The Voice Beneath the Silence with Ann

Welcome And Why Voice Matters

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Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne. Welcome to the podcast. This is just a little one of those segments that I do. And if you hear my kids in the background, hey, they're in the pool and I'm not that far away from them. So anyway, today I'm going to just talk about voice. I am going to be having on very shortly. I just interviewed a lady named Barbara McAfee. And she is like a master of voice. And this was something that I had never really thought of before. And I'm so excited about this. I she actually asks people to write their voice autobiography. And I did that. I had never thought about doing something like that before. Our voice has so much to do with who we are, whether it's been silenced or whether it's been praised. She even talks about echolocation as babies, and that's kind of like what we do. And like we will laugh or we will cry. And you know, those types of noises bring about a response from the adults around us. And those are the responses that we learn. I just thought that that was so interesting to me. It kind of forms our voice, it forms our identity, whether we're a woman or a young girl who's being taught this is how you talk when you're a young girl, or a boy, and things like, you know, you have to be tough. Oh, you can't cry, and those types of things. It does shape your voice. Or if you're neurodivergent like me, or if you have trauma and your family makes you keep secrets, that too, it's the same thing. It uh it takes away your voice, it silences you. So those types of things are just they really, your voice is your identity. And I didn't really realize this until I had this conversation with Barbara. It's not just the sound that comes out of our mouths, but our voice tells our story, and she really points out how it speaks truth. The voice asks for help, the voice says no, it establishes boundaries,

Your Voice Autobiography And Early Lessons

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and it says, This is who I am. So Barbara shared something that has stayed with me all week, and she talked about how trauma, shame, secrecy, and fear don't just affect our emotions. They can actually affect the voice. The trauma can live in the voice, and they can cause us to speak more quietly, hold our breath, tighten our throats, or stop speaking altogether. And I did have some of the silent or the selective mutism, if that's what you how you want to call it when I was younger. So I do know that trauma, that my voice did live in trauma. I really have not been able to stop thinking about this because I realized I haven't just spent my life learning how to use my voice. I've spent my life finding it. And maybe you have too, which prompted me to do this extra podcast on the podcast that's coming up. So what does it mean to lose your voice? When we hear the phrase finding your voice, and we usually think about confidence, public speaking, singing, which she does talk about singing, leadership, but and and she goes into the elements of voices, like she uses the uh air voice, which by the way is my least favorite voice, and fire, and uh water, which is which we talk about what kind of voice my voice is. It's the healing voice, the voice that you go to to tell your problems to. Apparently, that's the voice I have. And I guess that's why it works very well for a podcast or for when I was in counseling or worked with women in the jail system or with the battered women or with the abused kids in the group home, etc. I mean, that's I and she does bring up an interesting question. I mean, do we get the voice first or do we pick the job that fits the voice? I don't know, but I thought that that was interesting. Sometimes we lose our voice because long before we ever speak, our very first word, you know, things happen. And sometimes it's lost because we learn that people aren't safe. Sometimes it's lost because we're ignored, sometimes because we're criticized, sometimes because we believe what we have to say just doesn't matter. Sometimes because we're simply different, and we don't know how to advocate or speak up for ourselves in the room that we're in. And I do know what that's like as an autistic child and as an autistic adult. I just process

