After the girls were born and I left my corporate job to be home with them, my "self" got flipped on it's head and I found myself in a position I'd never been before. I was insecure about parenting (cloth vs disposable diapers, when to start solids, to let them cry or not), physically unfit and exhausted all. the. time. I ran on auto-pilot, with no end in sight. It was hard and I was tired. I wasn't reading or running or thinking about anything except for who needed to eat what, and when. Once the dust began to settle and I started sleeping a lot more, I realized that not only had my confidence left me but so had my voice. I wondered if I even had anything to say anymore. Slowly people started to nudge me into participation with the world again and it began to dawn on me that I was going to have to work hard to get back to my old ways. It has now been about 3 years since this realization and I'm tired of being patient and slowly "leaning in" to what I might have to say. I have got to take back my voice and find a way to get it out. At this point, I don't even honestly care where it goes, it just needs to get out. I know I have something to say and I firmly believe that our stories are what makes us human and what makes us individual. What we say is how we leave a mark on humanity to say, 'I was here." That just may all we're all after anyway. I, along with millions, are inspired by people who tell their stories. Brene Brown, Hope Jahren, and Trevor Noah all spoke to me this last year and pushed me to see that stories are all worth hearing. Their stories are the kind of stories that all of us can identify with. Their stories are 'just' stories of a life, but because they are released into the world, it's like they're given wings and set to music, appearing shiny and different. But scratch off the surface and they're all just like your story and just like mine.
After hearing back from so many people in response to my annual letter, it is obvious that my own voice has just as much power. We are all composed of stories and traits and identities of those who came before us. This is how we grow and change and learn as families and societies and eventually as humans. From those first cave drawings, telling of a glorious hunt to the 140 character tweets that now fill our lives with a different kind of story, we have always wanted to use our voice. The stories of my own ancestors who watched the Boston Tea Party from an upstairs window or wrote poems about a hard life off the coast of Scotland assure me of my place in this river of life. The pioneers who crossed the country in covered wagons, while not my own bloodline, are certainly voices that echo off our canyon walls and reveal nuggets of a longer lasting gold. They say we stand on the shoulders of giants, but the only way we know about them is because they told their stories.
If we just sit back and let others do the talking, there will be a time when we look up and realize we're not on the same page anymore. Silence is acceptance. Silence is the belief that someone has our back and will do the hard work for us. Silence is letting other people's stories matter more than our own. Silence is bowing out. In Egyptian culture, a person dies for the last time when their name is gone from the living's memory. A voice is silenced.
Figuring out where and how to use this voice is my challenge this year. I'm not saying I will publish a book of my life story or go on a national speaking tour, but I will keep up this blog and find some other ways to push myself out into the world. Our lives are walled in and colored by what we hear and read on social media. We let others control that to the point that we may not even realize the things on which we differ or in ways that we are all the same. From now on, my voice will be among the fray.
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