A Voiceless Child

It’s important we always speak our truth. We can become consumed by fear and keep our truth bottled up inside. We may tell ourselves our truth doesn’t matter. Or, that people won’t understand, or care. But when we don’t express who we are or how we feel we tell ourselves that we don’t matter, that our voice doesn’t matter, that what we’re unworthy, and we sink down into our own darkness, sentencing ourselves to life as if we are a voiceless child without a way to communicate that we need help.

We are not voiceless children, we can get help, but that need for that help has to be bigger than our fear of reaching out for it. At least it had to for me. There were many times, many signs, that I needed help, but fear, shame and pride kept me from doing so. To take the onus off of myself I played the victim, that I wasn’t capable or worthy of getting the help I needed. My disease also told me that I deserved to suffer, deserved to be punished for who I was and what I had been doing to get by. I did feel like a voiceless child, sitting alone in the dark. But none of that was the truth. It was just the story I told myself, the story my disease told me, the story the bullshit committee in my head told me, and the narrative I adopted because it took all the blame off myself and allowed me to keep being sick.

My biggest obstacle was fear. Fear was the motivator for most of my decisions before stepping on this path. Fear was the engine that drove my disease, drove everything negative in my life, fear ran my life. Fear is one powerful enemy when we allow it to be. It keeps us from people who care about us. It keeps us from getting the help we need. It keeps us in the dark. And that darkness can consume us. It almost did me. And my fear was so cunning, it actually had me romanticize it and make it sound inviting. Ultimately it was also fear that got me to reach out. I got myself to a place that I knew was very dangerous, and I knew had one final end, and reaching a place where I no longer cared about myself, I got more frightened than I ever had before. That fear, that new sense of terror, was the push I needed to finally speak my truth. And once I did, that voiceless child started to find her voice.

Finding your voice can be scary, but once you start to exercise your right to be heard, it has an incredibly powerful result. We learn to share who we are, what we need and we are able to reach out for the help we need. We learn that once we overcome that fear, walk though it, we stand taller, we get stronger and our community gets bigger. When I found the courage to reach out and finally speak my truth it was like a damn burst inside of me. It felt so good to let out the secrets I had been carrying around.. To not care about being judged, because I knew my life depended on me letting everything out, I knew the only way I could find a solution to how I was feeling was to share it all, and once I did, I let the some light in, and that light felt good. My head still wanted me to believe it wasn’t going to help, and that people were going to think I was crazy, or, that I didn’t deserve the help, but that little bit of light that crept in when I finally spoke up, that light overpowered those negative thoughts, and I kept running toward that light until I felt I could just sit in it for a while and let it shine on me.

Today I live in the light. The darkness doesn’t feel like home anymore. Sometimes I might dip a toe back in the darkness, my head will get me to just check it out, but I get back out because the light is now home. You can find the light in your own life by speaking your truth, no matter what it is, find someone to tell it to, it’s within that moment that the light will come in, and that voiceless child within you will find their voice and fight for the most important person there is, you. SLAY on.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you identify with feeling like a voiceless child? How so? Why do you feel you have no voice? Have you allowed yourself to lose your voice? Have you told yourself that your voice doesn’t matter, or that it won’t be accepted? Has someone else told you that? Why do you believe them? I am here to tell you that your voice does matter, YOU matter, and when you speak your truth magical things start to happen, for you, and those around you. You may just learn how much alike you truly are with those around you, that that loneliness you feel can be quashed with your truth. It is our truth, our story, that connects us to those around us, we all have shared experiences and the only way to learn what they are is to share them with others. Find your voice, step out of the darkness and speak your truth.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you