The Whisper

Secrets you keep to yourself, about yourself, are the ones that become land mines within—and as time passes, the mines get closer to the surface until the day will come where you will explode.

Literally, figuratively, and spiritually, we can ease the burden of our minds by being the only one who can detonate the wrath within. Secrets cause people to whisper, and whispering causes unrest.

When I wrote the children’s book, Why Is Everyone Whispering?, I was sitting in yet another waiting room looking around as the next person prepared to get biopsied, scanned, or hear the news that would make or break them at that moment in time. I could feel the tension in the air. Was it my own? Was it there at all? Were we immune to the sounds of cancer? I shall never know, but I do know that when I wrote that book, it was from the perspective of a child, my daughter, because we were living the whisper. Unless it was talked about, no one knew. As cancer took the body of a beautiful man, the spirit it could not swallow has been the force that lies within the nontraditional cancer survivors: myself and my three children.

As grief took its uneasy path, I continued to swerve toward the middle of the road, balancing my love for Tom, the peace of my reality, and the steps needed to allow full grace to set in. It was in my quest for more peace that I allowed the doors to fly open and find myself: the self who knew that whispering was causing pain, holding me back, and allowing the conditioned mind to become my mind.

Amazingly, when someone dies, you begin to live—knowing that you really have nothing to lose if you move forward. After allowing my grief counselor to read the book, she asked me if I was the little girl in the book! I realized at that moment in time that, yes, I was—in every way, shape, and form. The true me was trying to raise my voice to an audible level—at least, the one that I could hear, reflect upon, embrace, and take action to heal more than just loss but the suppression, limitations. and fears I placed on myself.

Growing up around family members with special needs, alcoholism, and other forms of mental illness, I was constantly wondering why everyone was whispering and not just saying what needed to be said. How helpful it would have been if someone had explained instead of expending energy on keeping it all so quiet. Thus, the poster in my pre-teen room clearly defined my distaste for secrecy. It read: “I must be a mushroom, everyone keeps me in the dark and feeds me lots of bullshit.” It was placed directly next to a gigantic poster of stick figures building a rainbow. The light within the dark in my mind.

So here I am, 50 years later, still sensing the whispers around me with a scowl. I know, however, unless I speak my truth and others do as well, the soul cannot heal, and the life around me will not move. Perhaps it is a journey, to experience the utter silence that prevails when a person dies of a cancer ravage. One is left speechless, deaf, blind, and motionless. And yet, the last gasp of air, a final whisper of love that was expressed for all to hear, can become the catalyst of renewal. The paradox of it all: to breathe away a life for another to live.

For I now see, hear, move, and give an audible voice to the whispers I endured. The whispers of alcoholism, cancer, depression, suicide, and any word a person deems cannot be said out loud. We learn that it is not so hard, after all, to let those words roll and be spoken at an audible decibel. For they are just a string of alphabet letters. Not definitions, not archetypes, not you. In fact, to say “them” is cleansing, liberating, empowering, healing, and, in the long run, (as I whisper) quite orgasmic. I feel their benefits daily. As we allow ourselves to finally hear all that has been whispered around us for years, we can finally reflect, embrace, and take action on what we need to do to get our lives back. We can unblock our blocks and move forward on a positive, de-light-ful path.

Previously published: https://writingourpath.wordpress.com/page/2/