There is a swallowing that comes from fear, and there is a swallowing that comes from strategy, and they look identical from the outside, which is exactly why the second one works.

A woman who says nothing because she is afraid has surrendered.

A woman who says nothing because she has already decided to act, and knows that speaking now would only warn her target, has done the opposite of surrender.

She has begun.

When I held my tongue that day, I was not accepting Damon’s verdict on my worth.

I was declining to educate him about the danger he was in.

Every furious word I might have thrown at him would have taught him something — that I’d noticed, that I was angry, that I was not as beaten as he needed me to be.