I must have been five or six, singing in the Methodist church — "Jesus loves me, this I know." The boy next to me scrunched up his brow and said, "That's not your real voice."
I don't know if it was or wasn't. But the words went in deep, the way words do at that age, and self-esteem became a companion question for years. It still sneaks in now and then, makes its little appearance. I've learned to catch it when it does.
Somewhere along the way I found the old voice — my own voice. And here is what I've learned: when you speak in your true voice, people attune to you. They believe you more easily. They listen, they hear, they respect. Not because you've become louder or cleverer, but because something in them recognizes that the sound and the being match.
I noticed something else over the years: my voice would change depending on whom I was with. Around authority, it grew more timid — more so in the past than now, but still occasionally. The practice is in the catching. The moment you notice the borrowed voice, you can set it down and pick up your own.
Finding your true voice is akin to finding your true way along the path. It facilitates everything. With your own voice comes a deeper security, a quiet assurance. Self-doubt held me back for years — kept me from the full measure of my creativity, from sailing boldly in the winds of society. And yet I've come to wonder whether the doubt itself was part of the making. Cabbage must steep in the brine before it becomes something that nourishes. Some voices need their long fermentation. What emerges is not the raw thing we started with, but something cured, deepened — nurturing, and satisfying.
The voice was never lost. It was waiting to be claimed. So I'll leave you with the question that took me eighty years to ask: whose voice told you that wasn't you?