Breaking the Not-So-Silenced Silence

An essay by Leesha Mony

By

Speak Your Peace

It’s said that silence speaks the loudest. Yet, what if what is happening inside isn’t really silent at all?  What if, instead, it is just not audible to those outside of the self, and that really what is happening inside is filled with loud confusion, tricky time-wrapping sensations, and a humming of a voice you faintly recognize?  A voice that you hesitantly wonder if it might be your own, and if so, how in the world can you move closer to it?  

And then a pondering emerges—what defines silence, anyway? Is it a tangible reality or a mere illusion? Does it have existence, or is it the act of unraveling, its own dissolution, that paves the path to liberation?

Lately, I have been thinking that silence is all of those things. All piled into my body, I was trying to make sense of my experience in a world that doesn’t always want to know more, a world where attunement is needed yet not often sought after. The underlying confusion painted on my facial expressions quickly looks like content for some—and that appears to be enough. Yet, it isn’t even close to being enough.  

And the break begins.  Trust impeded.  A voice trying to be known, while being birthed.  While at the same time not knowing how to reach the depth of where vocalization begins, and articulation is met. To express and give light to the voice inside that faintly resembles one's own is quite heroic in itself, yet the vulnerability in not knowing how it will be held or received sometimes feels like a whole other journey entirely.   Yet, how can you have one without the other? I am not sure. Unless, of course, what is happening inside is, in fact, somewhat silenced or numbed.

While navigating pregnancy, this became my dance—a constant effort to comprehend my internal world while simultaneously feeling unseen and misunderstood externally. As a pregnant survivor, this was the rhythm of my journey.

The unnamed unique experiences that my body traversed caused, at times, such disconnection and fear, which felt as though they had nowhere to go. The faint voice, which was indeed mine, attempted to loop me in.  It attempted to tell me that what I was experiencing was not my fault.  The voice tried to convey to me that such an overwhelming internal experience made so much sense given the changes and transformation that was happening.  A transformation that, although powerful and wanted, was still deeply disrupting, confusing, and scary. 

Like all transformational journeys, there was an element of losing ground. Ground that, for a survivor, was not easy to build in the first place. Another, both surprising and not so surprising, element was losing control and having to come to terms with my relationship to surrendering to the vast unknown. As much as I wanted to leap into trusting what was to come, my body, through emotional memories, reminded me that losing control over my body and autonomy was once not safe, that trusting others was once not safe, that losing myself and choices over my body was once not safe, all which led to the loss of my voice. 

Even though I had been on a healing journey of creating safety within for some time, the vulnerability that came with the season of becoming a mother rattled me.  It rattled me because I was being shown that my body housed such expansive hopes and possibilities while, at the same time, it was navigating a harsh need for protection as the piles of fears and nuanced sensations grew.   And what was even more alarming, was that not even I could put words to what was happening, and no one else seemed to be able to either. 

This experience of aloneness and a lack of understanding from those around me, including my providers whom I desperately needed to understand me, created what appeared to be some form of silence. Yet, inside, it was louder than ever, and within that quietude, a faint voice persisted. While I was trying to be reassured with phrases that did not match my experience like, "This is such a special time, and pregnancy and childbirth are the most natural things in the world, and that my body would know what to do, and that I could trust my body," all things I desired to feel, yet at that time did not. 

Not only were they not able to be felt, but in the non-feeling of them came wells of grief and shame, and if I was not careful, they could have easily become my new (old)  story.  A story that my body was bad because it was overwhelmed, confused, and unable to voice what was happening.  It could have been a story that my body was broken and that in that brokenness, I would never be able to be a good enough mother. Worse yet, a story could have been made that the passing down of trauma was already happening. 

The faint voice did not let those narratives become my story, even though they were sometimes the loudest and most persistent.  Instead, the faint voice became my internal touchstone when I was able to listen in deep enough to what was happening underneath all of the pain and longing for this season to be different. 

The faint voice brought me back to myself, my needs, my heart, and my hunger for change. 

It also helped me to break the not-so-silenced silence. 

So that I could hear that as a pregnant survivor, I was enough, am enough, we are enough. 

What wasn’t enough was not what was happening in my body; it was how alone it felt because of the very broken system into which mothers are born. 

Leesha Mony, a Seattle-based Somatic Psychotherapist and writer, explores themes of motherhood, maternal mental health, survivorship, and belonging. As a mother, perinatal specialist, and birth storytelling guide, Leesha brings a deep understanding of healing through holding others’ wholeness. Her work has been featured on Motherly, The Kindred Voice, and Motherscope. 

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