Breaking Silence is an album by singer-songwriter Janis Ian, released in 1993 on Morgan Creek Records in the United States and Europe and on Columbia in Canada and the Netherlands.

[4] In the preceding decade, Ian met Pat Snyder and, after significant financial and health setbacks, they purchased a house together by 1991.

They took on a second mortgage to fund the album, as major record labels were no longer interested in Ian's work.

[4] The album contains political songs such as "His Hands" (about spousal abuse) and "Tattoo" (about the Holocaust).

[2] It also includes Ian's version of "Some People's Lives", previously recorded as the title track of Bette Midler's 1990 album.