Listening is where healing begins.

I arrived in Santa Cruz, California long before fire devoured the redwoods—my beautiful and precious redwoods—those towering sentinels of time. Long before the wharf, once teeming with life, crumbled into the sea. The waves still danced then, crashing against the shore, carrying the scent of salt and something wilder, something untamed.

I had come for a women’s gathering, drawn to this place where sea lions bask in the sun, where conversation flows as easily as the tides, where co-ops brim with fresh harvests and the laughter of those who still believe in something sacred.

Women had traveled from across the country, from beyond borders, bringing with them stories—some held close for years, some waiting to be spoken, some pressing against the edges of silence, desperate to be heard.

To be seen.

Because isn’t that what so many of us long for?

The Weight of Silence

One afternoon, we were placed in small circles, given a simple prompt:

"Describe a time when you were not listened to. When your voice was unheard."

The words struck me like an old chord plucked from forgotten strings.

My mind flashed backward—to a moment buried and the right to grieve stolen. A psychology teacher called me a liar as I shared the plane crash my parents had just barely survived.

I spoke of it then, finally, with this group of women—the classroom, the professor’s sharp dismissal, the way reality was denied not because it was false but because it did not fit within another’s framework. And as I spoke, the weight of it, long carried, began to lift.

Across from me, a woman’s breath hitched.

Then—tears.

She sobbed, her body trembling under the force of memory, and as she did, her story spilled forth—a story not so different from mine.

Only, hers had happened just months not decades before.

Not in a classroom.

Not among strangers.

But within the fragile walls of her own home.

A Mother’s Betrayal

She spoke of her mother. The one who should have held her, protected her, believed her.

But when she came forward—when she said the words aloud, trembling and vulnerable—her mother called her a liar.

Her mother, who had once been well-endowed, had undergone a double mastectomy. A loss not just of flesh, but of identity, of the way the world had once seen her. A loss her new husband did not seem to accept.

One day, this man—this stepfather—grabbed his stepdaughter by the breast, squeezing, violating, enjoying.

She recoiled, horrified, pushed him away.

She ran to her mother, seeking comfort, seeking truth to be acknowledged.

And yet—her mother turned away.

"Liar."

One word, like a knife.

One word, severing the bond between them.

One word, telling her that her pain was too inconvenient to be real.

She spoke this in halting breaths, grief thick in the space between us.

I listened, feeling the weight of her words settle inside my ribs.

And then, slowly, we spoke together.

Not just of the pain.

But of the expectations placed upon us—the quiet rules written on women’s bodies.

How the world tells us what makes us worthy. How we are measured, judged, valued—or discarded.

Her mother had lost what the world had once prized in her. And now, perhaps, she feared her daughter’s presence was a cruel reminder of what had been taken.

We spoke of shame, of denial, of why some truths are too heavy for others to carry—so they refuse them instead.

And yet, when we speak truth, when we hold it up to the light, something shifts.

Truth makes space for understanding.

Understanding makes space for healing.

And healing, when it is real, does not erase the wound—it transforms it.

The Mending

Days later, word came to me.

The woman and her mother had met again.

This time, there were tears.

This time, there were hugs.

This time, truth was not denied.

I do not know all that was said between them. I do not know if trust was fully restored or if scars still lingered in the quiet spaces of their relationship.

But I do know this:

The words that were once weaponized—liar, silence, dismissal—had been replaced with something softer, something braver.

They had been replaced with listening.

And listening is where healing begins.

It was, perhaps, the most profound moment of the gathering.

Because in the end, when we strip away the noise, the expectations, the judgments and projections—what we all long for, what we need more than anything, is to be heard.

To be seen.

To speak a truth that is not rewritten, reshaped, or discarded—

But held.