Spiritual Solutions
With Sabrina
Tethered Silence
​By Sabrina Pearl Matheny
Part One: The Restlessness
She sat down in her chair by the window, closing her eyes and tuning into her body. Anxiety hummed beneath her skin. On the small round ottoman before her, her tarot cards and dowsing rod rested on a beautifully woven Balinese Songket cloth, its gold stitching adding a sacred, ceremonial touch. A small crystal sat nearby. She liked to research the properties of stones, choosing the ones that could help her heal old wounds.
Lately, she had been drawn to Infinite —the Healer’s stone. Its energy soothed her, said to expel negativity and invite relaxation. She loved how the polished palm stone felt solid and significant in her hand. Closing her eyes, she inhaled just, holding for the count of four and exhaling this with the same steady beat. Those two little words had become her centering prayer, a portal to a place deep within.
But today, another word rattled in her mind, restless and untamed. It pressed against her, insistent, threatening the peace she had worked so hard to claim. She knew this feeling well. When something stirred like this, it wasn’t meant to be ignored. It was asking to be seen, uncovered, understood… heard.
The guiding light held steady as she followed her angst into the depths beneath
the turbulence.
Part Two: The First Turn
It wove and bobbed like a serpent through her body, swifter than she anticipated, slipping just beyond her grasp. She called for it as though playing a game of Marco Polo, reaching into the unseen. She sensed it deep in her throat, its presence thick and unrelenting. She spoke the names that described its essence, but it would not turn to face her. Another breath in, another out.
She reached for the truth in a suffocating stillness where hope felt too distant to touch. Here, stripped of all strategy, she met herself. And in that moment of surrender, a strange clarity began to emerge. She understood its vibration somewhere in that liminal space and wanted to name it, but the words would not come. Her breath shallowed —her chest a locked cage. She was frozen in silence.
It recognized its energy instantly and whipped around to face her, undulating with a slow, measured rhythm. Its muscles rippled in the pulse of knowing, coiling inward with quiet precision as it searched her face for fear. It expanded and contracted with her breath, a living presence between tension and release, waiting to see if she would flinch. It hissed with such force that she could feel its hot, sticky breath.
“Oh child, you give them every word, every explanation, every piece of yourself. And still… they do not listen. You twist yourself into the shape of their understanding. And still… they do not listen. They do not listen, dear one, because they do not want to hear.”
It spat, flickering its tongue. “Not then. Not now… Not ever.”
Part Three: The Binding
Its body formed a perfect, fluid loop, swelling as it drank in her fear, an unspoken contract between prey and predator written in the space where her scream should be. A wave of dizziness overtook her; a distant ringing filled her ears. Reaching for the arms of the chair, she steadied herself, grounding against something solid, something real. Then she began again,
Just—This, three more times. The serpent swayed back and forth, unhurried yet deliberate, lulling her downward, anchoring her to the falsehoods that sought to keep her separate and small.
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She was sinking, not into darkness, but into herself. Old as the first wound, yet still raw, as if it had happened hours ago. And then…a voice. Not hers. Not the snake’s. Her mother’s. Steady as a metronome, its cadence measured and controlled. It wove through the air, spinning silk around her throat—thin, yet unbreakable. Each word, each expectation, wrapped tighter, securing her in place. The more she struggled, the more distant her mother became, so she stopped moving altogether.
She lingered in the background, close enough to see and hear but never close enough to engage.
Part Four: The Mold
She thought about her needs. Needs? How ridiculous. Were children allowed to have needs? Not in that house. Neediness was considered weakness, something to be corrected or ignored, unless, of course, it could be used to remind them who held the power. Her younger brothers, the twins, fell for it, hook, line, and sinker—storms with no warning. She’d seen it happen again and again: one minute the sky, open and clear, the next the air thickened, the colors drained, and everything collapsed inward, pulling her brothers and mother into the wreckage.
Not her. Wrong name. Wrong face. Wrong Soul. She had listened endlessly as her mother recounted her own childhood—tales that warned against need, shaping her to believe that strength meant silence. She decided early on that she would earn her mother’s love by being obedient. Yes—she would be perfect. To be perfect was to be untouchable, seamless, a reflection without cracks. But what about the others? What roles were left for them? Ah, now it was coming back. The oldest became the confidante. Another, the quiet one, distant but effortlessly adored, had never needed to do anything to be loved. “Fragile,” her mother had called him. He was born in the shadow of loss, making him a reckoning. Among them all, only one carried a name that echoed their mother’s, a thread spun to bind them for eternity.
