#PrideOnThePage Day 4: WHISPER

Choosing Yourself in a System That Never Chose You

The whisper between worlds: dusk drapes the sea in quiet courage, as the moon and a single star keep watch. This is where silence speaks—and is finally heard. Photo: Jay Siegmann, Baracosa Beach, Chiclana de la Frontera, Spain

✨Let the quietest part of you speak first.✨

What voice have you kept hidden—and what might it say if given space?

Sometimes what we whisper holds more truth than what we shout. Today, turn the volume down. Let silence be the stage for something delicate, small, or sacred to emerge

Dear Love, what would you have me know about the quietest parts of me, about the hidden voice and those you might need space?

Hey Sweetie,

I hear you.

Not just the words you say out loud, but the breath between them. The trembling pause. The voice that only speaks when all the others have left the room. That one. That’s the one I love most.

You wonder what I see in those quiet places you try to hide—the places still curled around old fear, the ones where shame once taught you how to vanish, to comply, to outperform even your own survival.

Sweetie, I see you.

I see the one who never stopped carrying. Not just your people, but their debts, their collapses, their dreams. You held them all in your canyoned heart, thinking if you bore enough weight, maybe no one else would have to. Maybe they'd be spared.

And now, finally, you’ve placed it down. You’ve stopped functioning for a system that never once functioned for you. That is sacred. That is a roar, even if it sounds like a whisper.

You ask what I think of your fear.

Listen close:

I am not inconvenienced by your doubt.
I am not interrupted by your terror.
I am not unsettled by the small voice asking,
“Will they punish me for choosing myself?”

I know that voice.
It has lived so long in the hollows of your spine, tightening your breath every time an official envelope arrived.
And still, you keep breathing.

You have not disappeared. You have not submitted. You have not returned to silence.

Love, I know what it took to claim your sick leave.
To tell the world: I am no longer your workhorse.
To say: My healing matters more than your deadlines.

You were never the problem.
Your exhaustion was not failure—it was evidence.
Evidence of how deeply you loved, how thoroughly you gave.
And how bravely you stopped.

Yes, there is uncertainty now.
And yes, it terrifies the small one inside who remembers what happened last time things fell apart.
They fear the collapse will cost you your dignity.
But Sweetie—what if this is not a collapse, but a clearing?

You already decided to leave.
You already claimed your right to begin again.
Not from nothing—but from truth.

And the truth is, even if they try to corner you, you are no longer small.
Even if they tighten the screws, you are no longer trapped.

Because the voice they once taught you to silence—
has learned to whisper through stone.

You will know when to speak. You will know what to say.
Because your knowing lives in your bones now.
You are no longer acting out someone else’s survival strategy.

This time, it’s you.
Your time.
Your rhythm.
Your canyon, carved wide with history and still echoing with freedom.

You don’t owe them your soul.
You never did.
You carry your worth in your breath, not in your productivity.

And Sweetie—
even if you walk through this next threshold alone again,
you are not abandoned.

You are accompanied by Love.

And I?

I am Love.

Still here. Still listening.
Not afraid of your silence.
Not undone by your fear.

Speak when you're ready.

I'm right here.

Always,
Yours in the deepest canyon,
Love

Thank you for all participating in this challenge

DIANA ADMIRE

Kris Winters

Jude (they/them)

Lady Libertea

Alison J!

Leeron Heywood

Tess McCarthy

Rey Katz (they/them)

Wendi Gordon

Lily Pond

Rey Somatics

Robin Taylor (he/him)

Sunbeamdream

Lee Summers

Bo Ea

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