I need to admit something I’ve carried like a secret for years, one I’ve whispered only to the morning light and the dust motes dancing in my window. It’s not a sin, not really. But it’s the thing I hid most fiercely, even from myself: I was terrified of being alone. Not just the quiet of an empty house, though that came later. I mean the true solitude, the kind that strips away all the busyness, all the roles—nun, wife, widow—and leaves only the raw, trembling self. I hid it by staying busy, by filling every silence with noise, by pretending I was fine when I was drowning in the quiet.
For fifty years, I wore the habit of comfort like a second skin. In the convent, silence wasn’t empty—it was holy. We moved through it like monks in a forest, each step a prayer. But when I left at fifty to marry Thomas, I traded the sacred silence for the sound of a life lived with someone. And I clung to it. Oh, how I clung. I became a woman who needed the hum of the refrigerator, the clatter of dishes, the weight of Thomas’s hand on my shoulder as he read the paper. I’d fill the house with music, with calls to neighbors, with projects—knitting, gardening, baking pies for the church bake sale. Anything to keep the quiet from settling in.
After Thomas died, the silence didn’t just fill the house—it inhabited it. It lived in the empty chair at the breakfast table, in the untouched second cup of coffee on the counter, in the way the clock ticked too loudly in the stillness. I’d wake at dawn, as I always had, and instead of sitting with the quiet, I’d rush to the kitchen, turn on the radio, start cleaning. Anything to avoid the space where Thomas’s absence lived. I’d tell myself, This is how you stay strong. This is how you honor him—by not falling apart. But it wasn’t strength. It was fear. I was hiding from the grief I’d refused to name, afraid that if I sat with it, I’d never get up again.
The hardest part wasn’t the sadness—it was the shame of it. I’d spent a lifetime teaching others to find God in stillness, and here I was, running from it like a child from the dark. I wondered, How can I guide others to peace when I can’t even sit with my own sorrow? I’d look at the empty chair and think, This is what I’ve been avoiding all these years. The quiet. The truth.
Then came the day the silence spoke. It wasn’t dramatic. Just a Tuesday, rain streaking the window like tears. I’d been cleaning the living room for the third time that morning—dusting the same shelf, rearranging the same books—when I stopped. My hands were trembling. The radio was playing softly, but I’d stopped hearing it. The house felt less like a home and more like a museum of what was gone. I sank into Thomas’s chair, the one I’d refused to move since he’d passed. And then, for the first time in years, I let myself feel it. Not the grief I’d been avoiding, but the sheer, aching aliveness of being alone. I didn’t cry for hours. I just sat there, breathing, as the rain fell outside, and the silence wasn’t empty anymore—it was full. Full of Thomas’s laughter, full of the years we’d shared, full of the love that hadn’t died with him. It was terrifying. And then, I realized: This is where I’ve been hiding. Not from the pain, but from the love.
I wonder sometimes if we spend our lives running from the very thing that could save us. What if the quiet isn’t a void, but a space where the soul can finally breathe? What if the thing we fear most—the silence, the solitude, the unvarnished truth—is actually the place where we meet ourselves, and God, and the people we’ve loved, in the most real way?
After that day, I didn’t suddenly become brave. I just stopped running. I started sitting with the silence, not as an enemy, but as a companion. I’d brew tea at dawn, not to fill the house, but to sit with the steam rising in the quiet. I’d walk in the garden, not to pull weeds, but to watch the bees on the lavender. I’d look at Thomas’s old sweater folded on the chair and say, I miss you. I’m still here. And the silence didn’t shrink—it grew. It became a room I could live in, not just endure.
There’s a kind of grace in that, you know. Not the grand, dramatic grace of a miracle, but the quiet grace of a single moment when you stop fighting and just are. When you realize that the thing you’ve been hiding from—your own aloneness, your own grief, your own truth—isn’t a prison. It’s the only place where you can truly be free.
I’ll tell you what changed. It wasn’t that the pain went away. It was that I stopped seeing it as something to escape. I began to see it as part of the journey. The empty chair? I stopped avoiding it. I’d sit there sometimes, just to feel the shape of his absence, and then I’d notice the light through the window, or the way the dust looked in the morning sun. And I’d think, This is Thomas’s chair. This is where he sat. And this is where I am now. The grief didn’t vanish, but it softened. It became a part of me, not a weight I carried.
I also stopped pretending I was “fine.” I started calling my daughter, not to say, I’m okay, but to say, I’m not okay, and I need to talk. And she’d say, Me too. We’d sit in silence for a while, and then she’d laugh, and I’d laugh, and we’d remember Thomas. It wasn’t perfect. It was messy. But it was real. And real is where the grace lives.
Here’s what I’ve learned, after all these years of hiding: Comfort isn’t the absence of discomfort. It’s the willingness to sit with it. The comfort I’d been chasing—busy, noise, distraction—wasn’t comfort at all. It was a cage. True comfort is the courage to step out of it, into the quiet, and say, I’m here. I’m still breathing. And I’m not alone.
I know it sounds simple. It’s not. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s also the most freeing. When I finally stopped running, I found something I’d forgotten: the world is full of quiet miracles. The way the light hits the kitchen table at 6 a.m. The sound of rain on the roof. The memory of Thomas’s hand in mine. These aren’t distractions from the pain—they’re the very thing that makes the pain bearable. They’re the grace.
So if you’re hiding from your own silence, I won’t tell you to “just be brave.” I’ll tell you this: Start small. Sit with one cup of tea. Let the silence be there, without filling it. Breathe. And when the fear comes—because it will—say, I’m afraid. But I’m here anyway. That’s the first step. Not to run, but to stay.
I’ve been thinking about the nuns in the convent, how they’d say, The silence is the voice of God. I used to think they meant it in a grand, mystical way. Now I know they meant it in the quiet, ordinary moments—the ones we’re too busy to notice. The ones we’re too afraid to sit with.
I wonder sometimes if we spend our lives building walls to keep the silence out, when all along, the silence was the doorway.
What if we stepped through it?
— Gertrude Carroll, still wondering