When your words are clear but the space isn’t; learning when to speak, and when to choose yourself 🌺
There are songs you remember.
And then there are songs that remember you.
This one found me again.
I hadn’t heard Words by Missing Persons in years. Decades, maybe.
But the second it came on… my body knew before my mind did.
What are words for… when no one listens anymore…
I didn’t just hear it.
I felt it.
Because I know that place.
The place where you’re speaking… but not being received.
Explaining… but not being understood.
Trying… but nothing is landing.
And if I’m honest?
There was a time in my life when I thought the solution was more words.
More explaining.
More softening.
More proving.
More trying to be heard.
It took me a long time to learn this:
The problem wasn’t my words.
It was the space I was speaking into.
Some people don’t have the capacity to hear you.
Not because they’re bad people.
But because:
they’re defended
they’re disconnected
they’re not ready
or they simply don’t know how
And no amount of perfect wording will fix that.
That realization changed everything for me.
Not overnight. Not dramatically.
But steadily.
Quietly.
Powerfully.
Because when you really understand that…
You stop performing for understanding.
You stop chasing connection where there is none.
You stop abandoning yourself just to be heard.
And something else begins to happen.
You start choosing where your words go.
You start noticing who actually listens.
Who is present.
Who is open.
Who can hold what you’re sharing.
That’s where connection lives.
Not in volume.
Not in repetition.
Not in perfection.
But in mutual presence.
There’s a line in my life now that didn’t exist before:
If I have to keep explaining myself…
that’s information.
If I feel unseen after I’ve spoken clearly…
that’s information.
If my nervous system tightens instead of softens…
that’s information.
And I respond differently now.
Not with more words.
But with boundaries.
Sometimes that looks like clarity.
Sometimes it looks like stepping back.
And sometimes…
It looks like silence.
Because silence isn’t absence.
It’s discernment.
It’s self-respect.
It’s aloha in action.
So when I hear that song now…
It doesn’t land the same way it used to.
It used to feel like longing.
Now it feels like truth.
What are words for?
They’re not for convincing.
They’re not for chasing.
They’re not for shrinking yourself into something more digestible.
They’re for:
Truth.
Alignment.
Connection… when it’s real.
And when it’s not?
You don’t lose your voice.
You just stop offering it in places that can’t hold it.
If this hit something in you…
Take a moment.
Where are you still trying to be heard
instead of being met?
Aloha,
Melin 🌺
Listen to WORDS
GenX FTW!!!
Oh wow, I really feel like this a lesson I had to learn the hard way but wish had been talked about more in early recovery. I thought if I could just talk and talk to my family then it would spark some kind of change. It's like I was talking more to change them instead of only focusing on myself. Far more change happened when I quit doing that.