I flew home last weekend to throw a baby shower for my sister the doc student.

I have two older sisters, my sister, the doc student, is the middle sister. (I am the youngest.) She is the first in my family to have a baby and we are excited that she will be having a girl.

As the months pass, I wonder what sort of world my future niece is being born into. She will grow up in a state that is at odds with my Latin culture and will grow up in a country that is experiencing growing pains through violence as the culture shifts to a new demographic with competing belief systems.

Society is complex and delicate and I am overwhelmed and feel defeated to think that I could possibly change anything the deeper I understand the root causes of societal issues. At the same time, I think of my friends who are working on healing themselves from their experiences in childhood and learned how they used accommodation for survival. I also see how my silence was my perceived shield and my accommodation too.

I can’t be silent anymore and that scares me. Silence was safe.

I have written about how I have gone to battle with my voice and my voice always wins. It wins because I know that silence hurts you more then it helps you. When I found my voice I realized that I hid a large part of myself from the world.

To live fully and completely, is to allow all of you to be seen because you are presenting the most accurate picture of yourself versus a tapas/ appetizer version of yourself. I’ve been speaking up within my life, among my friends and among my co-workers since January and I am continually surprised with what I say. I am not making mean statements, but honest statements which comes from a place of love. It appears that my journey was to understand the delicate balance of speaking honestly (which I learned in silence), but in a way that feels like a soft touch versus a slap.

As a result of these realizations I will have a dialogue with accommodation and silence to see what truths I uncover. I will write my findings in a future post.

Happy Saturday.