Nothing is Required: Trauma-Informed Gong Listening

He Doesn't Know

JS Worldbridger Season 1 Episode 106

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0:00 | 7:21

 

He Doesn’t Know is a raw, witness-centered spoken word piece rooted in lived experience, body memory, and the reality of caregiving through cancer and end-of-life. 

This poem speaks from the perspective of the one who stayed—the one who saw the surgeries, the chemotherapy, the pain, the vomiting, and the slow unraveling of a loved one’s body. It contrasts that lived truth with those who speak casually about cancer and hospice without ever having witnessed what those words actually hold. 

At its core, this piece is about authority and boundary. 

It reclaims the narrative from those who were absent and places it firmly with the one who carried the experience. It gives voice to the difference between knowing something as a concept—and knowing it through the body, through memory, and through direct witness. 

This is not an explanation.
 This is not an invitation to understand. 

This is a line drawn clearly: 

You were not there.
 You do not know.
 You do not get to speak on this here. 

He Doesn’t Know is a declaration of lived truth, of grief that remains embodied, and of the right to protect what has been carried—without apology, without permission, and without needing to educate anyone who was not present. 

The opening moments of this episode include a short excerpt from Regulation Before Release.

This excerpt is offered as orientation and stabilization before the main content begins. It is not an exercise and does not ask the listener to relax, process, or change anything. The sound is shared as structure—something steady that can be present while the nervous system settles at its own pace.

Regulation Before Release was created for moments when grounding and co

The opening minutes of this episode feature an excerpt from Nothing Is Required of You, a listening piece that anchors the tone and ethics of this podcast.

This excerpt is offered as orientation—not instruction. There is no exercise to follow, no breath to control, and no expectation to relax, heal, or change. The sound is shared as presence—something that can be nearby without asking anything of the listener.

Nothing Is Required of You was created for nervou

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SPEAKER_00

He doesn't know what lives under my skin. He doesn't know what my body carries before I even say a word. He walks into rooms like air belongs to him. Like sound is harmless, like words don't land anywhere. He doesn't know that I measure distance and safety. That I move things before hands get close. That I shift my body before anyone reaches. That my knee locks, my breath shortens, my whole system says, not again. He doesn't know cancer. The way I know cancer. He did not see what I saw with my mom. He was not there for the surgeries, for the pain that didn't stop, for the vomiting that took everything out of her. He was not there for the chemotherapy that almost killed her while trying to save her. He was not there for the days that stretched into survival for the nights that did not end. He doesn't know hospice the way I know hospice. He knows it as a word. I know it as a room that still lives in me. He doesn't know what it means to watch a body leave, to feel the moment when weight changes and something sacred crosses a line you cannot follow. He was not there. I was. I stayed when staying was the only thing left. And he does not get to throw that word around like it is something to be proud of, like it is something to joke about, like it is nothing. He doesn't know what my silence means. He thinks it's empty. He thinks it's nothing. But my silence is full, full of memory, full of grief, full of a body that remembers everything, even when I say nothing. He doesn't know, and I will not teach him. It is not my job to explain my pain to someone who was not there to witness it. So I go quiet, not because I have nothing to say, but because I know where my voice is safe and where it is not. He doesn't know. He does not carry this. He does not hold this. He does not live this. I do, and that is enough to draw the line that keeps me here. In my body, in my space, in a truth. He does not get to touch.