Tag: life

The Rooms Where Truth Presses In: On Tennessee Williams and the Work of Being Seen

By Jill Szoo Wilson

On a hot night in New Orleans, a woman steps into a narrow apartment carrying a suitcase that seems too heavy for what it holds. She pauses just inside the doorway, taking in the room with a kind of alert delicacy, as if the air itself might register her presence too quickly. Before anyone asks a question, she begins to speak. The sentences arrive shaped and careful, each one placed between herself and the world she has entered.

“I don’t want realism,” Blanche DuBois says not long after. “I want magic.”

The line is often treated as confession or ornament, a moment that captures her fragility in a single phrase. It works differently onstage. It establishes a method. Blanche does not speak to describe reality. She speaks to manage it. Language becomes the surface she can still control, even as the conditions around her begin to shift.

This is where Tennessee Williams places his audience. Not at the point of discovery, but inside a room where something is already known, already circulating, already shaping the behavior of everyone present. The tension does not come from what will be revealed. It comes from the effort required to keep that knowledge from settling fully into the space.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, that effort organizes every exchange between Blanche and Stanley Kowalski. She expands, adjusts, softens. He narrows. He asks, presses, produces. When Stanley lays out the papers from Belle Reve, the moment lands without flourish. There is no rhetorical victory, no extended argument. The fact of the papers changes the room. Blanche continues speaking, but the ground beneath her language has shifted. The audience does not need to be told what is happening. It can be felt in the distance that opens between what she says and what the room now holds.

Williams returns to this condition again and again, though the texture changes. In The Glass Menagerie, the room is quieter, almost suspended. Amanda Wingfield sits at the table and begins to describe her youth, the gentlemen callers, the afternoons that seemed to promise a future she still attempts to extend into the present. The story arrives polished, complete, ready to be believed. For a moment, it reshapes the apartment. The past becomes available again, not as memory, but as something that might still organize the life.

Across from her, Laura remains still. Tom watches, listening and not listening at the same time. The story continues. It always continues. When it ends, nothing in the room has actually changed. Amanda begins again.

The effect is cumulative rather than dramatic. Each telling reinforces the distance between the life that is spoken and the one that is lived. The audience begins to track that distance, to hear the effort in the repetition. Amanda is not deceiving in any simple sense. She is maintaining a structure that allows her to proceed.

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the structure gives way to something more direct. The room is fuller, louder, more openly confrontational. Brick Pollitt lies on the bed, his leg broken, his body angled away from the others. Around him, the conversation continues. Maggie talks, circles, tries again. Big Daddy enters and begins to ask questions that do not permit easy deflection.

“What is it that makes you so g****** disgusted with yourself?”

Brick answers, but the answers do not resolve the question. They reduce, redirect, and close down. The subject remains present, shaping every line that moves around it. The play does not build toward a moment in which the truth is finally spoken and understood. It builds pressure around the fact that it cannot be spoken about cleanly at all.

What emerges across these plays is a distinct relationship between language and knowledge. Williams does not treat speech as a transparent medium. It carries weight, beauty, even urgency, yet it rarely stabilizes what it names. It reveals strain. It marks the point at which something begins to exceed articulation.

That excess often appears first in the body.

Stanley’s presence in Streetcar organizes the space long before he asserts himself verbally. He moves through the apartment with a certainty that does not need explanation. The poker table fills, the room tightens, the air thickens. When he strikes Stella, the act does not read as escalation. It reads as something that has already been present finding its form.

What follows is harder to hold. Stella returns to him. The text does not justify the choice. It does not expand it into an argument or an explanation. It remains where it occurs, in the body, in the space between them. The audience is left to register what has happened without being guided toward a conclusion.

Elsewhere, the body withdraws rather than asserts. Laura’s movement through The Glass Menagerie defines her more clearly than any line she speaks. She handles the glass animals with care that borders on vigilance, as if contact itself might alter them irreparably. When Jim dances with her, briefly, the shift is visible at once. The body responds before the language can follow. When the unicorn’s horn breaks, Laura adapts the object with a single sentence, and the moment settles. Something has changed. The play does not insist on its meaning.

Brick’s stillness in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof creates a different kind of pressure. He does not withdraw from the room. He remains in it, yet refuses to participate on the terms being offered. Maggie moves toward him, speaks to him, tests the limits of his attention. He does not meet her. The distance between them becomes the central fact of the scene. It is held in space, not resolved in dialogue.

For actors, these moments resist interpretation in the usual sense. The line cannot be treated as the primary unit of meaning. The work begins earlier, in the conditions that make the line necessary. What does the character need at this point? What are they attempting to secure or avoid? How does the body register what the language cannot fully carry?

Blanche’s speeches, for example, require precision rather than expansion. The language is already full. The actor’s task lies in allowing it to respond to the shifting conditions of the scene. Stanley changes something. Mitch changes something. The room changes. Blanche adjusts. The movement occurs inside the line.

