Why Establishing Your Voice Won’t Be Easy
Over and over again we go around in circles trying to determine the meter of how our voice should be used. We spend our internal time trying to figure out how loud we should be when it’s time to yell across a room or how small our voices should get when it’s time to pull back and be quiet. I’m sure some of us can think back to times where we’ve practiced a speech in front of a mirror before we said it to whoever needed to hear it. There have been countless times back in high school where I’ve stood in the mirror practicing snappy hand movements and the elevation of my voice just to cuss someone out. I don’t remember who I was fake cussing out in that mirror but they were gonna get it the next day at school.
Since then I’ve grown and graduated to practicing my wedding speech in the bathroom, fake toast and all. That’s neither here nor there. What I’m saying is I’ve spent the better part of my adulthood figuring out the formula or the rise and slope of my own voice, discovering that I even had one buried deep beneath the ledge of my childhood dysfunction. Once I discovered that my voice could not only project and get loud but that some people would hear this bark, get the message, and lay low; I wasn’t going for nobody or their mama to try to oppress me or my voice…ever again.
As a little girl, imagine being muzzled and not allowed to speak much on matters as it would be seen as “talking back”. This was just about most black households in America. Speaking out as a child was seen as a childhood sin in our house. You served your place as the child to be quiet and they were the parent and any words spoken outside of their law would be deemed wrong and unforgiven. It was damaging to say the least, children shouldn’t be taught to not speak or speak up. Somehow we managed to survive, our confidence did not.
What my mother thought it taught me was respect but what it really deposited was the seed of low-self esteem and a low-self-worth that I would be left to sort out later in adulthood. As children, we were unknowingly taught by a generation, that did their best with what they had, but in turn, it created a generation of fear-ridden, gifted but tormented and muzzled souls looking to be free and free to speak up.
Parents didn’t know that it would be their yelling that would develop a sense of timidity in their children turned future adults. How could they know? But what we all didn’t know is that it subconsciously taught “that your voice doesn’t matter” and when you become an adult you somehow believe that your sayso or speaking up is of little to no importance.
It was in adulthood that I dared to discover that my voice not only mattered but that it was important to be used, our voice has the ability to save lives. I just want to make it clear that establishing your voice will not be easy. You have to heal from whatever trauma you may have endured that causes you from speaking up.
Here are just a few questions to ask yourself:
When did I begin to become so fearful of speaking up for important situations?
Why am I so afraid?
Am I willing to push past this fear to speak up? Am I willing to help others?
Every voice is attached to a purpose to serve and a life to save. Once you push past fear and your pain and begin to use it to help someone else then you are ready to help those who need to hear you. You need to be heard but first, heal.
Signing off,
Jessica
