Tag: silence

In The Quiet Moments

Sometimes I cannot bring myself to speak, to verbalise what thoughts and feelings are swirling. Silence seems to keep them under control, to keep them in the depths. If I open my mouth, they may escape and I’m not ready for that to happen. 

And what the world sees is me with a smile and a greeting. Maybe I falter at the moment of remembering something significant in your life. I can’t quite pull together the relevant memories and conversations that feed my knowledge. And then I feel ashamed that I have let my feelings overtake my interest in you, that you will think I haven’t listened or paid attention to your life and your needs.

All the while I’ll keep floating through the demands of daily ritual, the cooking, laundry, school runs, errands. All the while I am actually convinced that I have a handle on it all, that I have reasoned all the uncomfortable and painful feelings into the right corners of my brain and body. That I have accepted, processed, owned, released. 

And only in the truly quiet moments, this half an hour waiting for my children to finish their activities, where I have stopped with unexpected space and grace. Only then do I realise how much I do not want to speak. How much energy it takes some days to be a  responsible, thoughtful, loving human and parent, when I am craving blankets and books and silence. 

In my teens and twenties there were times when I would sit in the base of a shower and let the water run on hot for an hour, or I’d curl up in the bottom of a wardrobe with the doors closed and just the fabrics, darkness and silence as my embrace. 

Now my children, my life, my choices fill me and fulfil me so that I can believe so many of those pains never even existed. They belong to another lifetime, another journey but sometimes in the quiet moments, I never want to speak again. 

First published on social media on 3rd April 2023

Toxic Silence

‘Send them to Coventry’ is a phrase that found gravitas within military circles but swiftly moved into the echelons of military families and typically boarding school’s bizarre peer on peer punishment regime. 

Just reading any old Enid Blyton reflects how, not only accepted, but rated and applauded such exiles were. Someone does something you judge to be wrong and you stop speaking to them for a period of time (days, weeks or even months) and be sure to actively ignore them too if they try to approach you. This is a celebrated technique with certain sections of society and it was only the other day that I connected the dots between my family’s boarding school history and this form of punishment that is so frequently and unkindly used. 

I have lost count of the number of times I have been exiled. I now no longer attempt repatriation in the way I used to. I know someday there will be contact and no mention of the exile, or the reasons for it, will take place. This is the acceptance I have had to reach if I want both to stay sane and also to remain at least distantly connected to certain family members. 

It is no wonder that I ‘over talk’, I wish to resolve things even if that is uncomfortable and messy and sometimes difficult. I will stay up all night with you or have the conversation on repeat for endless days or, even if it is too hard, I will at least tell you that I need space or time or a break until we broach the issue again. What I won’t do is ignore you and when we finally speak again pretend it’s never happened. I have ghosted people in the past, habits were trained into me, but fundamentally if I love you, I will fight for us. 

Silence of this kind is toxic. 

When my father died nearly a decade ago, my kids were both under five. They heard me say I was going to view my father’s body and asked to come too. I didn’t know the best thing to do, would this be healthy or traumatic? So I phone the undertaker and asked their advice. They told me that as the children had asked, the should come. They sagely said, children will make up far worse things in their head, if they are told they can’t, than the actual reality. 

Such great wisdom that I have carried across many life moments with my kids and is so pertinent here too. The silences I have endured from childhood on, have meant that I have imagined the worst of feelings being thought about me. The reality of a tough confrontation always ends with a deeper understanding of each other, often more compassion and a broader perspective. Toxic silence just leaves a chasm of darkness and imaginings that linger and swirl. 

I think the patterns are too hard to break in my family but I’m grateful to recognise their origins and my reactions. I am sensitive to even brief withdrawals of friendship and affection, easily triggered from this conditioning, but awareness is everything and now I can talk myself through it more sanely. 

And as with all of these dynamic challenges

I am grateful for the gifts they bring, everything I have suffered through brings me greater soul wisdom and deeper expansion of my understanding and compassion for other’s stories. I am a better human because if it all. 

First published on social media on 9th August 2022