Stanley, by contrast, depends on alignment with the space. His authority does not come from volume or intensity. It comes from the fact that he belongs to the world he occupies. When that alignment holds, very little needs to be added.

Brick presents the opposite problem. The stillness must remain active. Silence cannot read as emptiness. It must carry what has not been said. The audience should sense the presence of that withheld material even when it is not articulated.

Directors, working within these plays, face a similar demand for restraint. The environments Williams creates do not need amplification. The Kowalski apartment, the Wingfield home, and the Pollitt bedroom already contain the conditions necessary for tension to emerge. The work lies in allowing those conditions to register clearly. Proximity matters. Movement matters. What cannot be escaped matters.

This is why Williams’ plays continue to feel immediate, even as their settings recede into another time. They do not depend on surprise. They depend on recognition. The audience is asked to remain in the room long enough to feel the pressure build, to notice the distance between what is said and what is known, to register the point at which language begins to give way.

The truth, in these plays, does not arrive. It presses.

To read other essays in the playwright series by Jill Szoo Wilson, click the links below:
Sam Shepard
Arthur Miller
Harold Pinter
Lanford Wilson

Whisper the Passing Time

Memory sifted through their hands

Like water

Or like sand—

The kind of sand that lays flat

On desert ground

And all around the blistered feet

Of those who stand and watch the sun

With faces red

And cracking under heat

Filtered through dust—

Or like water.


Like water

In trickles

Between fingers pruning with excess

Trying to keep it there

Sickeningly aware

Of the weakness in the spaces

Between their fingers

And their hands—

Their memories fell right through

Splashed around their ankles

In a shallow pool

Reflecting upward

Not what was held

But what remained.


Recollections darkened

Not gone—

But changed

Into purples and blues

Certain as midnight

Uncertain as morning.

The light from those days

Did not disappear

It bent

Casting shadows

From the figures they had formed

In the mind—

Standing still

Even as everything else moved.


Not that they lied,

They simply could not see

That the laughter of then

Would return differently

That what once rang out

Clear and effortless

Would come back softened

Carrying weight

They had not yet learned to name.


They heard the voices

Of those they knew

From long ago days

When laughter was simple

Easy as something rolling

Downward

Without resistance—

Smooth in the hand

Bright in the light

Held up and turned

Until color revealed itself

And then slipped away again.


Recollections continued

Not fixed

Not held—

But moving

Across the surface of them

As water does

As sand does

Shifting

Settling

Lifting

And falling

Without asking permission.


Their memories were old

But inside them

Something remained

Not unchanged—

But present.

A trace

A tone

A warmth

That did not belong

Only to the past

But to the shape

Of what they had become.


Memory sifted through their hands

And still

Something stayed—

Not in the grasp

But in the holding

They could no longer see.


Recollections whispered

The passing time—

Not hurried

Not still—

Simple as a falling grain

Intricate as the path it takes.


© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026

Poem: A Modest Proposal for the Internet Age

There is a version of you
already walking around out there.

She has good lighting.
He is a series of clean paragraphs.
They speak in sentences that arrive
fully dressed.

No one interrupts them.
No one misquotes them.
No one catches the moment
before the thought lands.

They do not hesitate.
They do not circle back.
They do not say,
“Wait, that’s not what I meant.”

This version of you
does not exist in your kitchen
or your car
or the quiet ten minutes
before sleep.

Still, she is convincing.

She has been liked.
Shared.
Saved for later
by people who will not remember
where they found her.

Meanwhile,

you forget what you were saying
mid-sentence.
You start projects you never return to.
You carry conversations in your body
long after they’ve ended.

You revise yourself
in the shower.
You win arguments
three days late.

There is no algorithm for that.

No one clicks
on the unfinished version.
No one bookmarks
the moment you changed your mind
and did not announce it.

And yet,

this is the only place
anything real has ever happened.

Not in the caption,
but in the pause before it.
Not in the post,
but in the hour you spent
deciding whether to speak at all.

The Internet will continue
to assemble you
from fragments.

A sentence here.
A photograph there.
A tone someone will misunderstand
and carry with them
as if it were complete.

You will be summarized
by people who have never
heard your voice in a room.

You will be known
in ways that are technically accurate
and entirely untrue.

This is not a problem
to be solved.

It is a condition.

So—

wash your cup.
answer the email you’ve been avoiding.
tell the truth
in the next small conversation
that asks it of you.

Let your life become
slightly more aligned
with the person
who appears so effortlessly
on a screen.

Not perfectly.
Not all at once.

Just enough
that if someone were to meet you
without context,
without history,
without the archive—

they would recognize you.

And if they didn’t,
you would not feel the need
to explain.

Now,

go and become the person
you want the Internet to think you are.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026

Iris Lennox

This one did not arrive gently.

The edges remember something—
a pressure,
a folding back,
as if each petal had to argue
for its place in the light.

Nothing about it is smooth.

The ruffles hold.
The color deepens where it was once hidden.
Even the softness has weight to it.

