How would you speak if you’d already been cancelled?
When a trip away helps you to put the pieces of the puzzle together
Last week, I spent a few days in Ibiza with a group of powerful women. During our time together, there were many common themes that kept coming up. One of them focused on the restrictions we feel about using our voices. Lots of us feel like our throats and voices are physically blocked, stopping us from speaking up, sharing our truth and even from enjoying ourselves by singing.
I’ve uncovered a fear from my birth imprint (the experience that has been stored in my body since my own birth 35 years ago) that if I speak up and make too much noise, I will die. I’ve skirted around the edges of that discovery for a few years now, struggling to put together the pieces of why I find it so hard to talk out loud about my own lived experiences, particularly on social media.
Logically, it doesn’t make much sense - I speak on Teams or Zoom all day, I can talk non-stop one on one, and I am comfortable (well, as comfortable as one can be!) presenting in front of an audience. A few years into my career, I was called a shop steward as I was always speaking up for perceived injustices, advocating for others and calling out what I viewed to be right from wrong. To heap more evidence in contrast to my belief, I can also write quite comfortably about almost anything, exposing my vulnerable innermost thoughts on paper. There’s safety in the ability to edit and refine my words when written down.
Despite the logic, my body has an intense reaction to sharing my own story verbally. I become a shaky, sweaty mess. The panic sets in. The earth beneath me gives way. Somehow having eyes on me while I’m speaking about my own story feels different. It feels like there’s no room for error when speaking out loud to people I don’t know, like the impact of doing it could kill me.
I’ve been working hard to change that belief. Over the last few weeks, I have added videos to my stories on instagram. The first time I did it, I couldn’t sleep for a few nights afterwards. I thought the adrenaline spike was going to swallow me up. But things get easier the more you practice them right?
In Ibiza, we did a ceremony to let go of our fears. We burned them. The wind picked up just as I stood in front of the flame, forcing me to face another fear: fire. I set fire to the fear of dying for using my voice. What was even more powerful was the affirmation that I called in to replace that fear - I use my voice for revolution.
Later that evening, during a summer solstice ceremony, one woman talked about how she uses her voice quite confidently already but she wants to unleash it fully. When she said she was working with the idea of speaking as if she had already been cancelled, I felt like a firework had gone off.
What freedom would I have to speak the truth if I had already been cancelled? Certainty. Confidence. Liberation. I’d burn that fucking patriarchy to the ground.
What would you do?