Aperture and the Art of Letting Life Back In

Aperture and the Art of Letting Life Back In

Grief has a way of narrowing the world. It closes the aperture — on connection, on curiosity, on the version of ourselves that once moved freely through life. For a long time, I lived inside that narrowing, mistaking withdrawal for protection and stillness for healing.

Listening to Aperture felt like a quiet reopening. Not a dramatic return to joy, but a subtle permission to let light back in — imperfectly, cautiously, honestly. This piece is about that moment after isolation, when reinvention isn’t performative but necessary. When letting go becomes an act of trust. When February feels less like pressure and more like possibility.

Matthew D. Celestial