Choosing Quiet

There’s a moment many of us reach when we realize the conflict in front of us isn’t actually about disagreement. It’s about what happens when you stop absorbing harm. That realization usually comes after you’ve tried everything else. You’re still loving and hopeful, but finally clear that what you’re asking for isn’t unreasonable... even if it’s treated that way.

Families unravel when someone stops playing the role that keeps everything running smoothly. Once this happens, the problem quickly becomes the person who spoke up, not what they spoke about.

I used to believe that clarity would save me. That if I explained myself carefully and calmly enough, things would soften. That intention would matter and family, especially, would eventually meet honesty with honesty. What I learned instead is that some systems survive by misunderstanding you.

Once you step out of roles you’re expected to play, dynamisc shift. And instead of dealing with it, people often decide you’re the problem. That’s where the villain comes in. All because you have chosen to distance yourself from harm.

Suddenly, everything you do gets reinterpreted. Setting boundaries is seen as punishment. Taking space is treated like betrayal. Even your success is framed as arrogance. It stops being about what’s actually true and becomes about protecting a version of the story that keeps everything else intact.

For women and especially for women of color, this moment often lands harder. Care that doesn’t look like self-sacrifice is suspect. Success outside traditional structures is questioned. Boundaries are labeled ego, politics or disrespect. When you stop being manageable, the volume increases tenfold.

You don’t have to be understood to be free. There comes a point where explaining more just brings distortion and defending yourself just gives the narrative more oxygen. Sometimes, the most grounded choice is to let people keep the version of you they need, so you can keep yourself

I constantly remind myself:

Distance is not cruelty when closeness requires erasing who you are.

Walking is deciding not to trade your nervous system for belonging. 

You can wish people healing without staying in harm. 

You can hold love without tolerating aggression. 

You can leave without becoming the monster they need you to be.

Being cast as the villain for doing so, is the clearest sign that you've stopped playing the role that kept the comfort.

If you’re reading this and something in you feels seen: you’re not dramatic for needing peace or disloyal for setting limits. It's not cruel to choose distance and respond to a system that asks you to disappear so it doesn’t have to change.

Choosing yourself in a sea of abuse and denial is growth.

What first-generation families are rarely taught

In bi-racial, first-generation families the hit goes deep because survival often comes before reflection. Growing up in rural spaces, many of us learned early how to adapt, stay quiet and keep moving forward. Our parents did what they could with what they had and endurance was often valued more than expression. Conflict was something to push through or carry silently. There wasn’t much room to stop and ask how any of that shaped us, especially once we became adults and were expected to just keep going.

What often goes unnamed is how biracial, first-generation siblings can end up quietly positioned against each other. When resources are scarce and safety feels conditional, comparison becomes a way to make sense of the world. Over time, that comparison hardens into identity. One sibling gets read as responsible. Another as difficult. Another as needy. Those roles don’t come from truth so much as from a system trying to organize stress.

That dynamic isn’t accidental. It mirrors the logic of American culture, which thrives on scarcity, hierarchy and competition. It teaches us that there is one right way to succeed, one acceptable version of stability and one path that deserves approval. Anything outside that narrow lane gets questioned, minimized or treated as a threat.

When siblings are close in age, the pressure can be even stronger. You grow up side by side, measured against each other long into adulthood. The difference stops being neutral and starts feeling personal. One person’s success becomes another person’s failure. One person’s refusal to conform feels like an indictment of everyone else’s choices.

This is how the system keeps itself intact.

It doesn’t need to announce itself. It just needs us to stay focused on each other instead of on the structure that taught us to compete in the first place. Harm gets normalized as “how we were raised.” Repair gets replaced with silence. And reconciliation becomes another word for endurance.

Breaking that pattern looks like stepping out of roles that were never chosen consciously and no longer serve anyone. It means refusing to keep reenacting dynamics rooted in scarcity and fear.

For me, breaking the pattern means choosing a broader definition of family… one where multiple paths are respected and where care doesn’t require self-erasure. It also means grieving the reality that I can’t make everyone see the bigger picture. It’s hard to watch someone stay rooted in the past, constantly churning old narratives and positioning us against each other. And it’s painful to accept that even gentle boundaries can be met with reactivity instead of reflection.

White supremacy is powerful precisely because it operates quietly, shaping our most intimate relationships without asking permission. Choosing not to keep carrying that logic forward is a much-needed interruption no matter how hard the execution.

Why I’ve chosen quiet over certain rooms

This comes up most clearly for me around the holidays. I’ve spent a lot of Christmases alone and people tend to assume that must be painful. They worry, ask questions or treat it like something I should eventually fix.

What’s rarely understood is that being alone has often been easier for me than being in certain rooms.

It’s easier than sitting at tables where the truth is sidestepped, responsibility intentionally blurred and keeping the peace matters more than honesty.

Over time, I’ve learned that what drains me isn’t solitude. It’s pretense. There is a particular kind of fatigue that comes from family spaces where the rules are unspoken but rigid: don’t bring up the past, disrupt the mood or dare say the thing everyone senses but no one wants to name.

For a long time, I tried to make myself fit inside those rules, to be “agreeable”. I tried to keep the peace and convinced myself that staying quiet was the same thing as staying connected. Shocker - It wasn’t. It just meant leaving parts of myself (most of myself) outside the room.

Choosing to be alone during those moments is about self-respect and has nothing to do with withdrawal or punishment. Its about recognizing that I don’t have to sit at tables where truth isn’t welcome in order to prove that I care.

I don’t believe proximity is always the same as love or that showing up physically is always the most honest form of connection. For me, stepping back has often been the only way to stay aligned with myself.

Solitude, in this sense, hasn’t been lonely. It’s been grounding. It’s allowed me to stay in my body, get clear and stay honest and often that honesty means choosing not to participate.