Open Yourself Up, Listen To Your Voice, And Use It.
{Photo credit: Danielle Cohen via MaryBeth Bonfiglio}
Our voices are the incantations of our visions, our imprint, our reason — all our blood and bones and wounds and fears. Our voices are us, fully freed.
Step up, woman. Speak. Write. Shift the dominate narrative. Change the stories. Change the vibration. Stop believing the old dying word of a masculine paradigm where voices tell us what to do and be and buy and are the end all, be all, in His holy name, Amen.
Stop putting things off until you think you know what you are doing and you know what you are saying. How about just say exactly what wants to roll off of your tongue? Like honey. Like bullets. Like stars that shoot across the sky like cannons.
What if the voices that were loud with power clearly claimed they had no idea what they were doing but did it anyway? That they were just voices that live in creation and trust? That they are in transition and movement, always and forever? That they are changing, always growing, always willing to not know and show up anyway?
Wouldn’t the world feel so less lonely? So less a them and us? Wouldn’t it give us all the green light to rise up exactly as we are, who we are, where we are?
Wouldn’t it be an open door, an unlocked gate, a bridge for all of us to tell our stories, to speak our unknowns and unbecomings and rebirths and skin-sheddings and lostness, and maybe by speaking up, writing out, creating… is how we are all found? Every time we choose to use our voice when we aren’t sure of things, we pave the way. For love.
We pave the way for love. Say things you want to say even when you don’t know how to say it. Create precisely because you don’t know what is going on.
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Our voices are power, praise, prayer, and dreams in manifest mode. Our voices, when we own them, claim them, re-claim them, ignite them, and use them — and when I say use them, I mean use them — is revolutionary.
Because for too long they have been on pause, silenced, hidden. Scared to be seen in the doubts and the wonderings. Scared to be seen in constant flux. Our stories and the stories of all our grandmothers, mothers and daughters have been stuffed inside us for too long. They long to flow and be fluid. To rip through the valleys and crack open the canyons.
They want to be unleashed from all chains and rip through our consciousness. Let’s unleash them. Let’s be examples to the world in the holiness of not knowing a fucking thing. They will not be perfect. Do not expect them to be. They are a work in progress. Use them anyway.
In places where it is quiet, in places where you are not heard, in places where people are being hurt and abused, in places where you can heal and soothe, in places where powerful people tell other people what to do, believe, say, choose. You can change things by using your voice. Your quivering, not knowing, not sure, strong, bold, intuitive voice.
Stop giving a shit about being perfect. Perfect is boring as fuck. Yes. You. Stop caring. Just speak up. Our voices are bowing down and honoring the divine and creating the future. Who are we not to use them? This kind of writing is the writing of the heart. It’s the writing that grants us ease to live in the uncertainty of this world and our world in general.
It is the writing that brings us closer to ourselves. For ourselves and the people around us.
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One of the practices of using our voices in the most truthful, unfurling, authentic and powerful way is listening.
Here are some ways to open yourself up so you can listen to your voice and use it — especially in those times when you voice isn’t being very clear, in times when shit is hitting the fan, and when you are leaving old stories behind and you are scared about what you might say and what it may sound like.
When you feel like you should just be quiet, but there is a bonfire raging in your gut.
* Sit down. Meditate. Breathe.
* Be in nature for long periods of time. Take note. Talk to trees. Listen to what they have to say back to you.
* Curl up with a child and tell them a story. Let them tell you one back.
* Lie naked with your lover without uttering a word and then write that story down.
* Eat chocolate slowly on a quiet spring night and think about all the things that are rising within you.
* Go into public places and ask people what they think about things, what their lives are like. Let that feed into your own living burn.
* Read.
* Pray.
* Move your body in darkness, alone.
* Push color around on a canvas.
* Stand up. Push out your boobs. Let the curve in your lower back be pronounced. Open your mouth.
* Write words and read them out loud. When you begin to hear yourself you will be so blown away by its beauty and ferocity. Make love to this world. As you are. As you came here to do. Use this voice. No matter where you are, it’s the one you got.
* Unplug. Internet cleanse. Turn off the computer. Turn off the TV. Block yourself from social media. Hide your phone. Stop reading blogs, updates, feeds. Stop messaging. Stop allowing the voices of others to infiltrate your day. Let it be only you. The voice of you. Let there be space for your voice to have room to be heard. Give yourself this space of only you.
“We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.” ~ Audre Lorde
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