Episode One: A Language that Feels Safe
Full Transcript: English
Episode One: A Language That Feels Safe
Intro
All of us — I think — have moments in life where things remain unspoken.
Either because what happened is too sensitive, too hard to say — or because it feels like words just don’t fit. The experience is too raw, or too deep. And so, we stay silent.
But somewhere inside, we begin to yearn.
We yearn for other languages.
Not necessarily other spoken languages — but other tools, other ways of expressing and holding what we carry. Because something in us knows that only those languages might meet us where and who we truly are — not where or who we’re supposed to be.
This — this quiet need — is at the heart of why I created Languages of Healing.
So first, welcome. I’m really glad you’re here.
In this opening episode, I want to share something personal:
Why I chose to make this podcast in English.
It might sound simple at first — English reaches more people, right? It’s a common language. And that’s part of it, yes. I do hope this podcast finds people across different places, people who might feel the same unspoken weight — and who long for a gentler way back to themselves.
But the deeper reason is this:
English is where I feel safest when I try to name what hurts.
Because it gives me just enough distance … to be — honest.
I’ve lived in Germany for over 25 years now. And yes, German is part of my everyday life — personally and professionally. It’s a language I’ve used in many areas of life. But emotionally, it feels more distant. It doesn’t offer the same emotional entry point to me — and I might know why.
Polish, my mother tongue, is even harder.
Because when I speak about painful things in Polish, it doesn’t just feel close — it feels exposing. Like I’m naked. Stripped. There’s no protective layer. And that can feel dangerous — like I’m reliving the pain instead of working through it — and thus healing.
What’s more, Polish, as a mother tongue — as all mother tongues — carries layers of collective trauma: the inherited silences, the cultural weight, the emotional codes around vulnerability. It’s as if the language itself remembers — not just my own past, but the weight of many pasts.
Even now, I feel my voice trembling. I’m recording this just a day before traveling to see my family, and the thought alone makes my body react. I can feel myself already preparing for that visit — and all the difficult thoughts are speeding up in Polish.
And that’s why, over the years, English has become something else. Something more natural, more safe - kind of a paradox, maybe, right?
Growing up in Poland in the 1980s, I wasn’t free to choose what languages I could learn. In school, the foreign languages we were offered were chosen for us. That didn’t change until I was fifteen, when I started at Liceum — the Polish equivalent of high school — and finally had the chance to take English. It was the first language I actively chose. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.
It was never transactional for me. I didn’t learn English for work, or exams. I fell in love with its rhythm, the sound, the space inside its words and structures…
Around the same time, I was drawn to theatre — to the way people could express what’s hard to say through more than just words: through silence, gestures, light. That’s how I first ‘met’ Shakespeare — and I was fascinated by how he grasped the most essential matters — and was able to shape them into language. His words felt like a way to hold the messiness of being human — the longing, the contradictions, the pain — and somehow give it form. I didn’t want to study it. I wanted to feel it. To be moved.
So that also drew me closer to English — not as a subject, but as a space.
A space for emotion. For truth.
That’s still what draws me to English. It holds enough distance – I would like to call it a kind of linguistic detachment from the experience itself, so that I don’t get overwhelmed by memories — but, at the same time it preserves enough closeness that I can stay connected to what matters. I need a language that lets me speak about these things without being swallowed by them.
It’s not about perfection. It’s about truth.
It lets me speak beside the pain, not from inside it. And that — that small shift — changes everything.
That’s what safety feels like sometimes:
A veil.
A shield between you and what sears.
And that shield, strangely enough, can make honesty possible.
Interestingly, sometimes we assume that emotional truth is only possible in our mother tongue. That fluency equals depth. But that’s not always the case.
You can be fluent — even sound sophisticated — and still be disconnected.
And you can stumble – on the other hand- hesitate, and still speak from the deepest and most authentic place in you.
English gave me that place — and became my shelter. My refuge.
And so, I offer this podcast from there. As a refuge.
Not as a performance.
Not as a product.
But as a space. A quiet space — where maybe you, too, can feel a little more protected. A little more allowed. Not exposed, not evaluated. Just met.
Sometimes I’ve been told I speak a bit too slowly. But this isn’t a podcast that rushes. It’s a space where things are allowed to take the time they need.
Because when we talk about things that matter — things that hurt — we don’t speak quickly. We pause. We search. We sit with something tender and try to name it carefully. And when we speak in a foreign language, we often pause even more — not because we’re unsure, but because we’re more conscious. We don’t take the words for granted. We feel our way into them. And maybe that’s the way into the real meaning — of the word, and of the feeling, the intention — the perspective — behind it. Not fluency, but presence.
So… if English happens to be the only language we share — then let it be enough.
Let it be one of the many languages of healing.
Outro