100 Day Creative Challenge Day 61: Finding My Voice
I don’t know if there’s any feeling more frustrating than desperately wanting to communicate what is inside to another human being while knowing we lack the language to express our deepest thoughts. Erwin Raphael McManus
When we learn our craft and progress to the stage where what we yearn to express deep inside is communicated to others we know that we have found our voice.
You cannot separate the self from your work. Who we are is inextricably integrated into our work whether or not we realise it or not. Finding our voice is how we find out who we are.
Last year I went to my New Year Creative One-on-one retreat and said to my friend, ‘I don’t know who I am. I mean I know who I am, but I don’t.’ I struggled with the words to describe how I felt. Wife, mother, writer, volunteer, blogger, speaker, friend and so were all parts of my identity. Some were integrated and clear, however, the writer or public part of me, wasn’t sure of who I was meant to project to the world.
I go to church and have faith, so people have a certain expectation of me. I write for young adults, but am writing for women’s magazines and working on an adult contemporary novel. How could all these voices inside me work together to create work that reflects my voice, when I wasn’t even sure of who I am?
In October last year, I had the opportunity to speak at The Inspire 15 Retreat. The talk I prepared was constructed of four random stories from my life framed under the banner Deep Editing My Life. Four stories about a master class, a grumpy husband, a ten year old child who aspired to be a writer and post-it permission slips all combined to show me that I was living the story promise of my life. That all the disparate, seemingly disconnected parts of my life were in fact connected. That my inner voice reflects my deepest thoughts and that, finally, I was able to communicate those thoughts through speaking and writing.
It’s been a long journey finding my voice and the confidence to use it. Perhaps getting older has something to do with it. Perhaps learning to understand my voice has something to do with it. It’s certainly been a process of growth.
I have often believed the pen to be a needle, and ink to be a thread. Each story is an intricately woven tapestry and with each word I invariably sew a piece of myself into the page. Shaun Hick
