When Silence Becomes Home

After forty-five, the world changes. Not dramatically, perhaps, but one day you notice that silence carries a different sound. That your mind is calling you back to yourself.

I am forty-six. And though I once believed that age was merely a number, I now know that it is a story. An age in which we cease chasing what ought to be, and begin to return to what has always been. An age in which silence ceases to feel uncomfortable, and becomes home. My daughter is twenty-three. She reads English literature and the history of art at a university in the Netherlands. She loves books, museums, the quiet of libraries, and a world that has a soul. I see in her everything I once wished for myself…

The Quiet Energy of the Ranch

There is a particular kind of silence that only this time can give me.

The moment I enter the arena, the world outside grows still. In its place comes the rhythm of hooves, the breath of horses, the soft rustle of straw. As though the very air carried a different energy — one that settles into the body and softens the thoughts. It lives in every detail. In the calm of the horses, in the golden light reflected upon ageing wood, in the rhythm of silence. Horses do not need words. They stand in silence, and yet they speak to the deepest part of me. Their gaze, the warmth of their breath in the cold air, the weight of their steps in the sand. All of it is a language of trust and patience…

My PhD Took Twenty-Three Years

For the world of adult children is a strange place indeed

When I wrote the article When Silence Becomes Home three months ago, I felt it was everything I wanted to say on the subject. Yet, that piece merely unlocked a deeper thought on meaningful relationships—a theme that is increasingly taking over my writing. And so today, I sit on the terrace, admittedly still in the chequered nightshirt I’ve been wearing since morning, which feels like my personal symbol of comfort today. I won’t hide the fact that I am simply relishing the truth that today I have to do nothing; I only may. And giving up this comforting nightshirt is entirely subject to that very principle…