You could say it opened.

But that would miss
what it endured to become open.

There are days
the sky lowers itself without warning,
and everything living is asked
to stay.

No explanation is offered.
No promise of outcome.
Just weather.

Still, something in the root
keeps drawing what it can.

Still, something in the stem
lifts what it has been given.

And when it is finally visible—
the pale, steady unfolding—
no one sees the storms.

Only the shape they left behind.

Only the quiet fact
that it did not close again.

Only the way it stands
as if the breaking of it
was never the end.

@Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026

Poem: Algorithms of Fathers and Sons (And Daughters, Too)

There is a jukebox in the corner

Where saddle shoes used to tread

Under skirts and socks with lace

Splattered with drippings from

Chocolate malts and shakes,

Where pearls would bounce

And roll across the floor.


Tile black and white—

I know it sounds trite

Like paisley on a bow tie

But patterns and bow ties

Bring order to the madness—

Also hamburgers, French fries

Ponytails and Snake Eyes.


He came to this place

Where the music was stuck—

Records displaying

Yellowed faces

Songs replaying

Grooves worn low

Weary, dull and much too slow.


Going backward

Isn’t really his thing

But there came a day

When his soul melted

Slipped through his lungs

Leaked and oozed

Puddled around the soles of his shoes.


Forward

No longer

Was an option for him—

What was he supposed to do?

Walk away, a shell of a man

Empty but for the wind

Whistling through?


He stood

Until noon traveled around him

Draped over the moon

Darkness descended,

Then fell his soul

Standing stuck

He heard the rattling of a rancid truck.


“Move aside,”

Said a man

Who smelled like Linus looks

Plus the tan lines of a garbage man,

“You’re in my way,

and what is this filth

at your feet?”


Accustomed to the dross

Of the city streets

With fetid hands the garbage man

Began to lift the spilt soul

Which was running into the ditch but,

“Wait!,”

Cried the empty man.


“That is not junk

though it lacks the glow

of gold

please leave it here

with me

it is all I have

if the truth is told.”


“All you have?”

Laughed the man

With the smell of human waste

On his hands,

“Then pick it up.”

Then came the second truth,

“I can’t.”


“I need your help,”

The wind spun around his tongue

Then played the space

Between his ribs

And his lungs

Like a concerto for weakening

Flesh and bone.


“Damn it all,”

The collector of trash replied

As he bent at the waist

To clean up the spill

That rolled down the hill

Before it crusted, caked and dried

Under the heat of the sun.


“I’ll put it in your pocket

now move along

get something to eat

there is a diner

across the street

that serves the lost

and the weak.”


And so, this is how he came

To the place echoing with the past—

The jukebox, the pearls

Where nothing was meant to last—

Fate brought him low

Then brought him here

To face the time where it all began

(Thanks to the garbage man).


“I don’t understand,”

He thought to himself

Then said it out loud

As his eyes rolled around

Searching for some logic

He could grip

Or some algorithm

He could apply to the script.


And then

Entered a ghost

With matted hair

On the sides of his head

Coming out of his ears,

A limp in his knee and

Teeth glowing green.


“I don’t believe in ghosts,”

Said the empty man

“Tough shit,”

Said the apparition

Blunt in his delivery and

Over dramatic

In his long flowing livery.


“Do you have a cigarette?”

Coughed the ghost

To which the live one replied,

“Do you always start with small talk?

I don’t mean to gawk but

your presence and general

demeanor are starting to piss me off.”


“You are here for a reason

and so am I

we need to get some things straight

before it’s too late

for you.

As you can see

it’s already too late for me.”


The beginning and the end

Sounded like a riddle

But somewhere in the middle

The living man

Recognized the voice,

“Dad?”

He squinted and then stuttered.


“No shit,”

Said the ghost and then

Once more,

“Do you have a cigarette?”

The living man

Almost fell to the floor

“Here, one of my last four.”


They sat in a booth,

The jukebox began to croon

They ordered hotdogs with ketchup

Had no forks

Cut their food with a spoon,

“I don’t mean to pry

but why have you come?”


“I met her here in 1952

we were both too young

to know what to do

so we loved and had fun

and then she had you

I thought of staying

but I couldn’t follow through.”


They sipped coke through a straw

To fill the long pause,

“Again, I wonder

why are you here?”

The ice clinked

In the ghost’s tall curvy glass,

“I know I was an ass

I feel kind of bad

I heard you needed me there

but I didn’t know—

shit—

it was hard to stay away

and hard to stay

I wanted to say . . .”


A pause.


And a tightening of the throat

Both the man and the ghost

Turned and squirmed,

“But why today?”

Asked the living son

Who wanted to run but chose to stay.


“Before I go to my final space

I was given the gift

once more

to see your face

and written there

I saw your hopelessness—

it rendered my journey motionless.”


“Is that when my soul

dripped all the way out?”

