Find your voice.

Tell your story but make it universal. Speak up because no one will speak for you. Be vulnerable but be perfect.

I feel a lot of pressure to find my voice, to speak up, and to contribute. I sit in a lot of shame because I’m silent and for the times I’ve opened my mouth and been wrong. I’m embarrassed because I often don’t have anything to say.

There is a fear of being wrong. I’ve lived just long enough to know that I don’t know much. What if I open my mouth and immediately put my foot in it? What if my words hurt someone? What if I’m in the wrong? Naive? Speaking out my own insecurity?

There is doubt about the value of my voice. I’m not in any persecuted minority. I don’t face daily oppression for my skin or my gender or my sexuality. I’m not a lauded expert in any field. What do I have to say, anyways? Does it have any validity? Who would listen? Should they listen?

There is, quite frankly, a lack self-awareness. I’m only just getting in touch with what goes on inside my mind. I’m damn good at ignoring my own views and the prejudices therein. Where do the opinions I have come from? Where are the wounds I carry? And what is their depth? How will they color the words that come out?

And so I’m silent.

In my silence, I’ve started listening. Listening because some bold souls have dared to speak. Have voices that are valid. Voices that challenge me. That speak from experience. Speak with passion. With empathy. Truth.

My initial tendency is to speak immediately. To respond to what I’ve been listening to. To join in the conversation. But I’m not sure that’s my voice.

I may have opinions on how Ferguson reflects our culture at large. I may believe strongly in feminism’s role in our daily lives. But that’s not my voice.

Why do those conversations need my voice? Maybe there will be a time for me to chime in, but there are plenty in each place with a real voice. I want to amplify them rather than drown them out with my own. I want to point to those speaking well. To affirm those who speak the real stories and real struggles and real pain.

At the same time, those stories awaken ones within me. I’ve lived a bit. I’ve loved. I’ve lost. I’ve made mistakes and learned from them. I’ll make the same mistakes again and realize I didn’t really learn.

So I’m starting to chase those stories. Going beyond nostalgia and digging into the reality. Going beyond letting life happen and seeing what is changing.

I’m writing the stories in journals. Telling them to close friends. Retelling them to acquaintances.

But still listening. What questions do they bring up in others? How do they connect? What growth do they point to? In what ways do they point to my current blind spots?

I’m learning to be teachable. I may feel like the omniscient narrator of my own life, but I’m a fallible one. I remember things wrong. I’m ignorant to the emotional reality of situations. So I listen.

But I will speak. I will find my voice.

I wasn’t given a brain, complex thought, and ideas to seal them within my mind. There are ways I see the world that matter. There are questions in me that are worth asking. There are mistakes worth calling out.

It’s scary. I learn daily that not all my opinions are right. That I’m not the lovable protagonist in all my stories, standing strong in the face of wickedness. They’re not all going to be stories I can wrap up in a bow. Every story puts forward some set of values, and I know that, time and again, I will fall short of the values I put forward.

But I will be courageous and tell them.

And I’m asking you to be courageous as well. I wouldn’t have started to find my voice if there weren’t courageous men and women telling their own stories and speaking up. And I certainly can’t speak for you.

One of the things that happens when you find your own voice, find its value, its weight, is that you begin to appreciate the voices of others. In seeing my own perspectives as beautiful, I can begin to see the beauty of another person speaking up. Of another person saying, this is what is going on inside of me. This is what those glares every day do. This is what those words hit on in my core.

So I want to hear you. I know there are stories given you to tell. There is a voice all your own. There are things the world will never know and sympathies given just to you. There’s beauty in your perspective and your experience.

What is holding you back? What fear is there? What insecurity? What voice of timidity is there? It’s terrifying, but I want to hear you. And I’m praying you speak.