When Silence Speaks Louder Than Fear

2 hours ago
3 min read

By Siobhan Shaw I was handed a timeline I never asked for. Stage IV breast cancer, six years to live, has a way of snapping the air out of a room. The fear is real, immediate, and undeniable. But what surprised me most was not the fear. It was the grace that arrived alongside it, quiet and steady, like it had been waiting for me to notice.

Before I tell you anything else, know this: the most important moments in my healing did not arrive with fireworks. They arrived in silence.

Often before I am fully awake, I whisper a thank-you for another day. Not for a cure. Not for guarantees. Just gratitude. And then I ask to be guided toward what is mine to do.

That question keeps reappearing in my life: What is mine to do?

Every morning when I swallow my chemo pills, I hold intention gently. Three pills. Three words. Love, love, love. One for each. It is not magical thinking. It is an offering. A reminder that fear does not get the final word in my body.

Cancer Bites, the podcast and community I created during my treatment, came to me this way. In quiet obedience. I was not building a platform. I was answering a nudge. I had no idea who it would serve, what it would become, or what I would have to release to make space for it.

At one point, I was running two podcasts simultaneously. One flourished. The other began to wither. Instead of forcing both forward, I stopped long enough to listen. And in that stillness, clarity arrived. The moment I chose to focus fully on Cancer Bites, something else happened.

My body responded.

For several days after making that decision, I felt worse. Pain intensified. Exhaustion deepened. I rested without negotiating, without explaining, without worrying. And then, just as quietly as it had come, the storm passed. Alignment returned. Energy followed intention.

I have learned to trust that my body speaks the same language as my spirit.

Someone once told me, go with the pain. When the night arrived where the pain felt unrelenting, I remembered those words. I didn’t resist it. I didn’t numb it. I lay still and let it rise, expand, and move through me.

No heroics. No bargaining.

Just presence.

The pain reached its peak. And then something extraordinary happened. It loosened. It receded. It left.

I didn’t defeat it. I allowed it.

That night taught me what striving never could. Resistance tightens. Surrender softens. Presence transforms.

A woman once said to me, half-joking and half-confused, that she had breast cancer too but never received the attention I did. I smiled and told her the truth. This was not about looks or personality. This was about assignment. Attention goes where it is needed. And if attention has found me, it is because the message is meant to move through me.

I am not the author of my suffering.

I am a co-creator of my becoming.

Grace has rewritten my days, not by removing difficulty, but by teaching me how to listen. When fear quiets, direction speaks. When I obey, peace follows. When I rest, my body remembers how to heal.

This is what rising looks like for me. Not louder. Not faster.

More aligned. More surrendered. More alive.

And if you are in a season of uncertainty, know this: silence is not empty.

It is full of guidance.

My name, Siobhán, means God’s grace.

I understand now.

Grace was never something I was meant to find.

It is how I am meant to move. Connect With Siobhan www.growingtogive.org