Silence: wound or healing?

Often when I'm reading, I come across a sentence or phrase that stops me short. What does that mean? How can I process the idea? If it were a signpost on the road, how would it direct me on my journey?
Here's the sentence that hit me this morning in a substack that focuses on estrangement.

Silence can become its own kind of wound.

The author was describing her own difficulty and feeling of aloneness when she experienced being "disappeared" by an adult child. For ten years, things germinated and she is about to publish a book offering parents what she would have wished for herself as she began walking the thorny and painful road of estrangement.

As I asked myself how to process this thought, I considered the different forms of silence:

• The silence of the person refusing contact.
• One's own silence walking the road alone and hiding the grief from others.
• Silence as punishment.
• The silence of condemnation that speaks volumes.
• The silence of pity which can add to one's burden.
• Suffering in silence and uniting grief and pain to the cross.
• Silence as listening.
• Spiritual silence.

So many different ways of "being silent."

If silence can be "its own kind of wound" can it not also be its own kind of healing? We embrace reality when we recognize a painful situation and acknowledge that we have no control over it or the ability to change it. Others may offer a magical solution. "If you only....[fill in the blank]... all will be well." If you disagree with the prescription or refuse to embrace it, you aren't serious about "fixing" things. 

Is everything "fixable" on this side of the veil? I truly doubt it. Personality differences, pride, intransigence, and, yes, sin all impact us and our willingness to engage in painful communication. We need to accept the fact that conflict is part of the human condition. Love is the art of maintaining relationships in all their messy reality. In some cases, though, silence can be a strategy of survival and even personal growth especially silence in the presence of God.

Jesus spoke very few words from the cross. Each had a purpose. Is it not better to embrace silence and only speak when words can fall on fertile soil and at a time when they won't be misunderstood?

One of the things I love best about the Traditional Latin low Mass is its silence. God speaks to us, as he did to the Prophet Elijah, in a still, small voice. We are not likely to hear him in the fire of raging emotions or the hurricane of angry voices. But when we sit in His presence in silent awareness of His love, He can perform miracles of grace and healing. 

May Jesus Christ be praised!