What Silence Cost Me. And What It Has Cost Families

Silence has a cost.

I know that now.

For years, I told myself my silence was strategic.

That it was professional.

That I was working behind the scenes.

That I needed to be careful.

That I couldn’t risk my position, my influence, my ability to “help.”

But the truth is simpler and harder to admit.

My silence protected me.

And it cost families everything.

The Language of the System Is Retaliation

The child welfare system knows one primary language: retaliation.

It retaliates against parents who speak up.

It retaliates against families who challenge decisions.

It retaliates against anyone who disrupts the narrative that it exists to protect children.

Parents learn this quickly.

If they question case plan tasks, it’s labeled “noncompliance.”

If they express anger, it becomes “emotional or mental instability.”

If they advocate for themselves, it’s reframed as “uncooperative.”

And the punishment is swift:  more surveillance, fewer visits, harsher recommendations, delayed reunification.

This is not accidental.

It is structural.

The system is not designed to hear truth from the people it controls. It is designed to silence them.

Professionals Know This and That’s Why Silence Spreads

Professionals inside the system understand retaliation too.

We see what happens to colleagues who speak too loudly.

We watch who gets labeled “difficult,” “not a team player,” or “too emotional.”

We learn which questions are safe and which ones will cost us.

So we adjust.

We soften.

We stay quiet.

We tell ourselves:

• “This isn’t the right time.”

• “I’ll do more harm than good.”

• “I need to keep my job.”

• “Someone else will say something.”

  
  

And slowly, silence becomes normalized.

But here is the truth we rarely name: Professionals have the option of silence. Parents do not.

Parents Cannot Afford Silence

A parent navigating child welfare does not have the luxury of strategic quiet.

Their housing, their children, their reputation, their freedom, and their future are all on the line at once. They are expected to comply, submit, and remain calm while their family is dismantled in real time.

And for Black families, especially those living in over-surveilled zip codes, there is no escape from this gaze.

Silence does not protect them.

Compliance does not save them.

Respectability does not shield them.

The system was never built to listen to them.

It was built to manage and control them.

To expect parents to speak boldly while professionals, whose bills are paid by the system, remain quiet is not just unjust.

It is immoral.

What My Silence Cost Me

Silence costs something on the inside long before it shows up on the outside.

It cost me alignment.

It cost me integrity.

It cost me peace.

I knew what I was seeing didn’t match what we were saying.

I knew harm was being reframed as “policy and procedure.”

I knew families were being punished for poverty, trauma, and survival.

And every time I stayed quiet, something in me fractured.

Because silence requires a constant negotiation with your conscience.

You learn how to look away.

How to explain things you wouldn’t accept for your own family.

How to separate yourself from “the families we serve.”

But that separation is a lie.

The Families We Serve Are Us

It is a dangerous thing to believe the families impacted by this system are “other.”

Different.

Separate.

Removed from us.

They are not.

The families we serve are us:  our neighbors, our cousins, our elders, our younger selves.

They are people shaped by the same policies, the same history, the same inequities.

Many professionals are only one layoff, one illness, one crisis away from being under the same surveillance.

There is no moral high ground here.

There is only proximity and denial.

The System Counts on Our Silence

Silence is not a failure of courage.

It is a feature the system depends on.

The system does not need everyone to agree with it.

It only needs enough people to stay quiet.

Because silence keeps the machine running.

Silence keeps the harm invisible.

Silence allows generational trauma to continue uninterrupted.

And Scripture is clear about this. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Not comfort.

Not compliance.

Not silence.

Truth.

Truth is the path to freedom, not just for us, but for the families trapped inside this system.

To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Required

There is another truth Scripture makes unavoidable: To whom much is given, much is required.

If you have a salary, a title, protection, education, and access.

If you can go home to your children at the end of the day,

If the system does not hold your family hostage.

Then silence is not neutrality.

It is abdication.

Parents enduring this system cannot be expected to risk retaliation to tell the truth while professionals, who benefit from the system, remain quiet.

It is our duty to speak.

Not because it is easy.

Not because it is safe.

But because it is right.

Truth as an Act of Liberation

The system retaliates against truth because truth threatens its power.

But truth is also the only thing that frees us from fear, from complicity, from the lie that this harm is inevitable.

Speaking out is not betrayal.

It is obedience.

It is obedience to our values.

It is obedience to justice.

It is obedience to the call to protect families, not systems.

Silence cost me years of clarity.

Silence cost families far more.

I won’t pay that price again.

Because the truth does set us free.

And freedom, real freedom, has always been worth the risk.