Finding Your Voice After Being Shut Down

Do you ever feel voiceless?

It’s all too easy for some of us to eventually lose our voices in this world. This is a noisy planet, often bursting at the seams with animosity, judgment, and despair.

Sometimes we’re punished and abandoned for speaking our minds.

Sometimes we’re silenced by institutions or disregarded by apathetic ears.

Maybe we’ve been used up and exploited by profiteers, parasites, and opportunists.

Or perhaps we’re tired of hearing ourselves speak, broken by our seemingly fruitless efforts.

Silence comes from mental illness, and the isolation and stigma of addiction.

Some of us found ourselves on paths so obscure, we couldn’t explain if we tried.

And if we could, we’re convinced no one could understand us, so why bother?

At a few intervals, I found myself so isolated that I had no idea how to even be around people anymore.

So confused, I didn’t know how to tell anyone what I was going through. Longed for connection, but didn’t know how to handle it when I found it due to awkwardness and anxiety.

The only way I know of, to get to the other side of that…

To move past isolation-induced voicelessness…

Is to speak.

Even when your voice quivers.

Even when your words don’t make sense to you.

Even when your instincts have habitualized silence and hiding.

If no one else is listening, just speak to yourself until you attract a kindred spirit.

Express yourself. Through writing. Music. Speaking. Painting. Dancing. Playing.

Tap into the depths of your primal core.

Get the mental and spiritual bacteria out of you. Clean out your mental house in cathartic splendor.

To become who you need to be, no matter how far away it seems now, just get started.

You can only be your real self by learning who you want to be and then leaning toward that.

If you’re stalled out in life, get out of your head and touch the world with your voice.

If you speak—and everything you say creates turbulence around you—the solution is not to mute yourself (though a temporary reduction of volume may be a reasonable plan).

This may call for a calculated modification of the values and mentalities behind the words which created troubling outcomes.

Which is totally doable.

Speak. Flow. Challenge yourself. Feel. Grow. Create. Work. Serve. Rest like the dead. Then do it all again.