I lost my voice

“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time."

I recently lost my voice. Not my audible voice but the voice that tells the truth of who I am, what I feel, and what has happened to me. Someone I deeply loved, who I thought loved me, read my blog and said that I try to portray myself as a victim, I lean into it, but I'm not a victim at all. Years of writing where I was vulnerable, honest, and transparent were taken away with those few words. I lost the desire to write. I lost my voice.

I contemplated what was said to see if there was any truth. Though I have been victimized, I saw my writing as a way to work through it and show a life of someone that had overcome unfathomable things. Were there aspects of my experience where I still felt and behaved as a victim? Probably. Am I also crazy resilient and have created a life for myself that no one expected possible? Absolutely.

I live life out loud. I swore I'd never be silenced as I had in the past. A lifetime of being told I'm too loud, too opinionated, and too much, and I had decided that to be my authentic self, you could take it or leave it but I'm not changing. And then I got small. 

I would start to write and nothing came out. In my previous posts they came quickly, very stream of consciousness, with few edits. I just said it. Yet now judgement loomed large over me. My writing which I'd been proud of now felt embarrassing. I'd laid myself out there only to be told it was something I should have hidden, stuffed down, and certainly not shared publicly. 

This past year has been one of the hardest of my life for loss. I lost my baby kitty who loved me unconditionally and though scared of most everyone else, lived for me. It was a quick and tragic death that I still sob about daily while smiling when I see you in person. I lost my job that I loved. I'd never loved a job but I did love this one. I stupidly wanted to stay until retirement. But as so often happens in life, it was taken away. I lost the person I considered to be the love of my life. Month after month of having something that meant so much to me to be suddenly gone. 

I'm sad. I'm destroyed. Am I being a victim now? 

This post has been in draft form for months. I go to publish and I'm immobilized. Then I saw this quote from Alan Watts "Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone.”

My voice is back.

Redemption

My favorite movie of all time is An Officer and a Gentleman. I love the characters, I love the plot, I love how painful and beautiful it is. Though what I love most is the redemption of each person. In the final scene they are all repaired, restored and atoned. Each person was so terribly broken from their life circumstances, and their own actions, yet in the end they were redeemed.

How often do we allow those in our lives redemption? When do we give ourselves the grace of being redeemed? Where do we meet in the middle with our humanity and brokenness?

In my Evangelical Christian days, I loved the stories of someone who should have been beyond redemption, but their God saved them and turned a horror story into something amazing. Jesus telling the criminal on the cross next to him in his last moments of life "Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.". I recall hearing about a mother who went to death row to forgive her son's killer and how we should all ascribe to that level of forgiveness. Redemption for someone nobody wanted redeemed. 

Yet it's such a fine line for each of us as to where our boundaries start and stop, where we forgive, and another might not. We speak from our own experience and feel whatever the outcome of our similar situation might be will also be that for you. We judge, condemn and assume, while believing our experience is the sole source of truth.

I definitely do this in our current political climate. I'm enraged with no room for an experience other than my own or that of what I've witnessed. I feel the same about religion and refuse to make space to hear anything otherwise. Not a good look but it's the truth of this moment for me.

On the flip side I hate being told what I should or shouldn't forgive. I read years ago "You don't have to forgive" and it was one of the most powerful statements of my life. One of my favorite author's, Anne Lamott, says, "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." So where do we draw the line? And do we allow others the autonomy to draw their boundaries outside of our own?

I don't believe in absolutes. I believe change is always possible. In yoga we say, "everything can change with your next breath". I've seen the worst humans turn their entire being around into amazing people, and I've seen heroes and saints plummet. We make the best choices for ourselves, sometimes redeeming the unredeemable, with the hope we might one day be extended the same grace. 

"We're all just walking each other home." ~ Ram Dass

Why I Share What I Do

Glennon Doyle wrote in her book Love Warrior, "I'm purging in the dark to a screen, so I never have to see anyone's confused or embarrassed reaction." 