Trauma, Secrecy, And The Silenced Voice

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the world differently and I communicate differently. I didn't always know how to say what I was thinking. My mom would tell me all the time, well, that's not what you said. Okay, well, that's what I meant. Even when my mind was full of what I wanted to say, it wasn't coming out right. And I actually did know that it wasn't coming out right. I had to consciously learn many of the things that seemed to come naturally to everyone else. And somewhere along the way, I began wondering if maybe my voice wasn't the problem. Maybe the world just wasn't listening in the language that I spoke. So I found that really interesting the more that this conversation with Barbara McAfee unfolded. And there was a time in my life when I thought surviving meant staying quiet. Not because I didn't have thoughts, not because I didn't care. Silence did feel safer. As I wrote in Loving Differently, my memoir that I am hopefully, possibly getting out there soon. So much of who we become begins with the lessons that we learn long before we understand we're learning them. We learn whether it's safe to cry, safe to ask questions, safe to disagree, safe to make mistakes, safe to be ourselves. And those lessons become our internal voice. That those are the messages that we give ourselves, even as adults, the messages that we learned when we were that young. So sometimes they become the loudest voice that we hear. For years, mine told me to work harder, do better, don't make mistakes, don't let people see you struggle, keep going, fake it, mask, smile, figure it out. Maybe you've heard those voices too. One of the things that Barbara said that I loved was that our authentic voice doesn't have to be created. It has to be uncovered that really resonated with me because I don't think that I ever found a new voice. I think I slowly uncovered the one that was always buried underneath the fear, beneath the trauma, beneath the expectations, beneath years of trying to become who everyone else expected me to be. And you know that happens a lot with young kids. And isn't that what healing often looks like? Not becoming someone new, but remembering who we've always been, getting in touch with that person. My children have become my teacher along the years. You know, I talk about that in the memoir and sometimes on the podcast. And one of the biggest themes in loving differently is that the children I thought I was raising became the people who transformed the way that I understood myself. When my children struggled to communicate, I learned to slow down. When they couldn't find the words, I learned to listen differently. When they shut down, I stopped asking what's wrong. And we talk about that in another podcast I had coming up with NeuroTalent Works, which you have to hear that one too. Oh my gosh, it's about neurodivergence in the workplace. It is so interesting, and that'll be coming up in a couple weeks. But we do talk about stopping to ask what's wrong and started asking, what are they trying to tell me? What is the real message? Then one day I realized that I never asked myself that same question. What was I trying to tell the world? What had I been trying to say for years? What parts of me had gone unheard? And the compassion I learned to give my children slowly became the compassion that I finally gave myself. You know, the voices that we carry, I think every one of us carry voices inside our head. Some are loving and cruel, some belong to our parents or our teachers, our mentors, some belong to people that we'll never see again, unfortunately or fortunately. Some belong to ourselves. The question isn't whether those voices exist. The question is which one gets the microphone, which one is going to

Neurodivergence And Being Misunderstood

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be the loudest. Because if we're not careful, the loudest voice in our lives becomes the one that tells us we're not enough, we're not smart enough, we're not capable enough, or lovable enough, or successful enough. We just can't. And here's the beautiful thing. Those voices may explain where we've been, but they don't have to decide where we're going. You know, I had to find my voice. People often tell me, you're such a good speaker. What they don't see is the years. I'm talking years, decades that it took for me to get here, all the notes, all the preparation, the fear that I have fought through to get here, the rewrites, the practice. You know, the moments that I questioned whether I belonged behind a microphone at all got me here. Finding my voice wasn't one single moment. It was thousands of tiny decisions to keep speaking anyway, no matter what the voice inside of me was telling me, to keep writing, to keep showing up, to believe that maybe my story could help someone else understand their own. The voice beneath the silence needs to come out. I think that's what Barbara reminded me of. Your voice isn't measured by how loud you are or how polished you are. It's not about being perfect. Your voice is the truest expression of who you are. And I never ever thought about that before. Not in the way that this discussion brought something in me, a realization. It allowed me to write my voice autobiography in a way that I had never thought of before. Sometimes that voice is spoken, sometimes it's written, painted, sometimes it's played on a piano, it's expressed through kindness or boundary. Sometimes it's finally asking for help. Every one of those is a voice. As I finished writing, loving differently, I realized something. The greatest transformation in my life wasn't just learning to speak, it was learning to listen, listen to my children, to listen to my own story, to listen to the younger version of myself who had spent years believing that that little girl

Uncovering The Authentic Voice

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had to earn love by performing and fixing and succeeding or staying quiet, keeping the secrets, being the quietest one in the room. She didn't need another lecture. She just needed someone to hear her. She needed validation. And maybe that's what healing really is: not finding a brand new voice, but really just finally listening to the one that's been waiting beneath the silence of it all along. You know, if you have spent years believing that your voice doesn't matter or silencing it or not really understanding your voice and how important your voice is, I hope today reminds you that it does. It shows you and the people around you your are your authentic self. It can. I hope today that you can allow yourself to at least start to work on that. If you've spent years feeling misunderstood, I hope you know you aren't alone. But if you've been carrying words, you've never felt safe enough to speak. Maybe today is the beginning. Not because everything changes overnight, but because every journey begins with one honest sentence. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Thank you for listening, for allowing me to be heard, and thank you for allowing me to share a little more of my own story. And as I always say on Real Talk with Tina and Anne, there is purpose in the pain and there is hope in the journey. And remember, we will see you next time.