Conscious Choice Seattle: Living Out Loud

October 2004 | Dr. Cat

Living Out Loud

“Strong and silent” has its place, but it’s not the only way

by Dr. Cat Saunders

A reader e-mailed me to comment about something I wrote in “The Secret Value of Silent Days” (Evergreen Monthly, July 2004). In that column, I mentioned using a calculator to estimate how much time I’d spent in silence in the last 20 years since I started doing regular silent days. To support her criticism, the reader offered a quotation by Sam Keen that was published elsewhere in the same issue:

I find the public revelation of intimate sexual and spiritual experiences increasingly distasteful. I suspect that true saints and great lovers don’t advertise their prowess, parade their tenderness or exhibit their compassion to be seen by all.

There is something I admire about the nearly obsolete virtues of shyness and modesty. Strong and silent go together more often than not. It is not seemly to speak too much about sacred things in public. Words of endearment, like prayer, are best spoken in a whisper.

The humor was not lost on me that someone wrote to complain that I’d said too much about being silent. Irony aside, I responded by agreeing that Sam Keen was right, and that I certainly was no saint in any case.

Later I noticed something was still bugging me about that e-mail exchange. It wasn’t that a reader had criticized me. After all, criticism comes with the territory of being a writer. Rather, I realized how much I believe in the power of truth-telling, even if it’s about sexual or spiritual subjects — and even if it includes numerical calculations. In short, I realized that I questioned the sentiments expressed by Keen.

First let me say that I’ve respected Sam Keen’s work for about 30 years now. Regarding the above quotation, I understand and sometimes share Keen’s objections. Even so, I rebel against the idea that it’s “distasteful” to disclose intimate details of a sexual or sacred nature. Despite my personal penchant for silence, I reject the idea that “strong and silent” is necessarily good for everyone. I also refuse to believe that it’s necessarily best to whisper prayers.

There are countless ways to pray. Aside from contrasting styles in different religions, I can attest to the fact that some forms of prayer are plenty boisterous and loud. In a cosmos as wild as ours, I can’t imagine that everyone should act like John Wayne when they pray.

As for publicly exposing intimate sexual or sacred information, I hear what Sam Keen is saying, but I personally feel uncomfortable when I find myself judging the “humility quotient” of other people’s self-disclosures. How do I know where they’re coming from, why they said what they said, or how much it cost them to expose the soft underbelly of their flesh?

What may seem like exhibitionism to me may have constituted a profound act of courage for someone else. Who am I to say what kind or how many details other people are allowed to share before their self-disclosures become “distasteful”? Who am I to say that others should be strong and silent? I mean, whose comfort does that serve, and who says comfort is the goal?

When I started writing this column, I kept seeing the image of a black-and-white photograph that became famous many years ago. It shows the torso of a naked woman whose right breast is missing from a mastectomy. Her arms are outstretched to the sky in an expression of innocent and exuberant celebration.

While researching the Internet in an attempt to find that photograph, I came across other photographs of women with missing breasts, including one by model and photographer Joanne Matuschka (www.matuschka.net). Matuschka’s photograph shows a full-frontal shot of her wearing a white dress with its right side cut away, exposing her mastectomy scars. When it was first published on the cover of The New York Times on August 15, 1993, it generated more mail than any other cover in the magazine’s history.

Now you tell me, was that photograph distasteful? Was it exhibitionistic? It appeared before a circulation of two million people when it debuted. Was Matuschka parading the intimate wounds of her sexual and sacred body when she revealed the detailed contours of her missing breast?

I don’t know your answer, but I’ll tell you mine. I think Matuschka’s photograph is awesome and earthshaking and deeply important. I’m grateful that she had the guts to show what others hide in fear or shame. In Matuschka’s case, she later described in explicit detail exactly why she did what she did-because only she knew the truth behind her actions.

Move over, all you strong and silent types. There are lots of us who know the strength of living out loud.

Cat Saunders, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist and the author of Dr. Cat’s Helping Handbook. To contact Cat or learn more about her work, please call (206) 329-0125 or visit www.drcat.org. Cat’s class, “The Five-Minute Switch System: Making Addiction Work for You” will be sponsored by Seattle’s Discover U on Saturday afternoon, October 23, 2004 (register at www.discoveru.org or 206-365-0400).

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: