When I was a little girl, I could talk.
A lot. 😆
I would come home from school or my after-school program ready to tell my parents everything that happened. I wasn’t trying to give a perfectly structured account of my day. I was excited. I wanted to share.
I wanted to connect.
I remember one Friday afternoon when my father picked me up from school. He asked about my day, and naturally, I started telling him all about it.
At some point, I mentioned that we’d had a couple of quizzes.
Before I could continue telling him how I’d done, my father corrected the way I said it.
My father was a teacher.
Correction came naturally to him, and as an adult, I understand what he was doing. He heard something he believed needed correcting and wanted to make sure his daughter knew the proper usage going forward.
Simple enough.
But little me sitting in the backseat of that car didn’t process the interaction that way.
I felt embarrassed.
There were only two of us in the car, but somehow I still felt incredibly small.
I had been excitedly telling my father about my day, and suddenly I didn’t want to tell the story anymore.
Looking back, I don’t think one conversation created everything that followed.
But I do think it contributed to a message I would encounter in different forms over the years:
If I don’t say something correctly, maybe what I’m trying to say doesn’t matter as much.
When Messages Accumulate
That’s the interesting thing about some of the voices we carry.
They don’t always begin with one dramatic event.
Sometimes a moment happens.
Then another experience reinforces it.
Then another.
Eventually, what began as someone else’s criticism, correction, expectation, or opinion becomes something we repeat to ourselves.
For me, criticism could feel more like an attack than something constructive.
So I learned ways to avoid it.
Follow the rules.
Pay attention.
Get things right.
Don’t create unnecessary problems.
Those qualities eventually served me well in some areas of my life. Apparently there was an auditor developing in there somewhere. 😆
But there was another side to it.
I became increasingly careful about expressing myself.
I wanted to be accepted.
I didn’t want to get in trouble.
I didn’t want to be misunderstood.
And somewhere along the way, being careful could become people-pleasing.
Keeping the peace could require abandoning what I needed.
And polishing what I wanted to say could become more important than simply allowing myself to say it.
That’s when a voice becomes difficult to recognize.
Because eventually it sounds like you.
Who Said That?
One of the things I’ve had to learn is to become curious about the way I speak to myself.
Not every thought that occurs in my mind deserves to become truth simply because I thought it.
Some thoughts have histories.
Don’t say that.
They’re going to misunderstand you.
You need to explain this better.
Maybe you shouldn’t share it.
What if they criticize you?
What if they don’t accept you?
For years, I could respond to thoughts like these without stopping to ask:
Wait. Who said that?
Where did I learn this?
What experience made this feel true?
Does it still apply?
And most importantly:
Is it actually true?
The loudest voice isn’t necessarily the truest one.
Sometimes it’s simply the one we’ve practiced listening to the longest.
My Voice Was Still There
For a while, I thought finding my voice meant recovering something I’d lost.
I understand it differently now.
My voice was there.
I journaled.
I wrote down prayers.
I filled pages with thoughts I wasn’t always comfortable expressing aloud.
I traveled with journals and recorded what I was experiencing.
I wrote poetry even when sharing it felt intimidating.
I spoke freely with people I trusted.
There were places where my voice felt safe enough to exist.
The challenge was allowing it to take up space elsewhere.
I’ve spent significant time learning that having a voice means being willing to use it.
That doesn’t mean everyone needs access to every thought I have. Healthy boundaries matter.
It doesn’t mean I have to speak simply because I have something to say.
And it certainly doesn’t mean everything has to leave my mouth exactly as it entered my brain. 😂
But it does mean I can stop treating my thoughts as though they require permission to matter.
What I think deserves my own acknowledgment.
What I feel deserves my attention.
What I’ve experienced can have meaning.
And sometimes something I choose to share might be exactly what another person needs along their journey.
They get to decide what resonates.
My responsibility is not to control every possible response.
My responsibility is to be honest about what I’m choosing to contribute.
When I Hear the Old Voice Again
I wish I could say that once I understood all of this, I never shrank again.
That would be convenient.
Also untrue. 😆
Old habits have a way of resurfacing.
Sometimes I still notice the urge to over-polish.
To explain myself until I’m exhausted.
To make sure every possible misunderstanding has been addressed before allowing myself to move forward.
Sometimes I catch myself protecting everybody else’s comfort at the expense of my own expression.
And when I notice myself doing that again, because I’m human and old habits have a way of resurfacing, I know what I can do.
I return.
I return to what I’ve learned.
I return to what I know about myself.
I return to the Most High.
And I remind myself that being misunderstood does not automatically mean I’ve communicated badly.
Being criticized doesn’t automatically mean I’m wrong.
Someone else’s perception of me doesn’t automatically become my identity.
And discomfort doesn’t always mean I need to shrink.
Wilderness Reflection
Think about the way you speak to yourself.
Are there messages you repeat so automatically that you’ve never stopped to ask where they came from?
Maybe someone said something years ago.
Maybe several experiences taught you a similar lesson.
Maybe something that once helped you feel protected has become a limitation you no longer need.
You don’t have to blame anyone to become curious about what you’ve learned.
Sometimes people meant well.
Sometimes they didn’t.
Either way, you are allowed to examine what you carried forward.
Ask yourself:
Is this actually true?
Does this still belong to me?
Does this voice align with what the Most High has shown me about who I am and how I should walk?
And perhaps:
What might I say if I stopped requiring myself to say it perfectly?
Scripture for the Wilderness
“The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.”
— Psalm 145:18
I appreciate the word truth.
Because sometimes truth requires honesty about more than what happened around us.
It requires honesty about what happened within us because of it.
Carry This With You
Some of the voices we carry have been with us for so long that we mistake familiarity for truth.
But familiarity isn’t proof.
I can honor the people who shaped me while still examining the messages I carried away from particular moments.
I can understand someone’s intention and still acknowledge my experience.
Both belong.
And I can recognize that something affected me without allowing it to define me forever.
My voice didn’t disappear because I learned to shrink it.
It was still there.
In journals.
In prayers.
In conversations where I felt safe.
In thoughts I kept to myself.
In words I wasn’t ready to share yet.
Maybe my voice never needed to return.
Maybe I did.
