MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
Speak Up. I Can’t Hear You.<\/p>\n
During a figure skating competition, an announcer said that
one of the skaters had finally found her voice on the ice. That resonated with\u00a0me. I talk to my writing students about finding their voice on the page, the\u00a0thing that distinguishes each of them from other writers. But accepting that\u00a0voice is something else altogether.<\/p>\n
I was ghostwriting a celebrity memoir for a British Royal
and she was distressed when I submitted some pages to her. I\u2019d listened carefully\u00a0to her voice on tape and I thought I\u2019d done a good job of recreating it on the\u00a0page.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat don’t you like?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds just like me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that a problem?\u201d I asked her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I don’t like how I sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
If we want to feel safe and good about ourselves, we have to\u00a0find the courage and commitment to accept who we are and how we sound. A friend\u00a0was talking to me in confidence about how someone was treating her. She started\u00a0with, \u201cI\u2019m not going to say this to her, but. . . \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d I asked her. Why not speak up to the woman who\u00a0hurt her and tell her how she felt? As women, we\u2019ve been programmed since we\u00a0were little girls to keep our mouths shut and swallow our feelings. I was blessed to spend time with\u00a0the late actress, Olympia Dukakis, who dedicated her later life to helping\u00a0women find their voices and break the silence that had plagued us for eons. She\u00a0\u00a0ran workshops and used herself as the model to laugh, cry, scream and claim her\u00a0space in a world that had tried to silence women for eons. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It takes courage and the commitment to stand up for our\u00a0opinions and ideas, but if we don’t speak for ourselves, no one else will. There\u00a0is a classic letter written by modern dance innovator Martha Graham to a young\u00a0Agnes De Mille who was just beginning her career in choreography. I paraphrase:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is only one of you and your expression is unique. If\u00a0you block it, it will never exist. The world will not have it. It isn’t your\u00a0business to determine how good it is. You just need to keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased but there is a blessed unrest that keep us marching and\u00a0makes us more alive than the others.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I was in my early twenties, I had an acting career and\u00a0I remember the first movie I made. We had just finished filming an important\u00a0scene and I felt pretty good about it \u2013 until I heard the sound playback. I\u00a0didn’t recognize my voice and I didn\u2019t like it. In fact, I expected to get\u00a0fired but nobody else had a negative reaction. I had to learn to accept my\u00a0voice the way it sounded, in the same way we have to accept our bodies. These\u00a0bodies take us where we want to go and they give us the energy to get there.
Our voices are the same. When we find a way to accept what we have to say\u00a0instead of judging how we sound, we\u2019ll feel grateful to be able to speak at\u00a0all.<\/p>\n
When I began to stand up for myself, I was afraid people
wouldn’t like me. It seemed like the unpopular route to take and often it was. At\u00a0first I was harsh and demanding. I didn’t know how to speak up in a kind and\u00a0compassionate way. But when I got used to being there for myself, the pendulum\u00a0swung back into what Buddhists call \u201cthe middle way,\u201d I learned to say my piece
without causing distress to other people but it was worth it as I became more\u00a0comfortable in my own skin. Sometimes you just have to take a risk and put it all\u00a0out there.<\/p>\n
When I tell the truth to my students in a loving and\u00a0encouraging way, they feel inspired by my suggestions and they trust me when I
give them praise. So sing your song, play your instrument, paint your picture, write\u00a0from your heart and tell the truth when you speak. Strengthen that muscle. Be\u00a0there for yourself and become a truth teller. When I stopped ghostwriting, I had picked up some bad
habits. I was writing too fast and I was using unfamiliar phrases. I thought I didn\u2019t\u00a0like my writing, but what I really didn’t like was that it didn’t sound like\u00a0me. When I slowed down and thought about who I was and how I actually spoke, when\u00a0I let it flow and didn’t judge or compare myself to anyone else, I reclaimed my\u00a0voice and I loved it, simply because it was mine.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG Speak Up. I Can’t Hear You. During a figure skating competition, an announcer said thatone of the skaters had finally found her voice on the ice. That resonated with\u00a0me. I talk to my writing students about finding their voice on the page, the\u00a0thing that distinguishes each of them from other writers. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}