THE GIANT THIS WEEK
The Silence Giant does not arrive loudly.
He doesn't charge across a valley or shout threats or announce himself with armour and a spear. He works more quietly than the others — more patiently — with a subtlety so complete that most people never notice he has moved in at all.
He simply waits. In the gap between what you feel and what you say. Between the truth you carry and the person who needs to hear it. Between the love that is real and the moment that passes before it is spoken.
And in that gap — day after day, year after year — he builds a distance. The kind that grows so gradually you don't notice how far you've drifted from the person who was meant to know you fully.
This week: the things we never say. And what it costs us to keep not saying them.
THE SPARK
I want to tell you something I've told very few people.
When I was seven years old, something happened to me. An accident — one that arrived without warning and left without apology, and remade my whole world in the space of a single day. For the next ten years I carried something no child should have to carry: a pain that was physical, mental and emotional all at once, on a loop. Like a tape playing the same recording several times a day that I couldn't switch off, couldn't put down, and couldn't explain to anyone in a way that felt safe enough to try.
Seven years old — and already fluent in the skill of carrying something enormous in silence.
My beloved reader, I'm writing this for you — in case you've been carrying a tape of your own, playing longer than anyone around you knows. Hear this clearly, from someone who has been there: you are not alone, and the tape can stop. Not instantly, and not without courage. But it can stop. And the silence that has felt like protection is costing you more than the saying ever would.
Because silence carried long enough doesn't lighten on its own. It accumulates — quietly, patiently — until its weight starts to feel normal. Until you can't remember not carrying it. Until speaking feels more dangerous than staying quiet. That is the Silence Giant's whole trick: he doesn't force you to be quiet. He makes the quiet feel safer than the speaking. And then he waits.
But the relief on the other side of the silence is real. It begins as a whisper — not someone else's voice, but something deep in you saying: there is another way. You were never meant to carry this alone. Faint at first, easy to drown out with the noise of ordinary life. But give it the smallest opening and it grows — until it feels less like a hope and more like a certainty. That the weight can lift. That the person on the other side of your silence — someone you trust, a professional, a friend, or God Himself — can hold what you've been holding alone.
Now let me tell you about a different silence. One that cost me just as much.
I was fifteen the last time I saw my father.
He had emigrated to America. The plan was for us to follow, and perhaps one day move on to Canada. A good plan — the kind that makes sense while you're building it, when the future feels open and the phone calls bridge the distance well enough to keep believing. It didn't work out. Not because it was impossible, but because life made it so. He stayed in America. We stayed without him. And the years passed the way they do when someone is gone — slowly, then all at once.
I had told my father I loved him — earlier, when the words came easily and the distance was still new. So the love was spoken; it existed between us in words, not just in the silence of assumption. That matters. But the last time I saw him, at fifteen, at that final goodbye, the love did not come out.
The anger did. The disappointment. Years of absence and missed plans and a family waiting for a reunion that kept not arriving — all of it, in the wrong words at the wrong moment. And then he was gone. And the right words, the truer ones, never got their turn.
I've carried that ever since. Not bitterness — and not the clean grief of loss, though that's there too — but the particular weight of the unspoken thing. The love that was real and deserved to be the last thing said, and wasn't.
That is the Silence Giant at his most devastating. Sometimes he doesn't stop us from saying things we don't mean. Sometimes — at the moments we can't get back — he stops us from saying the things we mean most.
And then came the news that changed that silence forever.
After many years, my father decided to come home. He began the journey. He stopped along the way to visit family — and he never arrived. He passed away before he could complete it.
He tried to come back. And the time ran out.
I'm not telling you this for my grief. I'm telling you because it's why I'm asking you — directly, urgently — not to wait.
If there's someone you've lost touch with — a father, a mother, a sibling, a friend; someone once close, now distant through argument or circumstance or the slow drift of years — and if that person is still reachable: stop.
Take a breath. Think of the good times, the real ones, from before the distance grew. And reach out. A message, an email, a call — whatever the means. Don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect words.
Because I know what it is to be the one who didn't make that call. Who let the last moment be the angry one. Who watched the chance close before the journey was complete. I would give a great deal to have that moment back.
You may still have yours.
The Silence Giant will tell you it's too complicated, too much time has passed, that reaching out will only reopen old wounds — that silence is simpler. He's wrong. He has always been wrong. Silence isn't simpler. It's heavier, and it gets heavier every year you carry it.
Say the thing. Write the letter. Make the call. Not because it will be easy — but because the relief on the other side is real, because the whisper telling you there's another way is telling you the truth, and because somewhere, in whatever time remains, the right words can still be the last ones.
YOUR STONE THIS WEEK
Identify one silence you've been carrying.
Not the practical kind — the emotional truth. The love not expressed. The wound not acknowledged. The thing you've kept inside because speaking it felt more dangerous than staying quiet.
Write it down first, just for yourself. One sentence: the thing you have not said.
Then — if someone needs to hear it, and if they're still reachable — ask yourself whether this is the week to say it. Not perfectly. Not with a speech prepared. Just honestly. Just truly.
The Silence Giant has had enough of your years.
Give the words their turn.
The Giant is waiting. Pick up the stone.
— Cassius Stone
If you are carrying something heavy and struggling to cope, please reach out to someone you trust or a professional. In the UK, you can call Samaritans free, any time, on 116 123.