What we hold in silence 🌑

A friend told me something recently that she had held for decades. She had never said it to anyone.

When she finished, she cried. Then she said she was exhausted and needed to sleep. Not distressed, just emptied out. Like something that had been gripping, finally let go.

I have sat with versions of this in coaching rooms too. The thing that has never been said out loud carries a particular weight. Not just the content of it, but the energy required to keep it contained. Naming it does not make it disappear. But it releases whatever has been spent on containment.

There is a word I keep returning to for that moment: unclenching.

A meditation teacher told me recently that my personal mantra, once given, should never be shared with anyone. Not a partner. Not a close friend. No one.

This surprised me. I had come to associate secrecy with shame, or with strategy. Neither felt right here.

The explanation was simple: when we hold something in silence, it grows inside. With a mantra, that is exactly what you want.

I have been sitting with the contrast ever since.

Both are held in silence. Both grow. But the mantra is tended. It carries no shame, no avoidance. Holding it is an act of care, a quiet daily practice that deepens with time.

The secrets that weigh on us work differently. They grow too, but through suppression rather than tending. The energy goes into keeping them down, not drawing them up. And over time, that effort accumulates. The body registers it even when the mind has learned to look away.

What my friend experienced that afternoon, the crying and the exhaustion and the need to sleep, was not weakness. It was her system releasing something it had been holding for years. The unclenching used energy. Rest was the natural response.

This is not unusual. In my experience, the moment something long-held is finally named, what follows is not relief exactly, not at first. It is more like the aftermath of effort. The muscles have been working, and they need to recover.

The naming matters. Not because saying a thing fixes it, but because silence can be a form of agreement. When we stop speaking something into existence, we can begin to believe it defines us in ways it does not.

There is a question in here that I think is worth sitting with, particularly for leaders who are trained to project certainty and absorb pressure without visible effort.

What are you holding in silence right now?

Not the mantra kind, where the silence is intentional and the holding is a practice. But the other kind: the thing you have not said to anyone, the uncomfortable truth about yourself or your situation that you have learned to carry quietly.

And if you brought it closer, even just to yourself, what might finally unclench?