Stillness, Revisted

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

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—dozens of them. 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 survival strategy, and that there’s wisdom to be found in what doesn’t move.

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

So, thank you.

Thank you to everyone who read, responded, or shared a part of their own story. Your presence was a gift. And your reflections—some tender, some fierce—taught me more about the story I thought I had already written.

What Stillness Is Teaching Me Now

In the few days since the essay was published, stillness hasn’t left me.

If anything, it’s become more layered.

I used to think of stillness as absence—of noise, of action, of productivity. But lately, it feels more like presence. Like a room that holds you without asking you to perform. Like a kind of sacred neutrality, where nothing is demanded and everything is allowed to be.

Stillness, for me, no longer feels like a pause between events. It feels like a place. A place I return to when the world asks too much. When illness quiets me down. When my energy drops and my body refuses to play along.

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

What I Learned from You

One reader wrote, “Stillness is where my truest stories begin.” I’ve been carrying that sentence with me ever since.

Another said, “I didn’t know anyone else felt this way. I thought my silence was a failure, not a strategy.” That hit something deep.

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

These comments weren’t just affirming—they were instructive. They added shape to something I had only begun to name.

If I Could Add One Thing

If I were writing that original story again, I might add this:

Stillness doesn’t mean you’ve given up.
It doesn’t mean you’ve stopped dreaming, or creating, or trying to belong.
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.

An Invitation

If stillness has been visiting your life lately—whether through grief, illness, transition, or a quiet you didn’t ask for—I invite you to stay curious about it.

Ask it what it wants you to hear.
Ask it what it wants you to hold.
And ask it what stories it’s been keeping safe for you.

I’ll be doing the same.

Thank you for meeting me in that quiet space. I hope we keep finding each other there.

With gentle presence,
Mary Monoky