My road through grief - from darkness to light
AI let me lock my emotions into nine songs.
It helped me get through that time - something else may help you.
Warownia Serca
Fortress of the Heart
Celina
R.I.P. · 18.12.2025
Love does not die.
It only changes its form.
I wasn’t looking for a new life. I was looking for a way to go on living.
Thirty years together.
Then years of fighting.
Then months.
Three and a half months of keeping watch, day and night. Decisions I wasn’t ready for. Her breath was the only clock.
Until that night came.
The next breath never came.
Celina was gone.
And then - nothing.
No decision to make. No breath to listen for.
Thirty years crumbled to dust.
Emptiness. Silence. A whirl of thoughts. A body that couldn’t keep up. The world as if behind glass.
I couldn’t focus on anything. Not even work.
I had far too much time.
Sports, meetings, various activities - that was only a few hours.
And the rest of the day?
And the nights?
Sleep wouldn’t come.
I felt I was about to lose my mind.
The same things in my head, over and over: those nights, that breath, that silence.
I wanted to forget it.
But it was our fight, our last months. To forget them would be like losing her all over again.
That is where the notebook came from.
I started pouring into words whatever lay on my heart. At first just keywords, briefly.
Later I began to make sense of those thoughts and to play with AI.
Until finally I started shaping them into longer texts and generating songs and videos.
It kept my head busy for hours, days, weeks on end.
That is how Warownia Serca - the Fortress of the Heart - was born: nine moments that mattered to me. Moments I felt I had to remember.
From complete darkness to the first glimmers of light.
If you are now where I once was - perhaps this road can be yours too.
- Michał
From 2020 to todayBefore the SilenceThe whole road, date by date.Read →or scroll on to the first moment ↓Nine moments lie ahead of you that I was afraid to forget. Each one is a song - listen to it, read the words and, if you wish, look at what was happening then.
Moment IMonth one18.01.2026
Hopelessness
A time when the heart forgot how to beat
Grief is a place where the world lashes you with brightness while darkness reigns inside, where silence tightens like a noose and the heart burns with the embers of loss.
It is the day when everything I knew fell apart in a single second. My harbour, my shelter, was taken away - and I was left alone, with an emptiness that wounds and an anger that burns from within.
It is a bottom that doesn’t know if it will ever push back up, where the only victory is that you managed to survive one more breath.
Sometimes the only light is the decision to keep going. Only that. And as much as that.
What was happening then
I wrote this song a month after she left. But I was still in that night. In the silence that woke me.
After the funeral the phones went quiet, people went back to their own lives.
I would go back to our flat, but I couldn’t be in it.
Every wall remembered our story. Everything stood in its place, as if frozen. The traces of the war for her last breath were still visible.
That silence, those traces, were unbearable. I ran away. I was afraid of every morning - because each one reminded me that it had really happened.
I couldn’t work, rest, talk, not even think. I sat late into the night over texts, songs and videos, searching for words. I wrote because I didn’t know how to scream. That’s how this song came to be.
It was the hardest month of my life. That was when I turned to eMOCja - a free support centre for people after loss, in Gdańsk. A wonderful place. After a few meetings with people who had lived through a similar loss, the stress eased a little. At least that’s how it seemed to me then.
Moment IIMonth two22.01.2026
The Deep
Don’t fight me… for I am you
The darkness after loss doesn’t lead in a straight line towards the way out. It is a brutal dance - a few steps towards the light, and the dark returns again, striking with double force.
I believed I was carrying a flame into this new, foreign garden. What a fool I was to believe in that one brief flash. The water closes over me, hard as steel, and my lungs squeeze out the last of the air to scream out the grief.
But the deep does not punish me for the light. It simply is. It teaches me that the armour I wear rusts from my complaints.
Water hard as steel. Not the bottom yet. Close already...
What was happening then
I wrote this song in March. In it I went back to the beginning of the second month.
I had already seen the light. Sports, meetings, life... seemingly normal again. I was sure I had got through it fairly smoothly.
And then it hit.
Out of nowhere I couldn’t sleep again. I couldn’t eat. I didn’t want to get up. Comfort like “tomorrow will be better” sounded like empty noise.
