The Inheritance of Silence

 

It feels almost unnatural.

Reading has always been second nature to me, yet this week has driven me to the edge of myself—overwhelmed, breathless, as though my body trembles at a peak it cannot hold. In that fragile space, I fled to a kind of refuge: the faint rhythm of a piano spilling from my phone, the ancient, musty perfume of old books. I reached for a volume at random from the library’s rack, not knowing it would cut so sharply into me.

It was a story of grandmothers. Our grandmothers.

The words dissolved into tears. The body betrays itself in such moments—hormones flooding, emotions unraveling, the simple act of breathing turning into labor. Anxiety crests like a wave, and with it comes an uncanny force: echoes that ache, shadows that press, a silence that suffocates.

The book spoke of the Comfort Women—women whose voices, long buried, rose to carry the weight of scars carved into their bodies and their souls. Enslaved at the hands of the Japanese, their humanity violated, their wills broken, they endured. Yet in their speaking lies defiance, a resistance against being forgotten. Their pain was woven with surrender, not chosen but forced. And in their histories, I saw again the same old pattern: systems built to lift men onto pedestals, while women were pressed into silence and shadow.

As someone who clings fiercely to feminism, I cannot help but ask: why must these tales, ancient yet unyielding, still demand our compliance? Why does power still belong to them, and endurance to us?

But feminism, at its heart, is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It is not a war against faith, nor a tearing down of what is sacred. It is the long, stubborn work of remembering what has always been true: dignity, independence, and respect are not gifts of gender but the birthright of every soul. I hold my Islam close, as I hold my breath. The syariah, in its pure essence, was built on justice, mercy, and balance. True equality does not desecrate the sacred—it demands that within the sacred, no voice is muted, no heart diminished.

Tradition can be honored without being weaponized. A woman’s independence does not strip a man of his worth, just as a man’s respect should not strip a woman of her voice. Equality is not sameness—it is recognition, it is space to breathe, it is the quiet right to exist without apology.

And yet—even here, in this modern age of algorithms and automation, this digital empire of endless noise—the absence of women’s voices endures. It lingers like an old wound, reopening in every silence. The paradigm trembles, but it does not break. The world still hesitates to listen.

So I sit here, cradled by music and old paper, haunted by grandmothers and their shadows. I wonder how long it will take before silence is no longer our inheritance—before their granddaughters can finally rise, not against faith, not against their roots, but with them. Into a future of equal respect, shared dignity, and unbroken strength.

Yeah. This is me.

Love,

Chits