As poet Terry Tempest Williams advises, we learn, then, to speak and ‘comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where [we] dwell.

In those weeks, she began pushing me to ask myself one simple question: ‘What am I not saying that needs to be said?

Looking back, I realize this time as the beginning of my own radical self-inquiry. My pain helped me realize that I was lost. My soul, no longer content to be ‘bruised and battered,’ took charge of my body and grabbed the attention of my conscious mind. The headaches, which continued even as the self-inquiry began, became a way for my body to say, in effect, ‘Wake the fuck up.’ For, if I didn’t wake up, my soul was going to drop me to my knees, writhing in pain.

See the stories you’re telling yourself about the other,’ I continued. ‘What do those stories reveal about the stories that you might have been holding quietly, silently, for all your lives?

This being fierce with the reality of what is requires the bravery to ask of oneself three challenging and yet powerfully liberating questions:

• What am I not saying that needs to be said? 

• What am I saying (in words or deeds) that’s not being heard? 

• What’s being said that I’m not hearing?