Probably from the lack of sleep, I felt I was at such a bottom that it was hard to bear. I sat alone. I could hear my own breath. Silence so thick I could hear my own heart. Total blackness. I didn’t know how to make it to morning.
I thought I was already above the surface. But the bottom was even deeper.
The thought that the earlier bottom hadn’t even been the bottom was terrifying. And it made my state worse.
I began to feel sorry for myself. To moan. And every moan only pulled me further under. The armour I wore began to rust from my own complaints.
I started forcing myself to go out among people as much as I could. The library, improv classes, strange meetings of all kinds, events that didn’t really interest me. But they gave me the feeling that I was among people. That this is how it should be. That I had to survive.
I survived. Grief doesn’t go in a straight line. It’s a wave - and every trough can be deeper than the last.
In the song, the only answer is a whisper: “Don’t fight the deep.” It wasn’t about giving up. Sometimes you simply have to accept the state you’re in.
Moment IIIMonth two14.02.2026
Valentine
I’m waiting for you… in silence
This is my first Valentine’s Day in silence.
They say you love someone “till death”. Only a fool believes that. True love thinks nothing of death.
Thirty years of shared oxygen don’t vanish with the last breath.
I stood guard beside you to the end. And I am standing it still. I am still here...
What was happening then
The first Valentine’s Day without her.
After so many years together we hardly celebrated it. And now this one day crushed me with all its weight.
Everywhere those red hearts, little hearts… wonders. Everyone was rushing somewhere - with flowers, with hearts. And my Valentine lay in a grave.
In love with a dead woman. Alone. Furious.
I had to scream it out. I had nothing left to give her, so I gave her what remained - our story.
Nights on the sand under a thousand stars, when we had nothing but the road and our plans. September and our wedding. Ordinary, grey days when she was my Valentine - not for show, not for a special occasion.
Then days as heavy as boulders. Phantoms sat down right by the door. I stood on watch while her eyes slowly dimmed, until the last bastion fell. I didn’t look away. I stood by her to the end.
In this song I sealed our whole life. It is my gift for Celina.
It eased.
Moment IVMonth two18.02.2026
Echo
I still talk to you… and only my own shadow answers
A time when the world around has already forgotten the silence, but within my four walls that silence screams the loudest.
I caught myself still talking to you. Telling you about the day, about what I think, about what I feel - just as if you were sitting beside me.
You are not here - and yet you are in every breath…
Know that this conversation never ends. It only changes its form - from loud words into quiet enduring.
What was happening then
Two months after she left. It was already a fairly stable moment. I had cleared away the traces of the war, moved the furniture around, begun a thorough clean.
Everything seemed to be getting back to normal. But it wasn’t.
Winter held on hard. Frost, snow, the cemetery buried up to the crosses, frozen canals in Gdańsk.
I would come home, and it was somehow cold, strange. An emptiness that was still waiting for someone.
There was no one to speak to who would really hear me. I couldn’t sit on messengers and phones all the time.
And then I remembered one of the ways I had heard about at a meeting of people in a similar situation. I put her photo in the bedroom. A kind of little altar - not a mausoleum. And I started talking to her.
At first I felt like I was going mad. And yet it worked. It gave me the feeling that she could hear me. A little crazy, but it somehow helped. I even got used to it.
In the morning I said “good morning” to her. In the evening, “good night”. Like on any ordinary day. Only she didn’t answer.
The silence on the other side still hurt. But for the first time, grief and emptiness found some comfort.
It stayed there for a few weeks. Until I felt it was time to close this chapter.
It was the conversation I needed in order to go on.
And then the photo was gone.
Moment VMonth three24.02.2026
The Wanderer
I walk alone… because the trail without you is the only one
We needed no harbours and no end to the road, Two wanderers chasing the sun.
The campfire has gone out, the home has grown foreign, I walk ahead in a refugee’s footsteps.
Today I am a ghost wandering in the mist, A heart in armour, still bleeding.
Walk. Even if you don’t know where. Marching is the prayer of those who face their own pain alone.