The ghost whispered back,

“That wasn’t your soul

it was fear and self-doubt

and I couldn’t help but

notice my name

on the puss that spilled out

so I used my airy powers

to stop your feet

with the little time I have left

I wanted to meet

in case my song repeats

after I’m gone.”


The air was still

Atmosphere heavy

Like before a storm

The ground felt shaky

And covered with worms

Snakes, anteaters and obese germs.

“I took a bit of you

and left too much of me

dropped you in a hole

of anonymity

no sure identity

as is given by a dad

and when you reached for me

your hand collapsed

empty

confused

your confidence slid—

but hear me now:

you are the best thing

I ever did.”


The living man

Felt a peace begin to grow

In a place he did not know

Existed before today

Above his ribs, above his lungs

Where scabs were hung

Replaced with Band-Aids.


“I didn’t know

and I have a lot of questions

but I feel your time is fleeting

so I will ask only one

why wait

so late

to have this meeting?”


“Time is made of seconds and of hours

each tick devours each tock

as we ignore the face of the clock

take for granted the breath

and selfishly hold the seasons

in vaults of the mind we keep locked

for prideful reasons.

But I tell you,

my son,

you are not

hopeless

I see your shine

and as long as you are living

there is still

time

so live

and be the you that is

free

of the weight of me

and my stupidity,

I am sorry.”


Then the ghost

He didn’t believe in

Vanished

To whence he came

But left a ray of something

Maybe hope

And the jukebox continued to play.


© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026 (updated)

Poem: A Man Lay Dying in a Field

A man lay dying in a field
between blades of grass,
panting
like a dog without water,
searching for air
not to be found.

In the quiet of night
where darkness
falls
and fills the earth,
spilling into
crevices deep and wide,

he wondered at the sky.
The reasons why
seemed now
to matter most—
there was nothing left
to boast.

Emptied of the fight,
his limbs
dreamed of flight.
Wrists turned upward,
soft skin
receiving midnight dew.

Fluttering eyelashes—
butterfly wings
above his blue.
Whispered memories
of when hope was fresh,
a fruit heavy with sweet.

A sound in the sky.
Wings opened wide.
Staring,
but not seeing.
Hearing,
he began to listen.

A breeze,
like mystery,
rolled in—
a wave in the expanse,
surfing stars
in a cosmic dance.

His limbs began to sway,
cradled by beauty
far and near,
above and surrounding.

His heaving stilled.
Focus tore free
from breathlessness
to oxygen
pouring down
like honey.

Water leapt from his heart,
flooded his blue,
nourished
his soul
and the grass.

A release on the ground.
A release in the sky.
Two powers
surging—
electricity
between earth and heaven.

A man lay dying in a field
until
he decided
not
to
die.

Instead, he laughed.
He writhed in pain
and howled at the stains of grass
on his pants.

When laughter ceased,
the loss,
the pain,
the breathless grief
rose like smoke
and fled into the clouds.

Mystery swirled,
a ghost swinging from the moon.
The living man stood,
said goodbye to the end
and hello
to the new.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2016

Casual Impact

By Jill Szoo Wilson

One cold, misty evening in January, I was sitting on my couch, scrolling through a website that lists job openings in my area. I was looking for a part-time position to run in tandem with my teaching assignment for the Spring semester. While my teaching load for the following school year included an overload between courses and directing a play, my Spring semester had quietly unraveled. Three classes had dwindled to one due to enrollment. Then that single class was enrolled at half capacity, which meant I would receive half of my pay.

I was still just as eager to begin the semester. The work itself had not diminished. But I needed to supplement what had quietly disappeared.

Anyone who has lived inside contract work in higher education knows its strange duality. The work is beautifully fulfilling and wildly unpredictable. During the first decade after graduate school, I averaged five classes per semester and often directed a show or coached a forensics team. I taught at two major universities, one surrounded by fields and open sky, the other pressed into the pulse of the city. On any given week, I might hear speeches about crop rotation and cattle auctions, then read papers on bioethics or constitutional law. I moved between farm boots and briefcases without leaving the classroom.

That panoply of subjects, people, and cultures has been a jewel box in my life. I did not take it lightly.

Two weeks ago, I chose to leave higher education. Not because it failed me. Not because I lacked joy there. A casual couch scroll opened a door I had not been seeking. A senior writing role at a large nonprofit ministry drifted across my screen. The position was full-time. I was searching for part-time. I still do not know why it appeared before me.

Yet as I read the description, something in my stomach came alive. It felt like excitement braided with fear. The kind of recognition that arrives before logic can intervene. A little too good to be true.

So I applied.

After a rigorous interview process, I received the phone call that shifted the trajectory of my career. As of today, I have completed my first week as a professional writer. I will also be able to weave in my love of performance by coaching actors and eventually directing in-house video and on-screen advertising projects.

Gratitude feels too small a word. But it is the truest one I have.

If you have followed my writing for any length of time, you know that my life detonated in 2020. There have been extraordinary highs and devastating lows since then. I will not rehearse those chapters here. I will say this: 2020 taught me that as long as we can breathe into the palms of our hands, we have choices. And life will change.

