Warning: Naughty language ahead! 

 

I have spent my life catering to the carefree whims of others, trying so hard to say all the “right” things and do all the “right” things and be all the “right” things.

I have lived solely to please everyone, anyone, someone.

And, fuck, it has been exhausting.

I’ve become a world-renowned expert at suppressing my needs and smiling pretty when I’m actually sad.

This does not agree with my juicy soul, at all.

She has suffered tremendously, slowly suffocating in poisonous clouds of deafening silence.

She grieves, now, for all the times I suppressed myself to disturbing degrees.

For the times I cast shadows on my sparkly spirit. For the times I choked out my opinions like pesky weeds. For the times I pushed down my succulent truths, walking silently on shattered eggshells instead.

She cries roaring rivers for all these painful memories and blooms white roses of pure forgiveness from the mud of tough, yet crystal clear realizations.

Yes, it’s time to move forward.

I am ready to throw up all the forced smiles and false pretenses so I can run wild through wide-open wheat fields and catch clusters of stars with my bare hands.

I am ready to live.

I am ready to hear me—my voice, my spirit, my soul, my needs.

I am ready.

As my voice explores the boundless edges of her newfound freedom, she is still shy, shaky and unsure.

She trembles sweetly in her pink polka-dotted rain boots, showing a feeble, yet toothy little smile under her windswept bangs.

She guides me to my heart, showing me something I’d rather not see:

I am so afraid of her.

I am so fucking afraid of my own voice.

I am afraid of her roaring fierceness.

I am afraid of her velvety soft gentleness.

I am afraid of her raw, unedited realness.

I am afraid of her intolerance to bullshit.

I am afraid of her wispy tendrils of whimsy.

But, it all comes down to this:

I am afraid to speak my truth.

Because who gives a fuck what I have to say?

My soul stops me, says that she gives at least three thousand fucks what I have to say, and urges me onward.

She tells me to take the honesty up a notch or two or ten thousand.

She tells me to bare fluttering butterfly-like vulnerability for all to see.

So I do.

So here it is:

I am afraid to speak because I don’t want people to reject me.

But, you know what?

All my worst fears have come true.

I started to speak my soul’s truth and voice my opinions and people did reject me. Criticize me. Scold me.

I lost friends.

What a fucking blessing!

Because I see that these are not the people I want in my life, anyway.

I see that I can survive rejection and criticism, no matter how they sting my sensitive skin.

I see that I can hold my own—that I always could.

I see that I can live with not being loved by every single person in the world.

I see the most important thing of all—that I can say what I need to say.

Because my voice, even shaky, is a beautiful force to be reckoned with.

So is yours.

Let’s honor them, all the way to the stars past Pluto and back.

Let’s scream and howl to the moon and grassy ground and foamy turquoise seas.

Let’s shout for all those times we didn’t shout.

Let’s roar like lionesses and tigresses and bears, oh my!

Let’s roar world-wide and wildly.

And keep on fucking roaring.

As loudly and fiercely as we can.

 

 

Relephant Read: 

Speak the Truth, Even if Your Voice Shakes.

 

Author: Sarah Harvey

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Flickr

 

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