Your Silence Will Not Protect You: What Audre Lorde Taught Me about Art, Fear, and Courage

“Your silence will not protect you.”

These are the words I can’t stop hearing.

Audre Lorde’s essay The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action has been looping in my ears lately. I'm holding space for two things at once: deep gratitude for her work — and the aching wish I hadn’t heard it. Because once you hear truth, you can’t unhear it.

She writes:

“We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted,

while our children are distorted and destroyed,

while our earth is poisoned,

we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles,

and we will still be no less afraid.”

That’s it.

Those words have found me exactly when I needed them — and maybe when I least wanted them. Because it’s absolutely true that my art terrifies me. Sharing it terrifies me.

I’ve had my creative expression submitted as evidence against me in court. I’ve shared my work with loved ones and heard:

“It makes me very sad that you made this.

I think someday you’ll regret this.”

But I’ve learned something that Lorde names and affirms:

I can be sad, afraid, and courageous all at once.

She asks:

“What are the words you do not yet have?

What do you need to say?

What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own,

until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

I’m sitting with those questions — as a woman, a mother, an artist, and a person trying to live with integrity and courage.

And I want to start sharing more of this kind of reflection here — not just what I make, but what moves me, challenges me, and keeps calling me forward.

Because I’m building something for those of you who feel that same pull.

A space where art and language, truth and action, reflection and creativity can meet.

A space for nourishment, expansion, and maybe even transformation.

So I ask you:

What do you need to say?

What silence are you ready to break?

Here’s the reading I’ve been listening to

And if you want to read it instead

And if you’re new to her work, Sister Outsider - these essays are fire, earth, and water.

I’ll be creating more of this kind of content — including monthly conversations, creative prompts, and ways to explore these ideas together. If that sounds like the kind of thing your soul might need… stay close.

Transformational reading from poet Audre Lorde

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