I couldn’t sleep. The temperature wasn’t quite right, the blankets were too stifling, and the moonlight coming in through the window was a little too bright. It didn’t matter the positions I tried, nothing felt quite right. 

The clock said it was 1 am and the immediate countdown to morning started; you know the countdown, where you begin to think how many hours of sleep is left to get, assuming you’ll fall asleep.

It’s shortly after the countdown begins that so does the mindless chatter. The late-night voice that starts ruminating about all the problems, the anxieties, the future worries. When all those questions and thoughts begin.

Was I a good mom today?

Am I screwing up my kids?

I should have had more patience.

I really should have said yes.

Oh man, I forgot to respond to that text.

Crap, did I send that email?

I shouldn’t have eaten that second cookie.

Does this back pain mean I have cancer?

Am I dying?

Will my kid pass school?

Will I hurt their feelings if I don’t show up?

Am I being selfish?

Why are boundaries hard?

Am I fulfilling my purpose?

Is this all there is to life?

And they go on and on and on. 

The endless chatter keeps us awake, keeps us doubtful, keeps us riddled with self-doubt. Molehills become mountains in the quiet of our minds, as the rest of the world sleeps and rejuvenates.

And this got me thinking about the human journey that is only ever lived and experienced in the quiet. Those quiet moments that are just between me and me and you and you. 

As I thought about this, at what was now 2:03 in the morning, I realized that so much of our lives are actually played out in the quiet. 

Quietly we experience pain, we experience sorrow, we experience grief.

Quietly we feel doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety.

Quietly we are afraid, unbalanced, and without hope.

As humans, our loudest parts are often the ones that seep from the mask we don every morning. We are loud people pleasers. We are loudly confident in our bodies. We are loud in our career accomplishments and our parenting successes. When it comes to our relationships we are loud with our over-the-top social media posts telling everyone how lucky we are. 

But underneath the loud, in the darkness of our minds, we quietly struggle. 

The relationship we publicly praise, constantly has us questioning our worth and leaves us wondering “Is this really the right person for me?”

The job success we’ve experienced, with the letters behind our name that earn us public accolades, leaves us quietly feeling unhappy because we aren’t pursuing something we love and feel like we are wasting away. 

The bodies we loudly pretend to appreciate, we quietly hate and punish with disordered eating and restriction.

The brave faces we loudly put on after something hurtful happens, in the quiet we are crying ourselves to sleep, having intrusive thoughts, and are riddled with hopelessness.

I often think we don’t really know people at all. That most of what we see is exactly what they want us to see. We mostly see their loud because to show anyone our quiet might be to our own peril.

But the largest journey we walk in this life is often done quietly. Personal growth, personal pain, and the soul’s journey all happen in the quiet. 

The brokenness, the heartache, the doubt, the fear – that simmer inside of us every day as we go about our business. We become masters of tuning it out, self-medicating, compartmentalizing, and shoving it down. 

But it’s still there, quietly whispering to us, only loud enough for us to hear. 

I think the most compassionate thing we can do for our fellow humans is to recognize each other’s quiet journeys. The paths we each walk in the quiet. The many roads we walk completely alone. 

To truly love someone is to understand that much of their life will be lived in a quiet place you cannot touch, you cannot access, and that place can be painful, merciless, and confusing. That sometimes that quiet will impact their loud causing them to make bad decisions, lash out, and say mean things. 

There’s a saying that hurt people hurt people, and I think it’s actually just the lack of acknowledgment of the quiet that makes people turn on others.

The hardships one faces that no one knows about.

The secrets people keep in order to stay safe.

The traumas people face that are too dark to talk about.

The dreams someone sets aside for someone they love.

The fear they face that they can never talk about.

The intrusive thoughts that make them feel they don’t matter.

If you exist long enough you recognize that the quiet is often our undoing and sometimes we just need someone else to understand that we have a quiet journey too. 

That we are all experiencing much of our lives in the silence masked under all of our loud. 

So I guess, my middle-of-the-night thoughts just wanted to say to you that I see your quiet. I acknowledge all of that pain, doubt, and confusion that you quietly live and experience and the loud mask you wear every day. You’re worthy of being loved on both journeys, in both ways. 

For what it’s worth, we might all be traveling through our quiet paths alone but we are still traveling together, each of us heading towards more hope, more growth, more expansion. Just because we can’t see each other on our quiet journeys doesn’t mean we aren’t close by and can’t support one another.

So give grace.

Remember everyone has a quiet you know nothing about and lead your life with empathy and compassion – even if it is from afar.