Permission to be heard
“We are defined by the stories we tell each other. How lovely, how amazing, if we allow ourselves to tell the truth.” — LaDonna Witmer Willems
I spent many weeks staring at this line on an otherwise blank screen, wondering what to write next.
Originally, I had just intended this to be a straightforward writeup of our She Can Do event in August where Dropbox editorial guru LaDonna Witmer Willems facilitated her incredible workshop, “Permission to Speak”. But I soon realised that “the power of my own voice” couldn’t be found in a point form summary, and therefore anything I wrote about a workshop about finding that voice had to be much more personal.
Enter the blank screen.
I sat in front of said screen thinking about why I was having so much difficulty populating it. I sat there so long that my laptop screen switched off and I started playing with my hair in the reflection to see if it was long enough yet to tie up in a ponytail. Then I continued thinking about it while I organised my desk and then while I painted my nails and then while I downloaded every podcasting app with four stars or more on the App Store to try them all out, and then while I obsessively searched online for the best hamster bedding available in South Africa.
LaDonna had taken us through a self audit where I had to take a look at all the little bits of my identity — the weird, the wonderful, the messy — which together form a story that is mine, and more importantly, mine alone to tell. I had written all the things down, made little notes of references LaDonna had mentioned to look up later, and felt pretty confident I would walk away and use that voice of mine to tell that story.
Hello chaos, my old friend
Unfortunately, sitting down to write this felt strangely reminiscent of the feeling I get every time I roll my earphones up neatly, only to take them out of my bag later in a tangled mess.
Enter ADHD. Imagine every scene of a story playing simultaneously on different channels on your TV. Now imagine someone else is holding the remote. Welcome to my brain, set of the blockbuster hits “The Never-ending Todo List” and “How to Feel Better About Getting Nothing Done by Impulse Spending”. I realised that the set of the story (aka my brain) was just as important as all the bits of the story itself, and directly impacted what I expressed and how. It’s like the difference between managing a lemonade stand, and Makro on payday weekend.
So how was I to gather those strands — my values, fears, imperfections, experiences — and express them in a way that makes sense to everyone else? My achievements in spite of everything. My love for writing. My worry about how my audience will respond to what I have to say. My fear that I won’t even have an audience. My sense of integrity. My tendency to use self-deprecating humour as a defence mechanism. My anger that women always get the short end of the stick. My paranoia that I am not being inclusive enough (How often do I mention my race and chosen pronoun?). My resulting fear of sounding too self-righteous. My compulsion to question everything. My cynicism about the world and paradoxical belief that we all have the potential to be better (well, most of us). My drive to use my voice to play a part in making the world a kinder place where my body corporate allows me to have a dog in my flat and not just a grumpy hamster who is ungrateful about her premium bedding.
It occurred to me that maybe I don’t have to express them in a way that makes sense to everyone. Giving myself permission to speak (through whatever medium) also means permission to speak in my own (all over the place) voice.
Did I not make myself clear?
In fact there is a world of women out there who don’t even know that it is ok to have a different voice. Our knowledge for diagnosing and treating ADHD is still based almost entirely on studies of little white boys. Consequently, there is a widespread problem of under-diagnosing and misdiagnosing women and girls who have ADHD.
What this means is that the struggles of a multitude of women have been silenced by an entire establishment. Even further, they are silenced by the fact that their biologically “neurodivergent” brain often makes it difficult to express those struggles in a way that is understandable, acceptable, and validated by the rest of society.
Instead of receiving help and support, their symptoms are framed as character traits and dismissed as abnormal. Try harder. Don’t be so sensitive. Stop interrupting. Don’t challenge authority so much. Just concentrate. You’re too stubborn. Why don’t you care about how you live? Why can’t you be on time like everyone else? Be friendlier. Speak clearer.
Being led to believe your differences are personal flaws for years creates intense feelings of shame and internalised suffering, which is an express ticket to other mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Women with ADHD often spend their lives underachieving and loathing themselves because of it.
One question on a “symptom checklist” reads: “Have you watched others of equal intelligence and education pass you by?” I mean, at least it saves time that the checklist for ADHD in women is also the checklist for just being a woman in a corporate environment. #Jussaying
But here is the thing. There is an increasing recognition and understanding of ADHD in women and this is as a direct result of other women telling their stories. Thousands of women are talking about their experiences of all kinds of mental health struggles and superpowers (yes, superpowers), which amplifies the stories other women are trying to tell about their own lives. Stories told in their own ways because they are legitimate ways to speak.
Speaking truth to power, or, the power of your truth
Herein lies the crux of the matter for me.
LaDonna imparted some tips on setting goals and keeping ourselves in check along this very personal journey of finding our own voices. But invoking the power of my voice doesn’t only impact me. When we give ourselves permission to speak, we enable others to do the same. For some of us it is easier and/or safer to speak, and we are accountable to the people whose strength comes from hearing other people tell their stories.
In a discussion on Slack leading up to the event, one of our SCD community members described being perplexed when she had been told she must be “an aggressive woman” at work for calmly explaining her view on something. What did they mean? And why did they feel they needed to point that out? I was really touched by the response to this from a fellow community member and general badass, Jax Fouche:
“Don’t let others baseline a truth… many people live in such tight worlds that any deviance creates degrees of fear. And it manifests in so many ways and nuances of emotion.
I’ve learnt that me being me, often gives people the breathing room to be themselves.
Because many of us who are open-minded will keep quiet because we’re considerate and learning.
But being yourself heartens so many.”
“I wanted to tell you you are not alone,” she wrote.
It’s often easier said than done to speak up, but sometimes we’re lucky enough to have someone around to give us a little bit of courage to do it. Someone who shows that it is ok to be yourself.
Stories change the world
Sometimes we’re not so lucky.
There was a great anthropologist named Clifford Geertz who defined culture as “stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.” I think we have to tell new stories, our stories, the stories the world hasn’t heard, to change the culture of a system that silences so many.
There’s another reason why I’ve had trouble writing. Last month a wonderful woman I knew took her own life. It seemed unfathomable at the time. I thought about what easy access to professional help we are privileged to have. My heart broke because, despite this, she suffered in silence. I thought about how many people she had around her, including myself, who adored and admired her. Again, my heart broke because despite this she must have felt so utterly alone in the world.
Beyond a culture with an already pervasive stigma around talking about mental health, speaking our truths is especially difficult when a global pandemic has locked us down and shut us away from the rest of the world. What stories will we never hear from people for whom it became too unbearable to give themselves the permission to speak?
I went back to that line at the beginning of this article. Indeed, how lovely and how amazing if we allowed ourselves to tell the truth… and how lovely and how amazing if we could have faith that we are heard, and that we are held, when we tell those truths.
I highly recommend you watch LaDonna’s incredible workshop below, and download the Personal Voice Workbook at this link.
P.S. A little note about using nectarines in the featured image of this article. Our first exercise in preparation for the workshop was to imagine ourselves as a fruit — all the flavours, imperfections, seeds, colours, bruises, and so on. I decided I was a nectarine: unassuming (I’ve been told) and seemingly thin-skinned, but slice me open and you’ll find something substantially juicier, sweet, sour, messy, irritating when I get stuck in your teeth, with a passionate red heart, and a weird, complex, unusual, hard centre. A fruit with a lot to say.
