Stillness Can Be Deafening

Aug 27

Written By Rondalyn Whitney

Stillness can be deafening.

Emptiness can feel chilling, an unknowable rage, a storm rolling towards you across the

horizon, a force pulling you downstream, head over heart, through an edgeless tumbling current.

And yet…

I moved away from my childhood home when I was 21: I’ve always been the daughter

who moved away. My mother would say, “When are you coming home?” And I would answer,

“When you get an ocean there.” In 3 weeks, my 94-year-old mother will travel across 5 states

and move here, to New England, and out of the Appalachian hills she always lived in. She is

moving to be near me, here where the ocean cleans the air. I am her last living child, one of 5.

This is not what any of us would have predicted. Still….

Rumination screams with urgent panic. Do I have the right shower bench, did I arrange

to have the will changed, is power of attorney settled? In the noise of life, a bit of stillness is

welcomed, a reprieve. I find that respite sitting by water – a burbling steam, a calm lake lapping

at the edge, a river meandering along the banks or, best of them all, beside a fishy scented

ocean. And so, this week I scooted off to Gloucester, where lobster traps decorate the scene.

It is a great privilege to sit and do nothing, intentionally sit on a porch overlooking the

water that only ends when sky lines it’s edge, sit with nothing urging me more than watching the

direction of boats’ bow heralding the direction of tides wafting in and then out and then in again.

Stilling my breath, stilling my body on a chair on a porch, watching tides, in, then out, the

rhythm of me and something ancient surrounding me.

When I ended my first full year of being a widow, I met day 366 hoping something

miraculous would be made clear to me. What I found, instead, was nothing, just more of

nothing. But in that moment I realized nothingness was something, an invitation, a clearing into

which I could lean, air cleansed of all the past and left to be inhaled as fresh inspiration. Breath

in, rest, breath out, pause.

Nothing settles around me today, the anniversary of yet another day Zero. I’m reminded that

today is the day emptiness became a gift.

Rondalyn Whitney

Rondalyn Varney Whitney, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, is an author, researcher, poet, and retired academic with over 25 years of experience in occupational therapy and health sciences. She holds an advanced certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, a discipline that shapes her current focus on deeply reading life's texts and listening to the "news" within complex human encounters.

Dr. Whitney’s clinical and academic research extensively examines family quality of life, maternal stress, and children's neurobehavioral development. Transitioning her lifelong clinical lens to creative non-fiction, her writing acts as a deliberate act of defiant healing—shining a light in dark spaces so others can rediscover the world’s awe-inspiring beauty. [1]

She is the author of over a dozen books, including text guides such as A Writer's Toolkit for Occupational Therapy and Health Care Professionals and parenting resources such as Bridging the Gap: Raising a Child with Nonverbal Learning Disorder. Her latest projects bridge the raw transition from wife to widow following the traumatic loss of her husband, Bill. This profound journey is captured in her highly acclaimed grief memoir, Habits of Widows, and her upcoming work, Lies in the Afterlife. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Now residing in Western Massachusetts, she balances her creative endeavors with intentional acts of personal rebellion—spending her time at the local gym, tracking watchful Red-tailed hawks, and reading by her firepit

https://rondalynwhitney.com

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