There is a silence I am learning to hold.
The kind that doesn’t beg to be filled or solved or silenced.
A stillness that doesn’t ask for rescue.

For most of my life, I didn’t trust stillness. I saw it as weakness. As vulnerability. As the moment something could fall apart if I didn’t hold it together. Control wasn’t just a habit; it was my lifeline. My shield. My sword. It kept me safe in a childhood where nothing else did. Where circumstances were unpredictable and love felt fleeting. Control became the way I survived.

And so I became alert. Always ready. Always calculating, adjusting, scanning the emotional weather. I didn’t sit still, I braced. For impact. For disappointment. For the moment when I’d need to rescue myself again.

But now, I’m learning to sit. Not in resignation. Not in despair. But with a quiet, trembling kind of courage.
The kind that doesn’t look heroic on the outside.
The kind that doesn’t post well on Instagram.
The kind that simply… stays.

And staying, especially in discomfort is new to me. Because control taught me to move. To fix. To manage. I believed that strength was measured by how much I could hold. How well I could prevent collapse.

But that belief came at a cost.
And its price was peace.
And connection.
And softness.

In my effort to avoid the sting of chaos, I became chaotic within. Hyper-independent. Untrusting of others. Even love felt threatening, because love requires trust. And trust means giving up control.

And so, I tried to shape every outcome to protect myself from pain. But pain came anyway just in more subtle, internal ways. I grew tired. Lonely. Numb.

And then something shifted. Not all at once, but gradually. Like a sunrise you don’t realize is happening until the whole sky is different.

It began with a question:
What if the pain I’ve been avoiding isn’t the enemy?
What if some pain is not punishment but transformation?

I started to see that not all suffering is harmful. Some of it is sacred.
This is the power of stillness. 

Like the soreness after a workout  –> pain that proves your body is building.
Like the sting of telling the truth –> the discomfort that clears the air.
Like the ache of waiting –> the growing pains of a soul learning patience.
Like sitting in grief –> and realizing it doesn’t destroy you, it deepens you.
Like walking away from chaos –> even when your nervous system begs you to go back to what’s familiar.

I began to understand:
There is a good kind of suffering.
The kind that creates space. That breaks patterns. That rewires old stories.
It’s not suffering for suffering’s sake; it’s the necessary friction of becoming.

For someone like me, who has spent a lifetime gripping tightly, choosing to sit still in discomfort felt like failure.

But it wasn’t weakness.
It was healing.

I think of Frida Kahlo; her spine shattered, her body in rebellion, and yet her soul spilled onto canvas in brilliant, bleeding color.
There is something deeply feminine about that. The ability to hold pain and still create.
To bleed and bloom at once.

This, too, is my art.
This learning to sit.
To stay.
To not escape the ache but breathe through it.
To not control the outcome but trust the unfolding.

Because growth doesn’t live in comfort.
It lives in the “this is hard” zone.
It lives in early mornings when I want to hide.
In quiet nights when I want to numb.
In awkward conversations, failed attempts, and the gentle unraveling of who I used to be.

I no longer want to be the most in control or impressive woman in the room.
I want to be the most alive.
The most aligned.
The most at peace with the things I cannot bend.

So now, I sit.
With my fidgeting mind.
With my anxious breath.
With the part of me that still wants to fix, prove, and run.

And I stay.

Not to punish. Not to prove.
But to heal.
To notice.
To listen.

I am learning that real strength is not in how much I can carry but in how much I am willing to put down.

Even the need to control.
Even the fear.
Even the old story.

And maybe the strongest thing I’ve ever done
is sit in the fire
and whisper to myself,
I will stay here until I become the light.