Where the Trees Listen

There's a kind of silence that makes you flinch — and then there's the other kind, the one that wraps around you like a warm blanket. I found the second one deep in a dense green forest, where the path barely showed beneath my feet and the trees leaned in as if whispering secrets to one another. But the moment I stepped among them, everything went still. Every question and expectation stayed behind, outside the circle of trunks. I didn't have to perform or explain or hide. I just walked, slowly, through the soft forest floor, like drifting inside a forgotten dream. The solitude didn't feel heavy — it felt vast. Like finally taking a deep breath after years of holding it in. Even my thoughts stopped fighting me. They weren't enemies anymore, but quiet companions who didn't demand anything. They simply walked beside me, gently.

For so many years, I had been shouting inside. Wordless, but loud. I wanted to be heard, to be understood, for someone to notice how heavy it was to carry an invisible world inside your chest. But in that forest, among the old and steady trees… I had nothing left to say. Not because it didn't matter anymore — but because it didn't need explaining. The trees didn't ask. They didn't want to know where I came from or how long I'd stay. They didn't need answers. They just stood there — still, ancient, attentive. And they listened. Not with indifference, but with quiet compassion. And maybe that's what I learned most of all: that healing doesn't always live in words, but in the things we don't say. In the thoughts we allow to exist. In the slow steps. In simply being.