Her mother had molded each of them, whether they realized it or not. She coaxed them into cohesion, transforming them into something supple. She stretched them between her fingers, pressing, folding, and turning. She could feel the tension between them, the strands of blind trust intertwining, tightening under her hands, readying them for the slow rise ahead. How neatly their family fit into the frame on the table. Each child so proud, so clueless. Her father, mired in conditional thinking, became their axis. His rules concealed his emotions; his criticism sheathed in a scabbard at his waist, his hand never far from the hilt.
Her ex had been no different. His words rewrote the past as often as needed, bending and twisting the truth to suit his mood. His words were honeyed with enough sincerity to be believed; his charm was a well-worn disguise. It had never been about love or truth. It was always about control—about familiarity, the only life she knew, etched into her long before she had a say in it. By then, she was a practiced shape shifter, contorting herself into whatever form he required to keep her close. She silenced herself in his presence, knowing she was built to comply and conditioned to aim for perfection. He liked that about her. One word, one look, and she would dance. He dwelt in obscurity, somewhere between truth and deception, shifting, slipping, evading—just like the world she had been born into, the one that taught her that obedience and silence were the price of survival.
Part Five: The Rupture
Every unfolding is shaped by our choices, and each path leads us to a new outcome. This life—chosen by her fear of stepping into her power, stung in all places she could not yet name. Her mind latched on, splitting her reality into a story of judgment and failure. The pain overtook her, rising then falling, swelling and subsiding like the serpent, lifting its head as its tongue flickered out to taste the air—sensing the weight of everything left unspoken.
And then, when she least expected, it hissed, "Silence!”
Part Six: Liminal Space
The strike was swift, a flash of movement too quick to react. Its fangs sank into her throat, puncturing with precision. Stunned and motionless, she stood there wondering what she had done to provoke it. But she knew. She had always known. Her life had been about getting people to love her, performing for approval. It had happened incrementally, so slowly she hadn’t noticed. Each success became ammunition fired in wordless moments—proof that she wasn’t enough.
The strike had landed; not just in her throat, but in the marrow of her story—and there was no unknowing it now. No matter how hard she tried, the maze never stopped shifting—rewarding compliance, punishing defiance—keeping her off balance, to ensure she’d never find her way out. She discovered that her life had been built on the illusion of stability, holding its shape at first, then eroding bit by bit with every tide, every storm, every inevitable force of nature.
And then came the longing. A restlessness that crept in. It did not command or demand but beckoned from within. It was gentle with her, easing her into herself, lingering in the quiet spaces of her heart. She was beginning to sense new possibilities, to return her thoughts of unworthiness to her storiless body and to allow her heart to drop its armor and soften. That would take time. Time to let the loud things grow quiet so that the soft things could clack and clatter about. Uncomfortable at first, then settling into place, she found that time. Time to test her resolve. Time to double back again and again, tugging at the threads unraveling her inherited story until it began to fray.
Part Seven: The Turning
The past pulled on her like gravity, pleading with her to stay with the familiar and sink back into the silence. The battle cry Know Thyself rang in her chest, offering resilience. Somewhere deep within, she understood—healing was never about perfection; it was about acceptance. The past was losing its grip just as the future enticed her forward.
She brought her awareness to the pain, her hand drifting to her throat. Closing her eyes, she steeled her nerves and prepared to face her greatest enemy…herself.
Part Eight: The Return
All that remained was a translucent, papery husk—a deliberate shedding making way for new life. The snake had gone, its work complete. It had not been slain; it had transformed, as snakes are born to do. The scars and parasites still clung, but they would fall away in time. This was the holy violence of becoming.
She waited. Still, it did not return. The lump in her throat began to dissolve as its words curled in the spirals of her nautilus ear, " You, dear one, have walked through the fire of transformation. Every experience, every wound, every healing, every search, and every surrender has etched itself into you, mapping the unseen. You know what it is to be lost, to wrestle with doubt, to stand in uncertainty and not look away. You have broken free from the limits of your mind, and when those old beliefs dare to rise with their serpentine lies and coiled myths, you track them through the shadows, call them by name, and strike—fang for fang, venom for venom.
This isn’t about chasing some far-off awakening. It is about inhabiting your life completely, claiming every breath as your own.”
Part Nine: The Reclamation
The venom had been drawn, the silence purged. And in the stillness that followed, the words rose. They did not ask permission. They did not falter. They unfurled from her lips, clear and strong, shaped by her courage, spoken by her heart.
Her voice returned.
©2025 Sabrina Pearl Matheny All rights reserved
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All characters, events, and situations are fictional or used symbolically. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author assumes no responsibility for interpretations or assumptions made by readers.