Ashes and Embers – living and losing Ingvild

There's a particular kind of energy that awakens only in those fleeting stretches of time when a musical is alive.

It's electric.
It's consuming.
It's the kind of energy that fills every cell in your body – until you're no longer just yourself, but someone else entirely.
That's how it felt to live as Ingvild.

For a while, I was her.
The witch-sister. The lover. The outcast.
A woman caught between worlds that refused to understand each other.
In love with a village boy who spoke of her sisters in hushed tones, until those whispers turned into flames.

And in the warm glow of the stage lights – clothed in her pain, her passion, her power – I felt more alive than ever.
Every night, I breathed with her heartbeat. Moved with her longing.
Let her voice rise through mine like smoke through the trees.

And then… the curtain fell.
The music stopped.
And a quiet ache crept in.

It's a peculiar kind of grief, the one that comes after the final bow.
When you've given yourself completely to a role – body, breath, spirit – and now must return to your own skin again.
But not unchanged.

🌕 still lingers within me.

I carry her heartbreak –
the sting of love that wasn't brave enough,
the betrayal of a boy who could not stand between her world and his.

I feel her sorrow as the fire rose around her sisters –
women who danced with nature, listened to the earth, healed with roots and moonlight.
Women misunderstood and feared for their knowing.
Burned for being too close to something primal and pure.

Her curse was born not of vengeance, but of anguish.
A cry from a soul that simply wanted to be seen… and wasn't.

Now that it's over, I sit in the quiet and feel her embers cooling in my chest.
The stage is dark, but her warmth lingers.
Her magic – a wild grief, a sacred knowing – still hums beneath my skin.

The show is over.
But she isn't gone.
Some stories stay with you.

Maybe because they echo your own.
Maybe because they remind you that even in sorrow, there is power.
And in silence, there is still song.