What was happening then
We always travelled together, near and far. Two wanderers chasing the sun. I was the one who planned our routes. I also travelled alone, many times. But there was always someone to come back to.
Now there was no longer an “us”.
A lone meteor in the universe. Sounds beautiful. Except I didn’t choose to be a meteor. The universe chose me and threw me out of my galaxy.
Every day at home looked the same. I drifted. Until I made a decision: I’m going.
I looked for a place where the temperature hardly changes. A little wild, a little civilisation. And sun. A cheap flight via London. The cheapest hostel, so as not to be alone.
One boarding pass. An empty seat beside me that I kept looking at. I wasn’t afraid. For the first time I was truly alone, and it was strange. And sad.
The wheels touched the ground. So here I am. I can do this.
Cold. Cold! WTF!
Strangers all around, different ones every day. A dozen or so years younger, with completely different goals. A shared kitchen, everyone cheerful, happy. What am I supposed to talk to them about? I could only talk about one thing: that I had lost my wife.
I went to bed in a crowd and I was alone.
What am I doing here?
I’m running away!
Volcanoes. A beach. Wind, whistling. Rain and sun, all at once.
And me. Anywhere further on.
And then I saw…
Could it be a sign?
Moment VIMonth three18.03.2026
Signs
They whisper… and the silence finally answers
I stopped feeling only emptiness. I began to notice signs.
A heart laid out in stones on the trail, a rainbow tearing the clouds at the hardest moment, a whisper that leads me through the dark.
I walk on, because every beat of my pulse is now Her guidance.
What was happening then
I had barely stepped onto the beach - and there it was. A big heart laid out in stones. And inside it, the letter M.
Someone had laid it out. Coincidence? A sign? To this day I don’t know.
And then the phone rang.
A critical bug at a client’s.
You’re standing over a heart of stones, at the end of the world, trying to catch your breath for the first time in months. And the world says: come back, something’s broken. Yes, world. I know. Something’s broken.
I went back to the same hostel I had run from. To the same kitchen. To the same laughter. I opened my laptop. The fix went clumsily, because with all of myself I wanted to be somewhere else.
And then the worst thing happened.
They started saying hello to me.
Chatting. Asking. Who are you, where are you from, what are you doing here. Alone?
I said something or other. Every question was a step on thin ice, because underneath waited the one sentence I didn’t want to say at that table.
So I came up with a survival strategy: I would be the one asking.
Where are you from?
And that was my first good move since December.
A tattoo artist from Switzerland, with a story that lasted half the night. Vladimir from Brazil - a ballet dancer. A motorcyclist from Italy. A guy from Serbia and a crew from Croatia - all at one stove. And the hostel owner, dead tired of eternal resting, who dreamed only of going on holiday from his holiday. To Vietnam.
On top of that, views from far left to far right. You had to be yourself and somehow live with them. Not kill each other. Laugh, eat, have fun.
My flexibility went through combat training here.
A knight in armour in a foreign tavern, pretending he only dropped in for a beer. But the armour began to loosen.
A bike. Running. The gym. Beer. Nights out in town. The Italians took me surfing. I didn’t understand a word, but polacco, italiano, bella ragazza - and somehow it worked.
Until one day I caught myself talking normally. Sometimes even welcoming the new arrivals myself.
I was that older gentleman who has been here a few days already, so a regular, an expert on the area, a specialist. I had my role. I liked that.
Slowly I was coming back. To life. To the living. Strange. As if less and less alone.
Many days, but they flew by. It was time to go back.
And I couldn’t shake one thought: that it was Celina laying out these signs on my road. A heart on the sand. A rainbow overhead. So that I would finally set off.
And I did.
Moment VIIMonth four28.03.2026
Birthday
By the burial mound… where time doesn’t flow, it only waits
A birthday. The first since the day she left.
There is no table and no candles. There is only the quiet earth and the wind over the mound.
Instead of a cake - a fire of brushwood. Instead of a toast - a few words spoken in silence.
Maybe to say thank you. Maybe just to be here for a while.
What was happening then
I came back from the journey changed. I already knew I was moving on. I was starting to feel integrated, with myself, with the world. It seemed to me that the worst was behind me.
And then her birthday came. The first without her.
