Adults: Children are meant to be seen and not heard

Peers: Shut up bucky beaver and go chew a tree

Community: The way you talk… you think you too good

Past Lover: If you can’t communicate it in a way I can understand then it’s bullshit

World: You’re black, you’re fat, you’re a woman… what you say doesn’t matter

 

Voice Coach: Sing out! Open your mouth! Ahhhhhhhh

 

It’s painful
 
 
My voice is not this thing that comes solely from muscle and mouth.

There is memory associated with it… emotion laced through it. The act of opening my mouth is defiant for me. Purposefully doing things that make me heard is something I have had an aversion to.

My voice is this animalistic thing that is hiding at the top of my head and I have to lure it down into my throat. As I push it into my lungs it burns and robs my breath as I force it into my center it churns my stomach and when I pin it down at the root of me it shakes, quivers, cracks and cries.

 

Because there is no space for it there.

Not in the basement with all the baggage.

My voice is a stone in a lake and all these things are coming up that I have to deal with in order to make a home for it

 

This process is changing how I breathe

I allow myself the luxury of expanding my body for breath now

This process is changing how I talk

I ask for things with unapologetically low baritones instead of a higher please don’t hate me softness.

This process is changing how I think about myself

I should be, can be, will be heard and I am strong enough to deal with the consequences of having a voice and using it.

 

It’s magic and manifestation that is demanding sacrifice in the form of whiskey, whispers and breathe work, situps, adequate sleep and soreness.   It’s alchemical necessitating an equivalent exchange of vulnerability for power.

 

sing out = I can be seen and heard

sing out = I get to take up this space

sing out = I get to exist in this space

sing out = These emotions are valid, how I feel is real

sing out = I matter…

 

I am worthy of being heard

 

 

Photocredit: Martin Quinn of Noir Photography

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