8.17.22 // Losing My Voice

The last few weeks I've had the most intense vocal fry.
.
It felt like my voice was grating against my vocal cords. No matter what I did the day before, I would wake up sounding like I had spent the previous day cheering and yelling at the top of my lungs.
.
Because my voice felt so unlike my own, I started to quiet down. Despite usually singing in the shower or in the car, I let my tired voice rest.
.
In the past, I would have shrugged this "weird" symptom off and thought nothing of it. However, now I see this as a guiding light -my body showing me what is going on in that big beautiful brain of mine.
.
It wasn't super clear at first, but as I started to unpack the "vocal fry," my understanding of what was going on hit me in the face like a wall of bricks.
.
My 1st iteration of understanding: "I'm just not being listened to, it's the outside world that isn't listening. I'm speaking and I'm being ignored. It's like screaming into a void! No wonder I've lost my voice!"
.
Close, but not quite. I sat in iteration 1 for a couple of days, then after a long frolic in the woods, I realized what was really going on...
.
My 2nd iteration of understanding: "I'M NOT LISTENING TO MY OWN VOICE. That is why my voice is tired. I've been begging to hear my intuition and now I'm just ignoring her because it's easier to abandon myself than to speak up for myself."
.
I said this out loud when running down one of the most amazing mountain trails, there was no barrier, there was no overthinking, it was just the clear, concentrated truth. A beautiful and painful (because realizing you’re letting yourself down, hurts just as much if not worse than letting someone else down) realization.
.
So when I got off the mountain, I started to speak up. That isn't to say I'm not going to struggle with helping my voice gain strength with others, but I know that I'll be listening to her even if no one else does.