What do I mean by quietlings
Which is to say, I’m still discovering, myself, what I mean by quietlings. Maybe the best place to start is with the story, as best as I understand it at the moment, of how the word first came to me.
In my mind, I trace the start to a conversation I had about a year and a half ago with a quieter part of me. A part I’ve been getting to know better over the last eleven years or so, but that I don’t always give as much attention to as it’s been asking for.
To hear it, I have to quiet myself a fair amount. Take a walk in nature, if I can. Listen to the birds and the sound of my feet on the earth, my heartbeat, my breath. Sit or lie on the ground and bring my awareness to my body, scalp, face, neck, chest, arms, hands, fingers, belly, hips, legs, feet, toes. Give space for any emotions that I’ve maybe been keeping at bay to move through me, show me whatever they want to show me.
So that’s what I did (except it was deep midwinter in Michigan where I live, so in lieu of a nature hike, I listened to a nature recording instead). Then, turning my attention inward, I asked the quieter part of me the first question that came to mind: what do you want?
To my surprise, an answer came. Surfaced, maybe. Like it had been there for a while, waiting for the right time.
A partner.
This other, deeper, quieter part of me wanted a partner. As if it had been living life on its own, doing its own thing, despite living inside of me. Sleeping in its own bed. Cooking for itself. Going through its own mail. Like a soulmate I’d been ignoring and had slowly grown distant from. It was asking me for a relationship. To be partners.
It was humbling to realize that this immense depth was asking me to be its partner. It wasn’t as if it had only then come to that desire. More that, finally, I’d asked, and it thought I might be ready.
What else do you want, I asked, sensing there might be more.
To express myself, I felt like I heard it say. Like a thought that showed up inside my mind that felt quiet and true.
I lit up inside. I could do that. I want to do that. I had this strange feeling that maybe even that’s what I (the part of me that was listening to this quieter part) am for. Like that might be my purpose, for lack of a better word. Yes, I thought, I can do that. Be your partner. Express you, us…
I had one more question. What do you want to express?
The answer arrived immediately, clearer inside of me even than the others. Like the quieter part of me was getting louder.
It’s good to be alive and there’s nothing to be afraid of.
I was moved when I heard that. It felt like a distillation of everything I had come to feel was true of my life. Things that really hadn’t felt true at all when life was at its noisiest, but were revealing themselves to have actually been true all along. In ways I maybe couldn’t have known and trusted without the encounters I’d had with quiet in times when the noisiest of noise was all around me and drowning out whatever quiet remained within me. In times when it felt very bad indeed to be alive. When almost all I could feel was fear.
I told the quieter part of me, I’m in.
I began listening to that quieter part more often after that, more intently. About two weeks ago, it felt like it was time to start this Substack. A fledgling start at partnering, expressing, a little more publicly. I wondered what I’d post on it, what to call it.
quietlings came to mind.
An invitation more than a demand. Like, what do you think? Or, actually, as I’ve come to realize when the quieter part of me speaks, the first implicit question is something more along the lines of what do you feel?
(When it comes to listening, I’m discovering, thinking serves me best when it comes later. Especially when it’s informed by, and in service of, feeling.)
It felt right. Good. True.
That said, the pairing of quiet with -ling(s) as a suffix wasn’t a word I’d ever heard before. So I googled it. Essentially nothing showed up,* just a social media page for a (defunct?) baby sleep pillow company.
Maybe it’s a word that wants to have a life, I thought. Maybe it’s something being born out of this new partnership that’s just finding its legs. Maybe it needs to grow into itself, find out for itself what it’s all about. Maybe quietlings is itself a quietling.
Maybe it doesn’t want a definition yet. Maybe it just wants to be heard, paid attention to, compassionately mirrored, so it can become what it will.
So I’ve been listening to quietlings, and growing more and more inspired each day by what it’s showing me of itself. The several parts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Quietlings are my first attempts to put some of that into words. I suppose in hopes that it might meet others in whatever ways it wishes and, perhaps, somehow, connect us to each other as we learn together in our listening.
*Quietlings appeared to have almost no history as a word beyond a brand, at least none I could find. But it had parts, and those parts had been living their own strange, long lives. I think we’ll get into those parts next, maybe in Part 3 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Quietlings. Which I haven’t written yet, so, yeah, once again… we’ll see!