Sometimes it explodes. You hear the pieces fly overhead and crash down around you like shards of nuclear glass.

More often, life alters you quietly. It presses into the most meaningful parts of who you are becoming with a force so subtle you almost miss it. Sometimes change comes in the middle of a storm on the high seas, with sharks circling below. Other times it arrives with a sip of chamomile tea and the small square of space your finger occupies on a trackpad.

In the meantime, God. Always God. Orchestrating. Allowing the good, the bad, and the heartbreaking to fashion you into who you are becoming, at both the cellular level and in the broad strokes of His artistry.

Over the past year, I wrote more than I had ever written before. As that season began to close, I realized how much I would miss the act itself. The shaping of sentences. The long wrestle toward clarity. That realization drew me toward this new role. Especially once I saw that I could invert the hierarchy I had lived within for years. Writing would become the vocation. Theatre would become the ministry.

I have learned to keep my eyes awake. Not merely open, but awake to the possibilities of being alive inside a life that refuses to remain fixed. We cling to routines, to jobs, to people, to time itself. We hold them tightly as we dodge and sometimes integrate the slings and arrows that fly across this world. Yet life keeps moving. And so must we.

I will end with this.

Yesterday evening, I was hiking through a wood I know well. As sunset approached, the shadows lengthened and the creatures that run across the forest floor and the birds that alight above grew restless. It was loud. Urgent. Like an airport terminal at dusk. Everyone coming and going, crossing and recrossing the same narrow paths.

I stopped.

My stillness felt amplified against the constant motion around me. Above me stood tall, thriving trees preparing themselves for Spring. At my sides lay trunks that had fallen long ago, softened by time and weather. Growth and decay in the same frame. Arrival and departure breathing the same air.

And in the midst of it, I thought, This is life.

And it is beautiful.

Poem: Exit, Stage Left

You left the room
with a clumsy flourish,
the door slammed quickly—
reverberating force
like a vacuum cleaner
shaking the dust, until
every corner rattled, left clean,
untraceable—
the map you had in your hand
a plan
long before anyone knocked.
You ran.

But you forgot about me.

You fled the scene
like a small boy whose shadows
stalked him
though he could not hear
the others say,
"That's simply the moonlight
trailing behind as it breaks
upon your face."
Merely a shadow.
I was the one whose voice you heard
I was still there—
I ran to the door
watched you flee,
from the entrance
you turned into an
exit.

But you forgot about me.

You closed the door with a lie.
Later
I closed the door with the truth—
One isn't better than the other.

Yes it is.

You had a victim's mask in your pocket
all along—
pieces of your defense
glued together
at my expense
wrought in a place of false pretense
cutting the edges of your hands
shaking at the moment of
planned dispense—
the past is a map.

Now I see

what before I missed.

(There is no before . . .
Sure there is.)

You were the one who always
showed up
until showing came with a price
which is not showing to give
but to take what you could
while fingering the razor
you'd use to excise,
lingering as long
as I was the sacrifice—
your comfort the key
my love the prize
your time a carrot
my loyalty a vice.

But you misread me.

I was telling the truth all along—
on the notes of every song
in the lines of the poems
and walks in the sand
in the gaze of my eyes
the touch of your hand
the finding and seeing
hearing, agreeing,
unfolding, repeating,
the four loves
and being—
freeing.

But you didn't see me.

I was there.
I remember it all.
I know the true parts
and the ones you call false—
what you call a dirge
was clearly a waltz
one-two-three, one-two-three,
I wasn't weak—
that’s never been me—
life has taught me resilience,
presence,
when to be quiet and
when to speak.

But now you can’t hear me.

I said the truth
with a slam—
for every action there is reaction—
that's what I teach.
You were "the other,"
my other,
I paid attention in full—
you had it all—
then, it was a gift to you
now, a gift to me
because as I look back I can see
we—you and me—
found our way to
living truthfully.
These scenes lay unrevised,
unchanged by your alterations—
the story is the same
no slight of hand
will defy the playwrights’ vision
like a Choose Your Own Adventure can—
the plot is still thick
(you know it's so)
we wrote the pages
created the spaces where each scene would go.

But you upstaged yourself and I left it all on the boards.

The places we graced
now empty stages
but stages withstand
construction and striking,
building up and tearing down
don't change reality
or the things we knew
the verbs, the nouns—
as the ghost light rolls on
what changes is
me
and yes,
even you—
and so, we.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2023

Poem: We Walked Through Snow and Ice

People are complicated. They’re rarely what we first believe, and they’re almost always carrying a weight we cannot see. We tend to notice what others are willing or able to show us, and we assign meaning from there.

Strength, in particular, is easy to misread. Sometimes it’s resilience. Sometimes it’s concealment. Often it’s both.

We move through the world interpreting one another through our own mixture of experience, education, memory, and fear. It is remarkable that we connect at all. And yet, we do.

