Getting my Voice Back
This week, I sat at a table with some mighty women. I do not call them mighty because of their money, power or influence. In fact, you wouldn’t consider most of them mighty at first sight until you hear what they have to say when they open up their mouths. This post isn’t about what they had to say on that table but about why their voices have been pivotal to my thought pattern in the last few days. And why your voice, dear reader can be pivotal whether you desire for it to be or not.
When I think of voice, I think of Maya Angelou. If you have read her autobiography ‘I know why the caged bird sings’, you will learn quickly why spoken word was her craft. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with her story, Maya at the age of eight went mute for 5 years. The reason? The man who raped her was killed in the streets, the very same afternoon he was to begin his 1 year sentence for child abuse. Maya believed that her spoken witness in the courts concerning the crime that this man committed against her had killed him. She therefore believed that her voice would kill people. She explains this moment in her book saying,
‘Just my breath, carrying my words out, might poison people and they’d curl up and die like the black fat slugs that only pretended. I had to stop talking.’
Somehow, Maya believed that silence was the only way she could escape associating with the world and causing harm. We all have a piece of Maya’s muteness inside of us. That selective muteness that our minds incline to because of past trauma, avoidance of drama and pain or the excuse of personality. This week, I realized that my personal muteness on various issues in my life, my family and my country have done nothing but perpetuated violence, despair and apathy collectively. So, I have been looking at why voice- my personal voice, your voice… our collective voices must be raised as I share below.
For one, voice allows us to give meaning to our emotion. Imagine a world where we couldn’t verbalize what we feel. Like infants, we would spend hours if not days trying to understand each others emotional state. Unfortunately, this is exactly how many of us are living right now. We say that our spouses, friends, colleagues and governments don’t understand or care about us but could it be that we haven’t personally and collectively voiced our emotional distress or eustress. Could it be that we are missing out on love, change, community, evolution because we refuse to speak our emotion?
Second, broken voices help us connect with the pains of those that suffer and are not ‘like us’. Human connection is best built through story telling. Some of the best relationships I have to this day are attributed to the heart to heart conversations I had. It was in the depth of those heart wrenching, cold and painful stories that I found new perspective, built empathy and resolved to be a conduit of change.
Could it be that we are missing out on love, change, community, evolution because we refuse to speak our emotion?
A raised voice gives others permission to raise their voices too. Sometimes, all it takes is one person to proclaim from the rooftops that violence must stop. Exploitation must stop. Injustice must stop. The courage (and sometimes frustration) of one man or woman can truly inspire tens, hundreds or even thousands to ask for change. We know this to be true when we look at the #MeToo Movement or the #ArabSpring. When we voice, others WILL voice too.
Finally, invalidated voices serve as teachers for the future. The saying ‘history repeats itself’ is often associated with bad events that have come full circle again into the present after a period of history. Usually it is the dismissed voice that offered solutions to certain societal problems that is looked up to by the present as a source of inspiration for problem-solving. This is why voices like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Tom Mboya and Thomas Sankara who were loved but hated by their contemporaries in equal measure are recorded in the books of history as the political prophets of their time and will never be forgotten.
Now back to Maya. You would think that a traumatic childhood and muteness would regress a child’s development through life. But not Maya’s. Today Maya (even in her death) is renowned worldwide as an acclaimed Poet, singer, activist, author, scholar and dancer. Acclaims that she earned through the power of her voice. Before Maya got her voice back, one Mrs. Flowers who was the aristocrat of Black Stamps threw Maya her first life line. She told Maya these impeccable words that I leave you with today. She said:
“Words mean more than what is set on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”
So whether on paper, on a podcast, on a reel or live show. Whatever #medium you choose, I hope that you will voice what needs to be voiced. Be the voice of emotion, the broken voice, the invalidated voice and the voice that gives others permission to say me too. Unapologetically get your voice back.
