Silent for too long, I lost my voice.

For a long time, it felt like death.

I was breathing but not alive.

I started to think I did not have a voice in the first place.

As a child, my voice was made small or unimportant.

It was rarely heard, or not at all.

I learned that my thoughts, emotions, and desires did not matter much.

I learned that I was small and that I had to remain that way.

Having so many thoughts and emotions trapped inside my little body, I had to find a way out of that suffocation.

I started to write to express my inner voice.

It wanted out.

I was just too little to understand more than its desire to come out in the air and out of my chest and throat.

I wrote my first poem when I was eight years old.

I have never quit writing since.

It became an integral, important part of myself.

It helped me channel my inner energies and frustrations of not being paid attention to and not being heard, as I craved.

Writing was (still is to this day) the first outlet to let my inner voice out.

My parents were too busy to understand or to support me cultivating my writing skills.

But that little girl in me never stopped writing.

She kept me alive.

I soon became introverted and had a tough time at school understanding my ignorant elementary teacher who did not have kids and was mean to me and a few other kids.

She always told my mom bad words about me and my progress at school. She was another person who tried to silence me and make me feel unheard and small.

I felt like I had to be ashamed of something every day I faced that teacher. And I did not know why.

But I kept writing, and writing kept me moving, kept me breathing, it kept me alive.

Now, as an adult, I am understanding clearly:

Being silent for too long had me ignore some parts of me.

It had me be ignorant of my sensual and sexual nature as a female, individual, and woman in progress.

It had me feel so insecure.

It had me hide from myself.

It had me break my heart several times.

It had me deny my spirit and its urges or desires and fantasies.

It had me into the habit of people-pleasing, lover-pleasing, friends-pleasing, parents-pleasing.

It had me get lost in the maze of other people’s “positive” or “negative” opinions about who I am.

It had me get angry, frustrated, feeling unworthy, small…

It got me in the habit of continuing on paths, jobs, connections, and transactions which were small, limiting, and had nothing to do with the real essence that pulses within my bloody veins.

Being silent for too long got me so insecure that the only dating I could afford and do was online dating.

It felt impossible to date in real life.

Being silent for too long to my true desires, longings, and fantasies got me into the habit of accepting distant, emotionally unavailable, sexually dissatisfying connections with men whom my spirit never felt truly content with.

But being silent for too long got me into thinking that I was worthless and that’s all I deserved.

But something inside me was screaming.

Something inside me has been boiling.

Something inside me has been craving to explode and for once speak up to give a voice to my inner self-torment.

Being silent for too long to give voice and wings to my core dreams, core desires, and to my essence in all its manifestations and shapes and colors, had me slowly die many times only to find myself being pulled up over and again by something inside of me more powerful, resilient, and wise than my thinking mind.

My Spirit has always pulled me up any time I was drowning in self-pity, deep insecurity, and self-loathing thoughts that decreased my self-worth and my sense of self.

Being silent for so f*cking long got me believing gurus and “enlightened beings” out there over my spirit, over my feelings and my gut.

Being silent for so long, from truly expressing in whatever form what feels right and nourishing to me, got me into the habit of being triggered so easily by others, not having a foundation and being grounded within my inner knowing that I am not f*cking broken…I am instead whole…I am instead enough to be whoever I shapeshift into being at any phase of my life.

But now, it’s my responsibility as an adult to speak my voice out.

It’s my responsibility to give my inner voice wings to fly and ways to be heard.

It’s my responsibility to grow my inner voice, to allow it to reach for the highest of its potential in all ways, shapes, and colors.

Because my voice is my own Spirit, my core speaking at all times, through words and moves.

I have decided to not be silent anymore.

I have a voice, and I will make it feel heard all over the world—so it can reach other voices that are unheard, so they can come out and be spoken.