Stop Staying Quiet

EPISODE 62: The Silence We Inherit

Episode Summary

This week, Christi reflects on something far more personal than politics: silence.

As the anniversary of her mother's death and birthday arrive just days apart, she finds herself thinking about grief, voice, and the lessons we carry long after someone is gone. Inspired by an article about women being told to stay quiet, Christi explores how many of us learned silence long before politics ever entered the picture.

From childhood to relationships, workplaces to family dynamics, silence often feels like protection. But what if it isn't protecting us at all?

In this episode, Christi shares why finding your voice is about more than self-expression. It's about healing. It's about truth. And sometimes, it's about finally giving yourself permission to take up space.

Topics include:
• The silence many women learn long before adulthood
• How grief changes over time
• What Christi's mother left behind
• Why storytelling matters
• The difference between protecting others and abandoning yourself
• Finding the thread that connects your life's work
• Why your story belongs to you

Key Takeaway

You do not need permission to tell the truth about your life.

The most important relationship you'll ever have is the one you have with yourself. Sometimes healing begins the moment you stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable.

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Disclaimer

Sassy Politics is an opinion and commentary podcast intended for informational and educational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research and draw their own conclusions.

Transcript

When Silence Starts Costing You

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I've been thinking a lot about silence lately. The kind where you've got something sitting on your heart, something you need to say, something you need to process, and somehow it never quite makes it out of your mouth. I've been thinking about all the years I spent doing that, protecting people, protecting relationships, protecting feelings, and versions of stories that weren't even mine to protect. And somewhere along the way, I realized I was paying for that protection with pieces of myself.

Grief, Time, And What Mom Left

SPEAKER_00 0:45

This weekend is always a strange one for me. June 5th is the day my mom died. June 7th is the day she was born. She died in 1999. She was 44 years old. I'm 52. Which means I've now lived eight years longer than she ever got the chance to do. Eight years. Eight birthdays and Christmases. Eight years of watching my kids grow. Eight years of becoming someone she never got the chance to meet. And every year around this time, I find myself thinking about what she left behind. Not things, lessons. Strength. Questions. A voice. And maybe that's why this week's episode found me when it did. I'm Christy Chanel. And this is Sassy Politics.

How Women Learn To Stay Quiet

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Welcome back to Sassy Politics. Because these headlines are about us. I was reading an article this week by Helen Lewis called The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet. I got about halfway through the article when I stopped thinking about what the article was saying and started thinking about my own life. I know this to be true. Most women don't learn silence from politics. By the time politics enters the conversation, we've already been practicing for years. We learned it way earlier than that. We learned it in all the little moments that add up over a lifetime. The times speaking up that didn't go well, the times telling the truth that made everyone in the room uncomfortable, the times we figured out through trial and error that keeping the peace was just easier than having the actual conversation. And after a while, that becomes automatic. You stop asking yourself what you genuinely think, and you start running everything through that filter of how everybody else is going to react. I can see it looking back at my own life in high school, in relationships, in friendships, in moments where I knew exactly what the truth was and chose to stay quiet anyway. Because I was afraid of what would happen once I said it out loud. Once you say something, it's real. Once you say it, people have opinions about it. Once you say it, somebody might just push back or pull away or make you feel like you shouldn't have said anything at all. And if you're somebody who has spent most of your life making sure everyone around you is comfortable, that possibility feels genuinely terrifying. But here's what I had to learn the hard way.

Silence Postpones Healing

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Silence doesn't protect you from any of it. It just postpones things. It delays the conversations that need to happen. It delays the healing that's waiting on the other side of those conversations. And if we're not paying attention, it delays us from becoming who we were actually meant to be.

Voice, Power, And American History

SPEAKER_00 4:25

And of course, this is not new. Women couldn't vote in this country until 1920, after decades of being told loudly, legally, officially, that they didn't need a voice in their own governance. For most of American history, black voices weren't just discouraged. They were violently suppressed. Indigenous languages and cultures were systematically taken away in government-run schools designed specifically to erase them. And through all of it, the people doing the suppressing understand exactly what they were doing. Because a voice that gets silenced can't organize. It can't challenge, it can't change anything. So when the same playbook shows up today, different targets, different language, same intention, we should recognize it for exactly what it is. Because controlling who gets to speak and whose story gets to be told has always been about controlling power. That's why I refuse to treat finding your voice as some soft, feel-good concept. It isn't. It is resistance. Real resistance. It matters right now in a way that is urgent.

Storytelling As Real Resistance

SPEAKER_00 5:40

This week, someone on my team walked into my office and handed me the beginning of a book she's writing. Her story, her life. And she was wrestling with something I have watched so many people wrestle with. How do you tell your story when the people in that story are still in your life? How do you talk about the things that hurt you without spending the whole time feeling guilty about it? How do you stop worrying about everyone else's feelings? I told her something that took me a long time to fully believe myself. I said, they did this to you. You didn't do this to them. Your story belongs to you. And I watched something shift in her face when I said that. Because what she was really looking for wasn't writing advice. She was looking for permission. Permission to be honest. Permission to take up space. Permission to stop shrinking herself so everybody else could stay comfortable. And I think a lot of us are looking for that same thing, whether we know it or not.

You Own Your Story

SPEAKER_00 6:52

I went back this week and started reading through old transcripts from my podcast. Old episodes, project I created years ago, and I kept expecting to find this scattered, directionless person who kept changing subjects and starting over. Simply vibing, love you miss you by sassy politics. Different names, different seasons, and what felt like completely different versions of me. But there was a through line in every single one of them. Every project, without exception, was about helping people find themselves, helping people realize they are allowed to take up space. I just didn't know that's what I was doing until I looked back at all of it. That's what this work has done for me. Every episode has pushed me to be a little more honest, a little more myself. It definitely didn't happen all at once, and I didn't even know it was happening at all. Because it never happens all at once. It happened one story at a time, one uncomfortable truth at a time, one conversation at a time until I stopped asking for permission and started trusting what I already knew. It's that thread that's been running through everything I've ever made. Underneath the politics and the entrepreneurship and relationships, I have always been fascinated by people. What breaks us, heals us, what shapes us into who we become?

The Through Line In My Work

SPEAKER_00 8:26

My mother never taught me to be small. She gave me permission to be myself long before I even knew who that was. She gave me permission to question things, to choose things, to become things. And sitting here at 52, eight years older than she ever got to be, I understand that gift in a way I never could have when I was younger. The greatest thing she left me wasn't certainty or confidence or some roadmap for how to do it right. It was a voice and the freedom to use it.

Stop Abandoning Yourself

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So if you're listening today and there's something you've been carrying, a story, a truth, a version of yourself you've been keeping hidden because you're just not sure what people will think or say or do, I want you to hear this. You don't need permission. Not from society or family or friends. And you damn sure don't need it from me. You already have it. The most fulfilling thing I've ever done wasn't build a business or start a podcast or grow a social media platform. It was learning how to stop abandoning myself. And today you're getting the most healed version of me. It's not finished yet. It's just the most healed version so far. And honestly, that's enough. There's always hope because you're here. Use that damn voice of yours. Do you hear me? And listen, I want to hear your story. So it's time you told it. See you next Tuesday.