Communication and Self-Expression

I originally wrote this article on September 8, 2013.

Laryngitis has kept me from using my voice for three days now.  Just last night, my ears plugged and so I’m also feeling limited on hearing.

I believe getting sick is my body’s way of getting me to rest.  Overall, I have created a mellow, calm life for myself.  But I still get anxious and overwhelmed about some things.  Resting my mind and body from the feeling of obligations of any kind is useful to me.

Additionally, I am on the other side of some major ‘hashing through’, as I call it, regarding a specific friendship that I painfully dragged on for two-and-a-half years; I finally let that relationship go completely. And then, bam, I got sick.  It makes sense: my body is tired from the emotional storm.  Time for rest.

During these three days of not feeling well, I’ve been present in the moments, and have been ‘listening’ for anything that might come up.

Communication is so important to me, even my numerology points to self-expression as being my life purpose.  In the past, healing-touch massage therapists have told me that my throat had an energetic blockage and would ask what it is I’m not saying.

With appreciation, I started embracing my need for communication and self-expression, after a childhood and early-adulthood of feeling like I needed to be as silent as possible—it was safer there and I didn’t think I had anything to offer, really, anyway.

Since the time when I finally wanted to be myself just as I was, I’ve let it rip. I’ve said what I wanted and needed to say.  And I’ve expected anyone who wanted a part in my life to do the same.

As time goes on, as I’m letting go of old beliefs and rules that do not serve me, I’m learning I have less and less that really needs to be said.  It seems like the relationships which have needed the most words have been the ones I was trying to repair by explaining myself and making myself understood, and trying to get the other person to open up as well.

Those words are exhausting.  And I’d end up talking endlessly about the down sides of my life—thus highlighting them and thinking about them much more than if I wasn’t putting it all to words—in attempt to explain myself and what I’m feeling to another.

These three days with laryngitis have left me with very few words—until I began writing this article, that is—and allowed me the space to see what it is that really needs to be said.

Besides with my kids and my boss, I really haven’t had to communicate.  But it might be worth noting that the times I’ve wanted to speak but could not have brought panic.  It feels very scary to not be able to speak.  So, I have remained silent without attempting to speak; and then I have no panic.  In other words, if I set things up so I don’t need to speak, then there’s nothing to worry about.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself what my passion is, what is it that really makes me tick.  The answer is clear: writing and coaching.   Yes, communication.

Thus, I’ve had ‘write blog entries’ hanging over my head for the past month or so.  I’ve known it’s something I want to do much more of.  I was waiting for the time in which it felt easy.  It feels easy now, so here I am.

I’ve not wanted to put too much focus in writing during these recent ‘hashing through’ parts of my life. My intuition told me to ‘just live’, to ‘just feel’; and doing so would not only heal me, but it would also result in much to share with others.

The reason communication is my passion now is not so I can be understood or heard, but so I can share something unique with the rest of the world.  It is my gift I freely give, thus, it gives back to me two-fold.  I simply offer a tidbit and you can say, ‘Oh! That’s something different. Let me try that on for size.’  Or you can say, ‘Hm. Not my thing. But I love that I have abundant options and choices in my life.’

We all have something to offer this huge puzzle called ‘life’.  To honor our lives is to honor and ‘live out loud’ the expression of who we each are. To me, there really is nothing else but that. We each are a gift just as we are.  Simple and pure.  We are here because we each are needed to make up the universal whole.  Diverse and abundant.

I have so much to say about my more-recent journey—about what, and how, I have healed within myself to further foster self-love.  I’m excited about what words will form out of my intensely-emotional (and mostly wordless) experiences.

Warmly,