Finding Your Voice

I've been teaching a class lately called, "Finding your Voice, Writing Your Story". I've taught it in several cities across the U.S. I try to help writers do just that: find their voice and write their story. We all have a voice. We all have a story. Sometimes we have forgotten that fact or ignored it or have been shamed out of our voice or are afraid of what it means to write our story. (What if someone reads it!? What if they think differently about us?)

A friend of mine recently "lost" his voice -- couldn't talk for over a month. It made me think: What does it mean to lose our voice? What does it mean to find our voice? My friend hated not having his voice. He felt he had lost a part of himself. Indeed, he had! But many of us don't even recognize that we have also lost ours.

In one of my classes, a student referred to your writing voice as the "who of who you are". I love it. I love helping people find the "who of who they are" in improv, writing or in regular old life. And I think the "who of who you are" comes from writing from your gut, from all of you, not censoring, but allowing the truth of who you are to emerge and be present, to write as you think and speak, not as you think you should, to write you. 

That's your voice. That's your "who". You're not trying to write like anyone else. You are just being yourself -- the only "who" you can be.

Blogger Madisyn Taylor in Daily Om writes, "Everyone wants to be heard and know that they matter. Reading your story to others meets the human need to be heard. Writing your story helps validate your life. We all want to know that what we have to say matters."

Speak. Speak "who" you are.

Power of Truth... or Karen and the Frog

I recently taught a writing retreat. It was called "Finding Your Voice, Writing Your Story". I had no idea what to expect. Would people have stories? Be willing to find them? Be open to share them? Who knew!

There involves a great deal of bravery in story telling. You're telling your story! Sometimes that ain't easy. When was the last time you bared your soul to a group of virtual strangers, let alone a loved one?  But I believe there is value in this because:

a. maybe it's a good story that needs to be shared widely
b. maybe it helps others if you speak your truth
c. maybe it helps you to heal/recover/start again

That's been my experience in storytelling. I have written 2 plays and 2 books all based on my life. Yup! I write allllll about my life: the good, the bad and the ugly. Why? Because I can't imagine processing some of the events in my life without it. And I think there's power in a story well-told.

Mexican poet and author Rosario Castellanos said, “Writing has been a way of explaining to myself the things I do not understand” Can I hear a what-what? Agreed, Rosario. Agreed!

A woman in my retreat lost her daughter, Karen, about thirty years ago and to this day has yet to truly speak about it with her family, including her other living daughter. It seems they have all buried it under the proverbial family rug --- too painful, even after all these years. So in she comes in to my retreat and drops this story bomb. She then followed it up by saying that said she had no intention of writing about it. Hint, hint. But less than 36 hours later, she wrote a story about a frog who hung out in a garden with a beautiful girl named Karen. Bingo. She opened the vault. She started to write about her daughter. Brought me and our whole group to tears. More stories came. She was on a roll. By the end of the session, she was considering sharing her writing with her other daughter in hopes of opening up a conversation about their shared loss all those years ago. She told me the retreat changed her life.

This is the power of brave storytelling --- the power of writing your story and speaking your truth.

Everyone has a story. What's your story?