Latest / Second Chances: Stories of Survival, Recovery & Starting Over / Learning to Sit with Discomfort During a Long Silence | Second Chances
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of terror that lives in the space between one message sent and no reply received. It’s not just waiting; it’s the feeling that you are being erased by the void. You know that feeling. I want you to nod if you do, because it’s so common we barely talk about it as its own distinct emotion. You’ve sent something important. A question. An apology. A hope. And then… nothing. The screen stays dark, or it shows that little blue checkmark, but there is no voice, no text, no movement. Just the hum of your own anxiety echoing back at you from the glass. We live in a world that demands instant feedback. If you order food, you get a notification when the driver is five minutes away. If you send an email, you expect a ping within the hour. So when life sends us a silence that lasts days, or weeks, or months, our nervous systems don’t just wait patiently. They panic. They interpret that lack of noise as a threat. Like, if they aren’t talking to me, am I safe? Am I still loved? Did I ruin everything? I see this in my inbox all the time. Women writing to tell me they’re staring at their phones until their eyes burn, convinced that the silence means they’ve been abandoned. But here is the truth I want to hand you today: silence is not always abandonment. Sometimes, silence is just the sound of things happening behind closed doors. Sometimes, it’s the sound of someone else trying to figure themselves out. But knowing that intellectually doesn’t stop the ache in your chest. So let’s talk about how to actually sit with it, without letting it eat you alive. We have to be honest about why silence hurts so much. It’s not really about the other person. It’s about our desperate need for control. When we are in motion, even if it’s chaotic motion, we feel like we are driving the car. We can react. We can fix. We can argue. But silence takes the steering wheel away. It forces us into the passenger seat while the car drives off a cliff into fog. That loss of control feels dangerous to our primal brains. Remember last week, when we talked about walking out of disrespectful spaces? We framed leaving as an act of power. But sitting in silence after you’ve left, or after you’ve reached out and hit a wall, feels like powerlessness. It feels like you’re stuck. And that’s where the discomfort comes from. It’s the friction between what you want to happen and what is currently happening. You want resolution. You want closure. You want to know the ending of the chapter. But life rarely gives us endings on command. It gives us pauses. And pauses are terrifying when you’re used to running. I had a listener write to me recently, let’s call her Sarah. She hadn’t heard from her sister in three weeks after a big family argument. Sarah was convinced her sister was angry forever. She was drafting texts in her notes app every morning, deleting them every night. She wasn’t living her life; she was holding her breath. She was waiting for permission to exhale. And that is the trap. We give other people the remote control to our peace. When they go silent, we freeze. We stop eating right. We stop sleeping. We start rehearsing conversations that will never happen. We are suffering from a phantom limb syndrome of communication, feeling the presence of a connection that isn’t there. But Sarah, and maybe you, have to realize that the silence is not a punishment. It’s just a state of being. And you can survive a state of being. So, how do we stay in that chair when the urge to run is screaming in our ears? We have to reframe the discomfort. For most of us, discomfort is a signal to change direction. If it’s hot, we open a window. If it’s cold, we put on a coat. If it’s uncomfortable socially, we leave the party. But emotional discomfort, especially the kind born from uncertainty, doesn’t have an easy physical solution. You can’t turn up the heat on a silence. You can’t put a jacket on a unanswered email. So we have to learn a new skill. We have to learn to sit. Not fidgeting. Not scrolling. Not checking. Just sitting. With the itch. With the fear. This sounds simple, but it is one of the hardest things a human being can do. Think about when you were a child and you had to wait for the cake to bake. You couldn’t speed it up. You couldn’t peek inside. You had to trust the oven. As adults, we’ve forgotten how to trust the oven. We think if we stir the batter more, it’ll cook faster. If we check the temperature more often, it’ll be done sooner. But you just make a mess. Sitting with silence is about trusting that the process is working, even if you can’t see it. It’s about believing that your worth is not tied to someone else’s responsiveness. When you stop reacting to the silence, you reclaim your center. You prove to yourself that you are solid. That you are here. That you are okay, even if they are not. This is where the growth happens. Not in the loud moments of reconciliation, but in the quiet moments of endurance. You are building a muscle called resilience. And muscles only grow under tension. So yes, it hurts. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. But that discomfort is the price of admission for becoming someone who cannot be shaken by the whims of others. You are learning to be your own anchor. I know that sounds poetic, but what does it look like on a Tuesday night when you’re tired and lonely? It looks like small, deliberate acts of grounding. We talked about folding laundry before, how it can save your soul. Well, sitting with silence requires similar rituals. You need to occupy your hands and your mind so they don’t orbit around that empty phone. Cook a meal that smells good. Take a walk without your headphones. Call a friend who knows the context and asks, ‘How are you really?’ not just ‘What’s up?’ Create boundaries around your waiting. Tell yourself, ‘I will check my messages at 8 PM. Until then, I am free.’ This isn’t passive resignation. It’s active waiting. There is a difference. Passive waiting is lying in bed, paralyzed, hoping they will text. Active waiting is living your life fully, acknowledging that you don’t know the outcome, but choosing to enjoy the present moment anyway. It’s saying, ‘I care about this answer, but it does not define my day.’ Put the phone in another room. Go outside. Look at the sky. Remind yourself that the world keeps turning even if this conversation stops. I remember a time in my thirties when I waited six months for news on a job that meant everything to me. Six months of radio silence. I almost went crazy. I started taking long baths just to have somewhere to hide. I started reading books I’d never read before. I learned to knit, badly. I filled the void with other things. And when the letter finally came, I was ready. Not because I had been obsessing, but because I had been living. The silence had given me space to become someone who could handle whatever the result was. If I had been consumed by the wait, I would have been fragile. But because I sat with it, I became strong. Here is the secret nobody tells you: uncertainty is where creativity lives. Certainty is comfortable, but it’s also static. It’s a finished painting. Uncertainty is the blank canvas. When you are in a long silence, you are standing in front of the blank canvas. It’s scary because you don’t know what will appear. Will it be a masterpiece? Will it be a mess? But you also don’t know what you might create while you wait. Maybe this silence is forcing you to find a new hobby. Maybe it’s pushing you to reconnect with an old friend. Maybe it’s giving you the clarity to realize that this relationship, or this situation, isn’t what you thought it was. Silence strips away the noise. It leaves you alone with your thoughts. And some of those thoughts are beautiful. Some of them are hard. But they are yours. Don’t rush to fill the silence with noise just to feel better. Let it be there. Let it breathe. You are allowed to be unsure. You are allowed to not have the answer. In fact, not having the answer is the only honest place to be. Everything else is a story you’re telling yourself to avoid the unknown. And the unknown is not your enemy. It’s just the next step. So, take a deep breath. Feel your feet on the floor. Notice the weight of your body in the chair. You are here. You are safe. The silence is loud, but you are louder. You are steady. And you are not alone in this. I am right here with you, sitting in the quiet, holding space for you to just be. Take it easy on yourself today. You don’t have to fix everything right now. Just breathe. I’m Jane Gordon, and I’ll be right here when you’re ready. Until next time.