I can still taste the metallic tang of the words I swallowed when I was seven years old. They sat at the back of my throat like cold coins—heavy, hard, and entirely mine. Back then, I didn’t see my silence as a cage; I saw it as a vault. Every secret I kept was a brick in a fortress no one else could enter. I was safe, and I was ‘good,’ but I didn’t realize that with each word swallowed, I was disappearing.

Each unspoken feeling was shoved into the dark, severed from the acknowledgment they needed to breathe. There they stayed, waiting for the day I was finally ready to see them.

Over the last year, my awareness showed me ways that I choose silence. I would sit with it and ask myself. ” is this silence serving me?”. I waffled between silence and speaking up. Neither felt right. For the first time since I was 7, I felt silence holding me in the way it did back then. I felt safe, but the wisdom from a lifetime of learning to speak told me this safety comes with a cost to Self.

What I discovered is that silence is complex. It requires discernment to know if it is serving me or hindering my growth, so here I am on my personal spiral of growth and cycling around to explore silence and finding my voice again.

As I shared this with a friend she asked, when did you first choose silence. Instantly the memory of me standing in front of my mom while she sat on the couch. We were eye to eye. She was trying to be gentle with me. I can see that now. The words she spoke did not tell me something I didn’t already know. I knew I was adopted, but this is the moment when I first truly comprehended the meaning. I am not sure what precipitated that conversation, perhaps someone at school asked, “what does being adopted mean?”, so I asked my mom.

Standing there I felt things I couldn’t name. I heard a story that sounded nice, “Your mom was too young so she gave you to us. We are so happy that we got you. You are my daughter and I love you the same as I love your sisters.” I was stiff and still, emotionless, I remember nodding like it was all okay, but I wasn’t okay. For the first time, I felt the ‘different-ness’ between my sisters and me. They were hers, I was not and in the vacuum of that sentence, I feel the walls of my fortress rising—brick by silent brick. I immediately felt the heavy weight of a should: I should be thankful. I should feel chosen. But instead of feeling loved, I felt a profound, cold ‘different-ness.’ I felt alone.

It is in this moment that silence felt safe. I swallowed down every feeling and never named them. My body was filled with an unease that my family wouldn’t know until 2019.

Yet, as the silence began to shroud me, something else happened—something I wouldn’t have the science or the spirituality to name for decades. I felt a sudden, steady warmth in the room. It wasn’t a ghost; it was a frequency. It was as if a gentle touch comforted me there by the couch. I realize now it was the woman I am today—the one writing these words—plucking the thread of time from the future to hold the child who couldn’t yet speak. My younger self felt it. In that moment of self-exile, I wasn’t actually alone; I was being held by the version of me who already knew the way out.

“Silence is the most powerful scream.” – Unknown

At that time silence felt like a protective blanket that I’d wrap myself in. Holding my thoughts and feelings inside it buffered my vulnerability from the world. I was the collector of secrets, my own and other peoples. Guarding my own feelings had taught me to value guarding others confidences too. I had an entire universe inside of me that no one knew. The internal power of knowing something others didn’t created a sense of mystery and self-sufficiency. By not sharing things with others, I was left alone to figure everything out. It made me feel independent. I couldn’t see how I was creating my own self fulling prophecy of loneliness.

Often, when I was too afraid to face feelings of rage or wounding, I told myself I was taking the ‘high road.’ I’d scream into my pillow or while driving so no one would hear. The illusion of the high road is where I need the most discernment. Staying quiet felt like a moral victory—a sense of superiority that I wasn’t stooping to others’ pettiness or drama. There are times the high road is wisdom, and there are times it is cowardice wrapped in spiritual garments.

Doing this allowed me to preserve the good girl identity that I had carefully curated for myself, but inside my gut unexpressed emotions sat like heavy bricks. The shield of silence which initially kept the “scary” parts of the world at bay, eventually became iron shackles hindering my growth and freedom.

