, shame, and hurt felt frustrating and defeating. But I as I sat waiting for some answer or solution in the discomfort of that silence, I slowly began to realize that the resolution I was waiting for had been there in the quiet all along. It was there in the silence with all my shit laid out there that I came to recognize the grace of silence to hold my brokenness with acceptance and nothing to change. The healing was happening in the very act of my laying it down and asking for help. I’ve learned from that time how to really receive that grace from silence.

This has been a huge component of my experience of the return. So much of the integration of the Heroine’s journey for me has been about learning how to reconcile the messy, broken parts of me into my life and accepting myself as I go along. My journey into my own depths and back revealed a lot and the tough bits didn’t just miraculously go away just because I’d recognized them. So much of the pain we carry is the culmination of a lifetime added to the pain of many lifetimes before that handed on through the generations. To expect that it will all just go away overnight once we shine some light on it is not always realistic.

While the light of recognition has brought so much transformation and healing, the echos of those painful patterns still ring out in my daily experience. It can certainly feel frustrating, but I’ve been able to slowly let go of the need to fix it all, and practice offering it up to silence and trusting that the spacious and gracious holding of that quiet recognition will bring resolution. Every time I lay a new bit down, my burden gets a little lighter.

I hope this song will inspire you to find the grace that resides in the quiet you have inside to bring you back toward the light of your own beautiful journey.

Doorway Back to Light Lyrics

I don’t know what happened to
the joy that I once knew.

But when I wake and look inside,
I find something new.

The weight of a life
I’m trying to live right.

I’m all tangled up
in regrets and a stubborn pride.

Someone save me from myself.
I’m drowning.
I think  I could use some help.
I’m ready.

But when I cry out all I hear is silence
and my mind.

It’s racing here and there to find
the flaw to which I’m tied.

I’m tired
and I can’t seem to find the light.

I’m all tangled up
in this trying to be alright.

Someone save me from myself
I’m drowning.
I think  I could use some help
I’m ready.

But when I cry out
all I hear is silence.
...

All I hear is all this fear
and silence

And I can’t keep up this fight

But as I lay
defeated here I find.

All the fear that felt so near’s gone quiet.
Held inside the spaciousness of silence

So at the end of your rope,
when you have lost all hope,
when there’s no one left, just space,
you just might find grace

Let silence hold your hurt,
for there you will be heard.
Let the quiet you have inside
be your doorway back to light.

So I'll wait here
in all this fear and silence.

Patiently
I’m holding
this silence.