We never celebrated it lavishly. But it was there, every year, modestly, just the two of us.
I went to her.
No cake. No candles. Silence and a few words over the earth.
All that power, all that certainty from the journey - and she was still there.
In the grave.
It broke me. Hard.
And it rebounded just as hard.
For the first time I heard something else, maybe a whisper: love hasn’t died, but you can’t die while you’re alive.
My emotions were still leaping from one extreme to the other. But beneath them there was now something steady: purpose, power, self-confidence.
Time to set out in search of a new garden. With a power I had never had before.
Moment VIIIMonth four18.04.2026
Daybreak
A moment of light
Time alone doesn’t heal. Working on yourself does.
The armour is still there. But not to hide in - to walk through life with confidence.
The light is no longer somewhere far away. It is close. It is inside me.
What was happening then
Four months on.
The pain was still there. But I had learned to live with it. I began to draw energy from it.
Something had broken through. Not because time healed - because I worked on myself.
I know I did everything I could for her. She did everything she could too. Our life was beautiful - despite the thorns and the hardships.
I felt as if I had been given a goal, assigned to me, to carry out. Sounds mystical? Not really. It was simply a moment of decision.
To be clear, because this has to be the truth: it didn’t end. In grief, new moments keep coming. Different problems, the consequences of those days. But it is no longer on that scale. It is no longer the pain it was then.
This wasn’t a return to my old life. It was a new beginning.
I’m coming back.
Moment IXA thank-you
The Circle
In the hour of darkness… blood binds what the darkness unravelled
They say grief is a lonely island.
But on that island I wasn’t left alone. When my world collapsed, a circle simply formed around me. People who simply were there and didn’t have to say anything.
Somewhere out there are people who can become your wall. All you have to do is let them keep watch.
What was happening then
Men’s circles are fashionable these days.
I had my own. No sign-up and no facilitator.
Nobody sat in a ring. Nobody asked how I felt about it. We hardly talked about death, men don’t know how.
A phone call. Getting out of the house. Ping-pong. A job to do together.
That’s all. And it was a lot.
I knew they were standing behind me. Just in case.
I didn’t have to ask. If I had fallen, someone would have picked me up.
This song is for them.
Thanks, guys.
18.04.2026 · a moment of light
This story ends here - not because love has ended,
but because the need to scream it out into the world has.
This is not the end.
This is a new beginning.
If today you can barely catch your breath, if it feels like this is the end.
It is not the end.
Just breathe.
Endure.
And let the light find its own way.
What really helped me
This isn’t advice. It’s simply my road - maybe something from it will be of use to you.
- People after a similar loss. A few meetings at eMOCja, a bereavement support centre in Poland. With them I didn’t have to explain anything.
- People at my back. Family and friends. They didn’t say much - but they were there. I knew that if I fell, someone would pick me up.
- Talking to her. Her photo in the bedroom, “good morning” in the morning and “good night” in the evening. Sometimes I felt I was going crazy. But it eased the longing.
- Movement, when my head couldn’t cope. Walking, weights. My body worked while my thoughts stood still.
- Creating. Words, songs, images. That’s how I let out what couldn’t be said.
- The road. The first trip without her was the hardest - and it turned out to be the breakthrough.
- Accepting the ups and downs. A better day doesn’t mean it’s all over. A worse one doesn’t mean it was all for nothing.
And one more thing: I made peace with the fact that there are things that, at some point, are no longer in our control.
It was as it was meant to be.
If you are in that darkness right now - here is help →
As long as we live in memory - we are.
As long as the heart beats.
As long as the march goes on…
Celina · Michał
1997 - 2025
The whole storyHow AI helped me scream out my grief - and not lose my mindAbout caring for her until the last day, about the relief that hurts, and about the silence after the funeral.Read why Warownia Serca was born →Bonus
Songs that came afterwards
Many more songs were made. I didn’t publish them all - many were left unfinished, like sentences broken off mid-word.
Over time, creating stopped being a scream. It began to fill the time, then it became play - sound, language, form. I started writing in English. Playing with sound.
These are no longer stages of grief. They are traces showing that you can walk on along this road.