In Small Doses

Back in college, I was so obsessed with C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. It lived inside my bag for years… always with me, worn and underlined.

He wrote,
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.”

And I felt that. I still do.

“LOVING, HURTING” is for those who love so deeply, it scares them. The kind of love that makes your chest feel full and fragile at the same time. Where happiness is never without the quiet fear of loss, and every soft moment holds the weight of how temporary everything can be.

It’s about how joy and grief often arrive together, like twin shadows stretching from the same light. Because when you care that much, when you let someone all the way in, you also open the door to ache.

Some people make the sadness worth it.
Their presence, their laugh, their love — it teaches you that even sorrow can be beautiful when it comes from having something real to lose.

So when Tita Halaman shared the demo of LOVING, HURTING with us last year, I instantly fell in love with the song.
It was gentle and gutting at the same time. The kind of song that says what you’ve been trying to find the words for.

And maybe it all comes down to this:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken… Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket… it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
To love is to be vulnerable.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

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