How I Found My Voice (Again)
photo by Jo Concetta
I’ve been thinking about my voice lately.
How life shifts when I show up from the heart instead of performing. Literally, the way the tone of my voice shifts. It gets deeper, more resonant, I feel it in my bones and diaphragm. When I’m writing, it shows up as words flowing through my hands, like they’re coming from somewhere deep inside me, not overly filtered from my mind, trying to make it perfect. There’s edits, sure, but for my own peace of mind that I’m saying what I want to, not what I think I should—that I’m being intentional in honouring my thoughts and feelings.
It hasn’t always been like this. I’ve gone through phases where I felt like I needed to be perfect. There’s a vulnerability in being honest, in speaking from and sharing the heart, and I haven’t often felt safe enough to do so. When I started Flopsy Life, it was just me and my words. I needed an outlet to share what was on my mind, and at that point, there were so few people reading it that I didn’t worry too much about how I was perceived. Growing coincided with things happening in my personal life that triggered complex PTSD, and I felt like I had to be this perfect version of the roles I was performing. My words stopped flowing, forced to fit content calendars, curated to keep myself safe from ridicule and rejection.
I didn’t realize how far I had drifted from my own voice, stopped sounding like myself, until writing my FOLKLIFE article with Jo Concetta. I hadn’t noticed how much confidence I’d lost until I was in shock that Jo even pitched me for the project, not feeling good enough or like what I had to say mattered. It was a dream come true for me, but I didn’t believe I deserved it. I thought I would mess it up, that I had to be perfect (yes, I’m realizing I’m saying that a lot in this article) or it wouldn’t be accepted, that I would disappoint myself and this beautiful friend who had faith in me.
I’ll share more about the joy of working with Jo and writing for FOLKLIFE, a slow living magazine I’ve loved for years, next week—it was truly magic, and still feels so surreal to me. But for now, I want to focus on how the process of writing this was a life-changing moment for me.
I actually wrote two articles for this project. The first sounded beautiful on the page, perfectly inspirational, but very surface level. I was in a dark place and afraid to share that with the world, so focusing on what was beautiful felt safe. As I look back at my other articles and posts from that time, they were all like that. Highly edited to the point where I could catch a glimpse of myself, a whisper of my voice, but I couldn’t hear myself.
Around this time, I had let someone in my life who betrayed my trust, and my heart was broken. I was afraid to let anyone else in, to share myself in that way again—a hard line to walk as a writer. I didn’t feel safe being vulnerable again. But I was also losing myself, the woman and mother I wanted to be. The person I knew, deep down, I was: a strong, soft, radiant presence that isn’t afraid of the dark, because my light came from within. I had lost my light.
I spent weeks working on that first article, editing and rewriting and editing again until it felt perfect. When I sent it to Jo to look over before we submitted (I was writing the article, and she captured stunning photos), she very lovingly pointed out that it was fine, but it wasn’t me. She was absolutely right.
Jo shared that she had been following my work from the beginning, from the early days when I wrote a style guide that shifted how she saw her wardrobe & the daily ritual of getting dressed. We share many folks that we love. She has heard my voice. She held that vision for me when I had lost it myself.
What a gift it is to be seen, to be held with love and gently reminded that my voice matters. That I matter. This was the message I had set out to share when I started Flopsy Life, and I had lost sight of it when I lost myself in grief and fear. Sometimes we all need a mirror to help us see ourselves.
In that moment, something shifted. It’s like the walls I had built up around my heart started coming down, letting the light shine through.
I sat down and wrote an entirely different article in a few hours. The words flowed out from somewhere deep in my soul, the joy and grief woven into something honest on the page. I edited the grammar a little and sent it back. This is the article that got published.
Beyond the honour of being featured in a magazine I truly love, this article means so much to me for the way it helped me reconnect with my voice again, finding the bravery to be honest and vulnerable. I’m grateful to Jo not just for the beautiful photos she captured, but for the way she helped me see myself again. In awe of FOLKLIFE for the way they lift up others, sharing voices and stories from folks who wholeheartedly believe in following their hearts, even when it’s not perfect.
It’s been a journey this year, coming back to myself. I’ve been doing so much nervous system & somatic work, moving through the PTSD and finding safety in myself again. I’ve recently started doing Jamie Sea’s Broadcast Room, dedicated to marketing and running a business anchored in authenticity, and supporting the nervous system to feel safe doing so. I’m challenging myself to write an article weekly(ish), without editing, being open + vulnerable + honest. I’m watching how this shifts how I’m showing up in my business, my relationships with others, and with myself. I’ve noticed that when I create with the intention of being true to myself, I’m starting to feel less anxious about the results, more proud of myself for putting myself out there wholeheartedly.
It’s a practice in loving myself and all the pieces that make me who I am—the lightness and the darkness, joy and grief, the beauty in the imperfections.