We walked along in the snow and ice
And you wanted to hold my hand.
I thought you wanted to show yourself strong,
But you were losing your footing too,
And needed my steadiness to help you along.

I refused you because I did not need your help,
I did not fear a fall,
And then you fell all on your own.
I wondered
If I could have helped.

We walked along a sandy shore
And you wanted to hold an umbrella up to the sun.
I thought you worried my skin would burn,
But yours was turning red,
You forgot your hat and needed the cover.

I refused you because I did not need your help,
My skin is olive in tone,
And then your skin turned hot.
I wondered
If I should have helped.

We walked along in wind and rain
And you wanted to lead me into shelter.
I thought you wanted to hold me close,
But beads of sweat gathered around your head,
And fever took your strength and made you ill.

I refused you because I did not need your help,
For me, the rain is a thrill,
And then you lay for days in your bed.
I wondered
Why I did not help.

We walked along inside my dreams
And you wanted to plot out the way.
I thought you wanted to boast in your sense of direction,
But the path grew long and the day turned to night,
So we lost one another under the stars.

I refused your course because I did not need your help,
For me, wandering without plan is adventure,
But then I lost you and you were gone.
I wondered
If I should have let you lead.

We walked away, I went this way, you went that,
And you did not turn to watch me go.
I thought you wanted to stay,
But the distance grew wide
And the time grew long.

I refused to feel because I could not feel it all,
My heart was broken in your hands,
But when I felt it all at once
I turned,
And you were gone.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

The Stewardship of Fear

By Jill Szoo Wilson

She is thoughtful, intelligent, good-humored, and consistently encouraging to her fellow students. She’s the kind of student who listens closely when others speak, offers quiet affirmation rather than competition, and seems genuinely glad when her classmates do well. She began the semester strong, delivering two solid speeches and attending every class. There was nothing tentative about her start.

Midway through the term, something changed. Her warmth toward others remained. Her generosity did not disappear. But her attendance became uneven. Absences began to grow to the extent that she missed one of her assigned speaking dates. From there, a pattern emerged that did not match her ability or her effort.

This student did not vanish or disengage as some do. Each missed class came with a morning email in which she apologized and asked what she could do to keep up with the rest of the class. Even as she struggled to be present in the room, she worked to remain connected to the course and accountable to its expectations.

On the final day of the semester, I pulled her aside before class began. This was her last opportunity to deliver the make-up speech she had missed earlier in the term. I asked a question I have asked many students before, a question meant to open a door rather than close one: “How are you doing? Are you ready to go today?” I could see the fear in her eyes drain into the rest of her body and turn into fight-or-flight level tension. Tears came first. Panic followed. We agreed that she could choose whether to deliver the speech privately, after the other students had gone, or not deliver it at all.

When the classroom emptied, we talked for a long time. In the end, she did not give the speech—she could not—and in that moment, I knew I needed to honor her choice. There are times when I will encourage a student to push through their fear. Knowing when not to is part of the work.

What unfolded in that empty room was a trauma response. Panic, dissociation, and fear overtook the student’s capacity to communicate as her nervous system shifted into a state of perceived threat. Her breathing became shallow and rapid. Her body held itself tight. Her words rushed forward, tumbling over one another as she tried to explain how desperately she wanted not to feel the way she did.

Anyone who works in a position of authority—teachers, pastors, physicians, supervisors—has seen this moment. Communication can become physically unavailable when fear takes over. The body tightens, language recedes, and access to speech narrows. When someone is in that state, it is important to remember that applying pressure to the one suffering amplifies distress. Performance returns only when the nervous system has time and space to settle.

There are moments when growth comes from learning that discomfort is not danger, and pushing through fear can be part of that work. There are other moments that call for a different response, as I will explain in the next section.

Fear, Authority, and the Return of Choice

Clinical psychologist David A. Carbonell has spent decades working with people whose lives are shaped by anxiety and panic. His work is especially instructive for those in positions of authority because it explains fear without shaming the person who experiences it and without requiring the leader to become a therapist.

Carbonell begins with a simple but destabilizing premise: anxiety is not a failure of reasoning. It is the activation of a survival system designed to move faster than thought. When fear arises, the brain’s alarm circuitry engages before the reflective systems responsible for language, planning, and explanation have time to come online. This system is meant to protect us, not to help us communicate well.

In moments of perceived threat, the nervous system does not pause to ask whether fear is reasonable or proportional. It acts. Muscles tighten. Breathing shifts into the chest. Attention focuses inward, and sometimes sight narrows. The body prepares for escape, defense, or collapse. Thought follows only if the body allows it.

This is why anxiety so often surprises both the person experiencing it and those witnessing it. A student who is prepared may suddenly freeze. A patient who understands their condition may struggle to answer basic questions. A congregant who wants to speak honestly may fall silent at precisely the moment language feels most necessary. These responses are not evidence of avoidance, deceit, or unwillingness; they’re evidence that the body has moved ahead of the mind.

