By: Amara Soleil

Some people call it “keeping the peace.”

But if your truth is trapped inside, peace isn’t the word it’s control.

Have you heard My Way by Queen Key? It’s a great song, but my favorite is “The Episodes.” In that track, she speaks her truth in a way that feels like she’s breaking free. She responds to the men who talked about her even his other baby mama — and she does it through music. She used recordings from her diagnosis, and the raw emotion is undeniable.

One day I was scrolling on TikTok and saw Tia K on live. She was calling people out and talking about her family, and then she mentioned Queen Key even featuring her in episode four. That moment made me realize something important:

Silence doesn’t mean you’re okay.

There’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score, and it explains how trauma stays in your body when you don’t release it. So many of us hold back because we don’t want to be seen as rude or disrespectful. We keep secrets. We stay quiet. We refuse to hold people accountable.

But silence isn’t healing it’s a delay.

Queen Key turned her pain into art because she couldn’t keep it inside anymore. And you can feel the years of silence in her music. She doesn’t just talk — she reminds people what they did, and it hits because she finally spoke.

That’s why I think about The Braxtons. I used to watch the show for entertainment, but now it just feels sad. It wasn’t funny — it was painful. Truths were coming out, and then people acted like it was “for Traci.” But I don’t think it should’ve been on TV. They didn’t like being around each other, and the drama was real.

Tamar was wrong but so was everyone else. They treated Toni like the star, and then let her get away with not showing up. She even said she wouldn’t be their friend if they weren’t family. Traci brought life to the show, and I felt for her husband and son because they were grieving. And still, the show kept mentioning her name while refusing to let her husband appear even though he was there through it all.

What you keep inside doesn’t disappear. It comes back later often worse.

I’ve stayed quiet before because I didn’t want to be seen as “the problem.” But I learned that silence doesn’t mean peace it means the pain is still inside. The longer you hold it in, the louder it gets.

Ask yourself: what am I holding inside that I’m afraid to speak about? What truth are you avoiding because you don’t want the drama?

Your silence isn’t protecting you it’s keeping you stuck.

“You can hide a storm for a while, but you can’t stop the rain. Eventually, it finds a way out.”

“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself… The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”

— Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score