> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.needagarden.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Restraint - URL: https://www.needagarden.com/restraint/ - Published: 2026-09-24T03:48:28.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T03:48:28.000Z - Description: The woman with the clogged throat chakra became the woman everyone else trusts to open theirs. - Author: Tanya Hart - Tags: #chapter, personal essay, garden, voice, #musingsfromthegarden, Musings From the Garden > *Content note: this essay includes sexual assault, self-harm, and substance use.* As soon as I stepped out of my car, I headed for the garden. It could have been a nice, short Friday, but instead I'm seething with rage. I'm weeding with my bare hands, cycling through every insult, every clap-back, every single pivot to try and control me. And yet, I say nothing. A few years ago, I randomly decided to see a psychic on my birthday. I live my life invested in woo, but I still can't accept the validity of a psychic reading. His studio was in an office building in a small farm town: fluorescent lights, a certificate of psychic mediumship, a wall hanging of chakras. I barely remember the reading. He told me my throat chakra was clogged, put on a poor-quality prerecorded meditation, and performed Reiki from his chair ten feet away. I left thinking about how much money I had just wasted. If you don't speak woo, I'll save you the lesson. Chakras are less anatomy, more metaphor. I wasn't speaking my truth. I was holding back. I had been living half-muted. It wasn't a diagnosis. It was an accusation. He didn't know me. He just looked at me and saw the silent decades of every swallowed word, every stifled scream, every "I'm fine" that tasted like a lie. He didn't know I was the kid who couldn't cry, the woman who couldn't ask. He just looked at my throat and named the lump. Suddenly I'm a kid again. I've fallen off my bike with road rash covering half my back. "Rub some dirt on it," my uncle says as I seethe with pain while my mom cleans it out. "Stop crying or I'll give you something to really cry about," my dad says, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, followed by the classic: "Life isn't fair." *Observe. Say nothing. Rinse. Repeat.* Eventually, that silence turned into rage. I found songs with enough parallel that I didn't just sing every word, I felt it, too. I was a teenager, holed up in my room, listening to sad songs, using a razor blade to help express all of the things my throat could not. At 15, that rage would get me kicked out of my house. My hobbies included skipping school, snorting Ritalin, drinking cheap booze, and smoking cigarettes. It was better to avoid than to communicate. I'd find myself in all kinds of bad situations. One in particular still creates a burning in my throat. I'm left alone by my cousin, who's gone looking for drugs, in a run-down mill with an older guy who forces himself on me. Walking back home, shivering, empty, I tell my cousin his friend took advantage of me. That I asked him to stop and he wouldn't. As soon as I say the "r" word, my cousin stops walking, turns back to look at me, and says, "You're wasted. You don't even know what you're saying. You guys were just partying too hard." *Say nothing. Rinse. Repeat.* Boyfriend cheats: I'm "making it up in my head." My boss sexually harasses me: "He only acts that way because he likes you." A friend makes a backhanded compliment: "Relax, it's just a joke." *Rinse. Repeat.* Eventually I just stopped talking. Every time I tried, my eyes would well up with tears and I'd cry. No words, just an overwhelming sense of panic, a quivering lip, chaotic breathing, and the taste of salt water. I started trading words for cigarettes. Cigarettes for joints. Joints for pills. Pills for every letter of the alphabet that refused-to-form-words-that-refused-to-form-sentences. Silence is a good teacher. I witnessed which words made people soft and which words triggered defense. My observations taught me where the truth was hiding in a room and what questions unlocked it. Words had value, and I started to try them on again. I used them to garner attention and to "yes" myself into being used as a doormat. If I said no, I followed it with "I was only kidding. Please don't leave." Everything was an apology: "Sorry I wasn't more patient." "Sorry to bother you." I had learned how to use my voice to please every single person around me. It never once spoke up for me. My throat chakra has been blocked for as long as I can remember. The irony? The woman with the clogged throat chakra became the woman everyone else trusts to open theirs. Years of watching others while diminishing my own worth made me fluent in everyone else. Skills include: telling it like it is and asking hard questions that crack someone open. I am really, really good at giving people the words to armor themselves while still choking on my own laundry list. *Silence. Repeat.* I am the master of restraint, with so much to say, yet I will say none of it. If I want something, I work harder to get it. Hustle as a substitute for asking. Loneliness over advocacy. People say I'm strong, poised, confident. Yet I walk around with a lump in my throat. I'm allowed to feel angry, but God forbid I yell. That would be unprofessional. I'm allowed to love, but not so quickly. We've only been dating for six months. I'm allowed to be disappointed, but please, accept every situation as it is. Restraint is a clogged throat chakra, but better dressed. A celebrated, graceful skill built from suppression is still built from suppression. The weeds are pulled. Everything I want to say is in the compost pile out back, and a calm comes over me. Rub some dirt on it. *Say nothing.*