Carbonell describes anxiety as a “counterintuitive problem” because the strategies people instinctively use to overcome fear often make it worse. Reasoning with fear, pushing through it, or trying to suppress it may appear sensible, but they frequently intensify the nervous system’s alarm. The body interprets urgency, control, or insistence as confirmation that danger is present. What sounds like encouragement to the leader can register as a threat to the person already struggling to regulate.

When I was struggling with heightened anxiety in 2013, I remember telling my longtime family doctor, who was familiar with my personality and profession, “Speaking exhausts me right now. I know what I want to say, but I just don’t feel like talking. It’s exhausting.”

This insight is critical for anyone in authority. When anxiety is driving the body, access to speech narrows as survival takes precedence. Communication returns as the conditions that support it are restored.

The AWARE Framework

Dr. Carbonell developed the AWARE framework while working with clients whose anxiety escalated quickly and overwhelmed their ability to stay present. Rather than asking people to conquer fear, the model offers a way to slow the moment down once fear has already arrived and to change how a person relates to that fear in real time. AWARE stands for Acknowledge, Wait, Allow, Repeat, and Engage. The sequence follows the nervous system’s own rhythm as it moves from alarm toward steadiness.

Acknowledge

Acknowledge begins by bringing attention to what is happening in the present moment. Fear often intensifies when it goes unnamed, especially when a person tries to reason their way out of it or push it away. My student described it this way: “The last time I did a speech, I kept thinking if I could run out of the classroom I would be okay, but then also telling myself I couldn’t run out of the classroom. The more I told myself to stay, the more panicked I felt.”

Acknowledgment interrupts that spiral. When fear is named as it appears, the body no longer has to work as hard to contain it. Attention shifts from escape to awareness, and the nervous system begins to loosen its grip.

In practice, acknowledging fear means noticing and naming what is present in real time: a tight chest, shallow breathing, racing thoughts, a sense of urgency. This naming does not analyze or correct the experience. It simply brings it into awareness. That attention eases the body’s demand for immediate action and signals that the moment can be tolerated rather than escaped.

Instead of asking, “How do I get out of this?” the question becomes, “Is this danger or discomfort?” When the answer is discomfort, fear can be acknowledged without being obeyed.

Acknowledgment slows the interaction and opens space for choice.

Wait

Wait introduces time into a moment that feels compressed. Fear collapses experience into urgency. Everything begins to feel as though it must happen immediately.

For my student, waiting would not have meant deciding what to do next. It would have meant staying with the sensations for a few seconds longer without acting on them. Feeling her feet on the floor. Allowing her breath to move as it could. Letting the urge to escape crest and fall rather than rushing toward resolution.

Even brief pauses give the nervous system crucial information. As seconds pass without action, the body begins to register that immediate escape is not required. Breathing steadies. Muscles soften. Attention widens enough for choice to return.

For leaders, waiting can feel counterintuitive. We are trained to move toward solutions, explanations, or outcomes. Carbonell’s work asks us to trust time itself as a regulating force. Waiting allows the body to recalibrate so that whatever comes next emerges from awareness rather than urgency.

Allow

Once fear has been acknowledged and time has been introduced, the next impulse is often to make the fear stop. This is where anxiety tends to escalate. The body senses resistance and responds by pushing harder.

In the student’s experience, this showed up as an internal struggle. She tried to calm herself, reason with herself, and override the urge to escape. Each attempt intensified her panic. Her body interpreted the struggle itself as evidence that something was wrong.

Allow changes that relationship. Instead of working against fear, the student lets the sensations exist without trying to fix them. The chest remains tight. The breath stays shallow. The urgency lingers. But the fight stops.

Allowing fear does not mean agreeing with it or surrendering to it. It means recognizing that the alarm has already sounded and does not need correction in order to settle. When resistance drops, intensity often follows. The body begins to regulate not because it was forced, but because it is no longer being fought.

Repeat

Fear rarely resolves in a single wave. It rises, softens, and often returns. When it does, the impulse is to interpret its return as failure.

Repeat offers a different response. When fear resurfaces, the student returns to the same steps without escalation. She acknowledges what she notices. She allows the sensations to exist. She waits again. Nothing new needs to be solved.

This repetition teaches the nervous system something essential: fear can come and go without requiring action. Each cycle weakens the urgency attached to the sensations. Over time, fear loses authority not because it disappears, but because it no longer controls the response.

Repeat builds tolerance, not toughness. Consistency, not control, carries the system toward regulation.

Engage

Engage comes after fear has been acknowledged, time has been allowed, and resistance has eased. The student does not wait for fear to disappear. She reenters the task while carrying the remaining sensations with her.

In the classroom, this means shifting attention outward. The student stands at the front of the room with a breath that is still shallow but workable. She looks up. She finds one face in the room. She begins with the first sentence she prepared.

Engagement does not require full calm. It requires orientation. Attention moves away from internal monitoring and toward the shared task of communication.

