For years, I talked about going on a silent retreat.
An ashram in India.
A remote place in Europe.
Even a retreat centre here in the Netherlands.
But every time the same question popped up:
Why spend so much Money just to be quiet?
So instead, I came to our little eco cottage in Zeeland and gave myself four days of silence.
No phone.
No computer.
No TV, music, talking.
Not even reading or writing.
I simply wanted to see what was left when all the noise stopped.
I didn’t really have a goal. Just curiosity.
(I did allow myself 30 minutes a day to finish Alchemy of the Soul and 30 minutes of Buddhist study — I’m human after all.)
I walked, jogged, canoed through the nature reserve.
But what surprised me most was how easy it became to just sit… staring at the lake for hours.
Then things surfaced.
Old memories. Old feelings. Things from the past I had never really looked at before.
It hurt. A lot.
I felt vulnerable. Sad. And at one point I genuinely worried I was sinking into a hole — which was definitely not part of the plan.
I stayed.
I surfed the wave.
Let the Emotions be.
Dropped expectations. Let go of old recriminations.
And by day five — emerging quite literally from a freezing five-minute dip in the lake — I felt different.
Freer.
Calmer.
Stronger.
More aligned with the wholeness of who I am than ever before.
Just something to consider…
Maybe silence deserves a place on your 2026 resolution list?
The post The Gift I Gave Myself: Silence appeared first on The Kennedy Connection.
