Silence as medicine

Perhaps what the world needs is your silence.

Not the silence that avoids responsibility and strengthens the oppressor. Rather, the silence that can hold the multitudes that are limited by language.

The oppressor’s tools are loud and they unravel our nervous systems and exhaust us and lead us to dismay and hopelessness. Our tools are rooted in collective care and power. In knowing when, how, and where to use our voices. Our tools allow us to endure individually and generationally. Our tools need us right now, and we need our tools.

There is space in silence. There is love in silence. There is honesty and integrity in silence. There is potential in silence. 

Silence doesn’t mean you’ve stopped caring. It means you care enough not to center your voice in a time when it needs to be quiet enough to hear the outcries of others. You don’t need to be loud to be present. You need to be present to be present. To honor terror is to not try to find words or sounds that define it. 

Being silent frees up the energy you need to truly care. Truly show up. Truly endure. To be informed and to bolster the weathered ties to your humanity. Constant noise, postulation, and point-making drains you. 

If you don’t have the words, you have the silence and the space that silence allows you to hold truth, nuance, grief, terror, and the rest of what each moment hands you.

While your complacence is never warranted, your solidarity and power might be in your silence — and the action that stems from it.