As the student speaks, fear may continue to rise and fall in the background. She does not evaluate it. She stays with the work in front of her. Each sentence spoken gives the nervous system new information: the body can remain visible, engaged, and unharmed.

Engage restores agency. Communication resumes not because fear vanished, but because attention found a place to rest outside the self.

What This Means for Leaders

Over the years, I have noticed that more students are arriving in my classrooms with nervous systems already shaped by repeated alarms. I see it in attendance patterns, in the way bodies brace before a speech, and in how quickly attention collapses inward once fear takes hold. This is not unique to my classroom. It is widespread and growing.

Recent data make that clear. A large national survey by the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that one in three college students reported moderate to severe anxiety symptoms, with more than a third meeting criteria for a diagnosable anxiety disorder (University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2023). The National Education Association reports similar findings, noting that anxiety now surpasses depression as the most frequently cited mental health struggle on many campuses (National Education Association, 2023). A global review in BMC Psychiatry echoes this pattern, showing that roughly one-third of college students worldwide experience elevated anxiety levels, with anxiety disorders among the most common conditions in this age group (Nguyen et al., 2023).

These are not abstract statistics. They describe the lived reality of the bodies and minds leaders stand before every day in classrooms, churches, clinics, and offices. Anxiety is shaped not only by individual history, but by cultural and academic pressures that accumulate long before people enter our spaces. For many, heightened vigilance is already the baseline.

That reality has direct consequences for communication. Bodies braced for threat do not speak as freely as bodies oriented toward engagement. When the nervous system detects danger, real or perceived, it redirects energy toward survival. Leaders trained to maintain momentum or secure outcomes may misread hesitation as resistance, silence as avoidance, or uneven performance as lack of preparation. Yet insistence on immediacy or efficiency can quietly confirm the very threat the nervous system is trying to manage.

Trauma-informed leadership begins with recognizing this dynamic. It does not require diagnosis, nor does it ask leaders to become therapists. Instead, it calls us to:

  • notice how fear shows up in the moment,
  • slow the interaction enough for regulation to begin, and
  • orient expectations around the body’s capacity before asking it to communicate under pressure.

This does not weaken standards. It strengthens people.
Honoring a student’s nervous system in a moment of acute distress does not eliminate accountability or academic standards; it ensures that evaluation reflects capacity rather than collapse.

A trauma-informed posture creates the conditions under which students and colleagues can perform to their actual ability. It allows them to remain present long enough for thinking, skill, and preparation to take shape. The goal is not to remove challenge, but to ensure that challenge does not exceed the body’s ability to participate.

When leaders understand fear as a physiological response rather than a personal failing, they interpret hesitation as information. They allow choice to reenter the moment. And they learn to meet fear not with urgency, but with timing, which is often the difference between collapse and communication.

In an era when anxiety is this pervasive, trauma-informed leadership is not an added skill. It is a necessary form of stewardship.

Afterword

This is a complicated topic to write about because so much of what we do in a classroom grows out of instinct and the kind of discernment that only time creates. It is hard to explain to a new teacher, or to a young professional in any field, when to hold a firm pedagogical line and when to let it soften in order to meet the human being in front of you. Students need different things in different moments, and those needs are often invisible until they surface in panic, silence, or retreat.

I was out of the college classroom for two years. When I returned this past semester, I noticed a marked shift in the students. I am not someone who says, “This generation is lazy” or “The kids are changing” as a complaint about the future. The students are changing, but they are responding to changes that began long before they entered our classrooms. They face a cultural landscape shaped by social media, constant comparison, economic pressure, and a world that asks them to “perform” in nearly every public and private space. Their nervous systems reflect the world that formed them.

I taught a student in 2013 who blacked out while giving a speech. He remained standing at the podium, but his words stopped. Just before he went silent, he began to stammer, and I watched fear move through him until it overtook the moment.

After class, we sat together and debriefed. I asked him what had gone through his mind just before the fear took hold. He said, “I pictured my mom in the audience. And she was telling me I would not amount to anything.”

In that moment, it was clear that no amount of pedagogy would help him. He did not need stricter deadlines or more detailed feedback. He needed encouragement. He needed someone to meet him in the present moment and remind him that the story he carried was not the story he had to live. I decided to let him give the speech again during the next class period so he could replace that frightening experience with a new one.

What happened next shaped the way I think about teaching. After he finished the second speech, the entire class stood and applauded. They were not applauding brilliance. They were applauding something much more important: courage. They had seen a peer face something that had once undone him, and they honored the strength it took to return.

That semester taught me to build classroom cultures rather than classrooms organized around performance. It taught me that skills grow best in environments where students trust that their humanity is seen and that their fear will not be used against them. I have never regretted that decision.

Further Reading

Carbonell, David A. The Panic Attacks Workbook: A Guided Program for Beating the Panic Trick. McGraw-Hill, 2004.

Carbonell, David A. The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It. New Harbinger Publications, 2016.

Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press, 2024.

Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. 3rd ed., Holt Paperbacks, 2004.