I was recently given some negative feedback on my blog that I'm putting everything out there in a way that this person wouldn't do. Though told "it's not a cut", it so clearly was a cut. I accept this. I share intense things, I dump my trauma out for all to see, I expose myself in ways that make people uncomfortable. 

Words on the internet are forever so once it's out there I can't take it back. Along with the words are the trolls, haters and those who only want to gleefully cut others down. Yet my soul (if I even believe in such a thing) can't turn back now.

So why put myself through this? I openly share my deepest pain, regret and sorrow because I believe our stories heal each other and ourselves. I know when I see myself in another I am changed. I know we all want to know we are seen and that we aren't alone. I know when I share my agony that it lessens the pain. When a light is shone into the darkest places, and we stay breathing, our resilience is strengthened. 

Though I lean more than a little towards nihilism; I do want my life to count. I want my distressing moments to show another a way out. I want all my own self-work to mean something. I wasn't gifted with a ton in terms of talent but I'm loud, brave and I can say what someone needs to hear.

I will continue writing and sharing the things that most people wouldn't want others to know. I will share my feelings, and expect they might change through time, as I live and breathe through this moment. I won't get small to make you comfortable.

TELL YOUR FUCKING TRUTH

I have seen miracles happen, when people just tell the truth.

 Not the ‘nice’ truth. Not the truth that seeks to please or comfort. But the wild truth. The feral truth. 

The inconvenient truth. The tantric truth. The ‘fucking’ truth. 

The truth you’re afraid to tell. The horrible truth about yourself that you hide in order to ‘protect’ others. To avoid being ‘too much’. 

To avoid being shamed and rejected. To avoid being seen. The truth of your deepest feelings: The rage you have been concealing, controlling, pasting over. The terrors you do not want to speak. The sexual urges you’ve been trying to numb. The primal longings you cannot bear to articulate. 

Finally, the defenses break down, and this ‘unsafe’ material emerges from deep within the unconscious. You can’t hold it back anymore. The image of the ‘good boy’ or ‘nice girl’ evaporates. The ‘perfect one’, the ‘one who has it all figured out’, the 'evolved one', these images burn. 

You tremble, you sweat, you come close to vomiting, you think you might die doing it, but finally you tell the fucking truth, the truth you are deeply ashamed of. 

Not the abstract truth. Not the ‘spiritual’ truth. Not a carefully-worded truth designed to prevent offence. Not a neatly-packaged truth. But a messy, fiery, sloppy human truth. 

A bloody, passionate, provocative, sensual, untamed and unvarnished mortal truth. A shaky, sticky, sweaty, vulnerable truth. 

The truth of how you feel. The truth that lets another person see you in the raw. The truth that makes one gasp. The truth that makes your heart pound. 

This is the truth that will set you free. 

I have seen chronic depressions and life-long anxieties lift overnight. I have seen deeply embedded traumas evaporate. I have seen fibromyalgia, life-long migraines, chronic fatigue, unbearable back pain, bodily tension, stomach disorders, vanish, never to return. 

Of course, the ‘side-effects’ of truth aren’t always this dramatic. And we don’t step into our truth with a result in mind. But think of the massive amounts of energy it must take to repress our animal wildness, numb our feral nature, suppress our rage, tears and terror, uphold a false image, and pretend to be ‘okay’. 

Think of all the tension we hold in the body, and the damage it does to our immune systems, when we live in fear of 'coming out'. 

Take the risk of telling your truth. The truth you are afraid to tell. The truth you fear will make the world run. Find a safe person – a friend, a therapist, a counselor, yourself – and let them in. Let them hold you as you break down. Let them love on you as you weep, rage, quake with fear, and generally make a mess. 

Tell your fucking truth to someone – it might just save your life, heal you from deep within, and connect you to humanity in ways you never imagined.

~ Jeff Foster ~