stories

the opposite of silence

the opposite of silence

By Sarah Childers. I come from one of the quietest places on earth. There is a difference between quiet and silence. Quiet feels like being held. It is the contented squeak of something small and furred sleeping curled into itself. Silence is the unsaid, bound and gagged.

The morning after Inauguration Day we waited in a crowd along Jackson Street to join the Seattle Womxn’s March. Behind us, a tofu factory. Across the street, an art school. Above us, blue sky and later, after we had passed, a pair of eagles. 

women's work

women's work

Wednesday morning, mere hours after the presidential election was decided, in the calm, quiet of my baby’s room, as I nursed him back to sleep, I wept silently. I wept for the loss of a dream, I wept for the nation, and I wept for my daughters. I faced for perhaps the first time in my life, the fact that for some, women’s rights are not human rights. I started to think about “women’s work.”