When I wrote What Stillness Taught Me About Story for the Brevity Blog,

📖 Read the original post on Brevity Blog →https://brevity.wordpress.com/2025/08/06/what-stillness-taught-me/#comment-236688

When I wrote What Stillness Taught Me About Story for the Brevity Blog, I thought I was sharing something quiet. Something small. A reflection that might speak to a few people lingering in the margins, like I often do.

I didn’t expect an echo.

But the comments came — from writers, readers, caregivers, and quiet souls who’ve been cracked open by life in one way or another. People who understood that stillness isn’t always peaceful. That silence can be a strategy for survival. That there’s wisdom in what doesn’t move.

Your words met mine. And in doing so, they reminded me why I tell stories at all.

Stillness hasn’t left me since.

If anything, it’s become more layered.

I used to think of stillness as absence — of noise, of action, of productivity. Lately, it feels more like presence. Like a room that holds you without asking you to perform. A place I return to when the world asks too much, when illness quiets me down, when my body refuses to keep up.

It’s where the raw truth lives — before the edits, before the explanations.

One reader wrote, “Stillness is where my truest stories begin.”
Another said, “I thought my silence was a failure, not a strategy.”

Those words stayed with me.

They reminded me that stillness can be a form of listening — not just to the world, but to ourselves. That listening is its own kind of authorship.

If I were to add one thing to the original piece, it would be this:

Stillness doesn’t mean you’ve given up.
It doesn’t mean you’ve stopped dreaming.
It means you’re allowing something deeper to emerge.

A story that isn’t rushed.
A truth that isn’t loud.
A presence that doesn’t need an audience to be real.

If stillness has been visiting your life — through illness, grief, or a quiet you didn’t ask for — you’re welcome here.

I’ll be listening too.

— Mary

This reflection lives in Compass Point 2 — Who Am I Now?