On the Backside of Beloved
- cynthiamorshedi9
- Dec 24, 2025
- 3 min read
Beloved is complete.
Not just finished in the practical sense, but complete in the way a season settles into the body when it has said everything it needed to say. I can feel it now from the backside, where the labor has passed and only the warmth remains.
This collection asked for my full presence. Emotionally, physically, spiritually. It wasn’t simply about creating ornaments or visuals or pages. It was about tending something fragile and luminous at the same time. About allowing tenderness to exist without performance. About letting love be handcrafted, imperfect, and real.
Every bauble in Beloved carries that intention. They were made slowly, deliberately, with reclaimed materials and layered surfaces, yes, but more than that, they were made with breath and pause. With memory. With the quiet hope that objects can still hold meaning in a world that rushes past them.
Over the last few days, I’ve been sitting with what it means to be at the end of a cycle. Yesterday especially felt like a closing door. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just the soft sound of something being set down.
There was a sense of depletion, but not emptiness. More like the feeling after a long vigil, when the candle has burned low and the room is finally still. The love is there. The work is there. But the body knows it’s time to rest.
Beloved was never meant to be endless. It was meant to be held, cherished, and then released.
As the year turns, I find myself less interested in announcing and more interested in witnessing. Witnessing what was made. Witnessing what it cost. Witnessing how much devotion can exist inside a finite season.
January is already moving toward me quietly. A new season with a very different tone. Deeper blues. Reflection. Hibernation. A kind of inward tending rather than outward offering. I don’t want to rush toward it yet. I want to let these last days of December remain what they are.
A sharing of love.
A gathering of threads.
A final blessing over the work.
Beloved now belongs to the world.
And I am stepping back, hands empty, heart full, ready to rest before the next flame is lit.
Beloved
I did not make these ornaments
to glitter for a moment
or to be admired in passing.
They were made slowly,
with hands that remembered
what it means to tend.
Roses fell into the work first
soft, red, unguarded
teaching me how love enters
without asking permission.
Each bauble learned to listen.
To breath.
To hold warmth without burning.
They gathered story in their layers, patina over patina,
memory over memory,
until they knew how to be held.
The tree became a witness.
Not a spectacle,
but a gathering place
where devotion could rest its weight.
BellaVille appeared at the edges
a town made of lantern light and care,
bells calling no one urgently,
only reminding us we are still here.
Beloved was never meant to last forever.
It was meant to arrive,
to be felt fully,
and then to be set down gently.
Now I stand on the other side of it,
hands empty, heart warm,
watching the final petals fall.
The love remains.
The work remains.
And in the quiet after,
something inside me knows
it is time to tend the flame inward.
An audio journey can be taken below.
Where the work is finished, the love remains, and the flame turns inward.
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