“Your silence will not protect you.” – Audre Lorde

I am not sure when I first realized being silent was holding me back. There have been so many times I didn’t speak up for myself. Often, the sentence was right there, vibrating against my teeth. If I said it, the room would change forever. If I stayed silent, I could keep the peace. I chose the peace. I always chose the peace. Staying quiet to keep the peace became automatic and this felt better. I believed that if I was good enough others would change. It took me a long time to learn that is not true. My silence gave me the illusion of power and peace, but inside I was shrinking and miserable.

Silence felt easier at first, but it is exhausting holding all these feelings inside day after day. Pushing them down, running them through my mind, thinking about how to say things perfectly, rehearsing speeches and telling myself tomorrow I will have the courage to talk. Years passed by like that, decades. Silence became a wall in my relationships preventing true intimacy. How could anyone really know me when I hid so much of myself?

Swallowing words with the skill of a sword swallower, taking them deep without—I thought—being cut. But even a dull blade leaves a scar if you hold it inside long enough. It didn’t protect my marriage or my friendships; it only ensured that when things broke, I broke in total isolation.

I became a shadow of my true self. The me people knew was not the me inside. By keeping my true thoughts and feelings inside I separated myself from others. There are many ways of connecting, but expression is a place of profound connection when we can speak the raw and real truth of our thoughts and feelings. I began to see that I could not be authentic when I am afraid to speak. My loneliness came from my fear of abandonment and inability to speak when my feelings might rock the boat.

Preferring still waters is natural, but if the waters are still for too long, they become stagnant. Holding all those thoughts inside made my inner world muddy; my mind became a tangled web where solutions came slowly and action slower. It took me a long time to consistently speak and act in ways that are aligned to my true self. Yet this past year I have felt uneasy again with speaking. I was choosing silence and I was not sure if I was building walls and hiding or being wise.

But I am learning that the ‘Pause’ I’ve been in this past year wasn’t a regression. It was a witness-state. I was observing the increasing static and chaos of the outside world, learning the nuance between being a silent victim and a quiet observer. I was preparing.

I know now that what I saw in my NDE in 1991 is true; we are all pinpoints of light on a single, rotating earth, and our ripples eventually touch the other side. My words and my silence are not just private acts; they are frequencies I am emitting into the intricate web of life—the Field. No longer am I held hostage by what I am afraid to say; instead, I am held steady by the wisdom of knowing when my voice is one of my greatest tools.

We spend so much of our lives trying to build walls, to define our territory, and to prove our strength in the noise of the world. But there is a different kind of power found in the quiet lean. It is the physical and emotional opposite of standing your ground.

In a patriarchal or “power-over” system, we are taught to stand tall, stiffen our backs, and remain independent to show strength. The quiet lean is something different. It is the moment you stop holding yourself up so rigidly and allow yourself to rely on someone or something else. It’s the child leaning into the mother, or the soul leaning into the silence. When I was 7, I could not lean into my mother, so as an adult, I became the mother she felt safe enough to lean into.

In the silence where we stop fighting to be ‘right’ and start simply by being ‘with’. This is the architecture of home: not a fortress of dominance, but a sanctuary of presence. When we allow ourselves to be held by silence, we aren’t losing our power — we are finally finding the source of it.

Collectively, we are facing our shadows—past wounds that are demanding our attention so we can finally evolve beyond lower states of being. We are being called to build our capacity to hold higher states of consciousness. It takes awareness, discernment, and the courage to live authentically so that we can shine a way for others to follow. Whether through my speech or my sacred silence, I choose to broadcast Love. I am finally home, and I am shining the light for you to find your way Home, too.

Empowerment doesn’t always feel like a loud shout; sometimes, it’s just the steady, quiet confidence of knowing you no longer have to swallow the “cold coins” to stay safe.

The metallic taste of the past has been replaced by the golden glow of the now. Within this vessel, across every timeline, I am finally home. 

We are all navigating our own timelines, searching for the place where we are truly held. If you are seeking a sanctuary for your unspoken truths, you have found a home here.  Shall we explore together? If you are needing support, some guidance or are curious reach out to me today.