12/07/2025
The art of listening to your partner.
The Silent Truth
To listen is not to wait for your turn,
not to shape a reply before the words have landed.
It is to sit at the threshold of another’s heart,
unguarded, open, willing
to hold what they bring,
not as a burden, but as an offering.
To listen is to quiet the noise within,
to lay down the tools of fixing,
to soften the mind’s hunger
for answers and solutions.
It is the courage to stand in the fire
of another’s sorrow,
and not turn away.
The wounded do not ask to be mended.
They ask to be seen,
to have their ache named aloud,
to be met in the silence
where language fails
but presence remains.
Deep listening is not passive~
it is an act of love,
a weaving of unseen threads
that mend the breaks inside us.
It is the sacred art
of holding pain without clutching,
witnessing without fear,
walking beside another’s grief
without leading them away from it.
The ear, when offered wholly,
is a doorway.
A bridge from exile to belonging,
from fracture to wholeness.
To listen with the heart:
this is how we heal.
Not with answers,
but with space.
Not with words,
but with unwavering presence.
From Jayne Gumbel
