Silent Screams

a poem

Do we feel safe to openly and honestly share about the hard things? If so, when and where?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. There are many reasons that we might answer, “No.” I believe that the curated spaces on social media where we lie to each other by omission can be harmful to ourselves and to others by denying permission for each other to show up authentically in the world. I admit that it’s a complicated space and that it is unwise to share freely without filters or discernment.

But the social media facet is new in the history of human existence. What has been around longer is a society with its spoken and unspoken rules that it is more virtuous to bear the hard stuff silently and stoically, with that stiff upper lip the British pride themselves in. Religious institutions can be complicit, as well, especially Christian churches that privilege victory as a sign of Godliness and lament as a failure to overcome. Or just as harmful is the requirement that all suffering become redemptive.

Women often bear an extra share of the burden when we are taught to focus on serving others and that self-sacrificial women are virtuous women.

Then there are the people, well-intentioned as they are, who try to comfort us when we are suffering by saying, “This too shall pass.” Instead of helping, they have weaponized that platitude. Not only does this phrase trivialize problems and fail to hold space with the suffering person, but it leaves those with chronic conditions, who know in fact that this will not pass, feeling even more alone and alienated.

As a result, sometimes what is unspeakable, un-voicable, builds up in us, and we scream. Sometimes that scream is so intense that it can’t be heard; it is beyond the capacity of human ears. That is the origin of my poem, “Silent Screams,” that was published this week by Coming Up Short - Aperture.

I hope you’ll read it here.

The Scream (1893), Edvard Munch