Use Your Inside Voice
At an art fair once, we heard a mother tell her child to use his “museum hands”, you know — touch nothing. We decided that must have sprung from the idea of having an “inside voice”, which is so different than a voice within you. If I could teach one thing over, in my parenting lesson plan, it would be yes, use your inside voice, but also always listen to the voice inside you, maybe even give it a microphone.
It has taken years to find my voice. Heartbreak and bad decisions along the way. But I know what I know, and what’s important to me bubbles to the surface far more often. I’m putting myself first more often, which is new for me. For instance, when we were moving and looking for a house, “open-concept” made me shudder. Oh it’s the big hot buzzword in the housing market and renovation industry. I’m like, give me a door. I certainly do not need to see the television programs my spouse enjoys, and he has no interest in mine. I need space — to read, to bake, to listen to podcasts, to open the window even when it’s cold, to cook mushrooms without there being drama surrounding it. Doors: so underrated. Space, privacy, boundaries — these concepts are not going out of style, for me.
But it was not always this way. Back, new fresh out of college, I worked somewhere that our boss found it entertaining to ask in Monday staff meetings about everyone’s sex lives over the weekend. Right. Hashtag metoo. Far from home, living paycheck to paycheck, I needed that job, or so I thought. I heard my inner voice that found this so uncomfortable, but I quashed it, too afraid. Many many years later, I was in a different career and in a meeting where someone in a leadership position made a dark joke about mental health. I knew if I said nothing, it made me complicit; wonder if he repeated that joke, thinking even a mental health professional in the room had been okay with it? Being silent was eating at me. It took me two days, but I requested a meeting with him and told him how inappropriate I’d found that joke to be. Before I even finished, he apologized. I spoke my truth, and it landed on open ears. It even changed the landscape enough where I was deferred to on mental health issues. Man, you’re not always going to be heard. But you’ll never be heard if you don’t speak.
Slowly and gradually, I learned to listen more to those nagging inner thoughts. Newly engaged and planning a wedding in Wisconsin, I was deep into the plans when I realized, this is not what I want. I wanted to walk out of the front door of the house on Arundel Road on my wedding day, in my sweet hometown on Lake Erie, maybe get married in Rocky River Park on the hillside. It was May, the wedding was scheduled for September. I sat at the picnic table behind our duplex, and told my (now) spouse, I couldn’t do this, here in Wisconsin. And then I cancelled everything. Letting go of what was stressing me was the best feeling in the world, my little inner voice was joyous with relief. I called my mom, and said, a September wedding would still be nice, and can you make that happen in Ohio? And she did. She nixed the outdoor idea, but she planned it all and I simply stepped in. Of all the photos from that day, the one of us standing on a fjord in the Rocky River, me barefoot, with water soaking the hem of my dress, shale cliffs and hazy sunshine, still speaks to the fact that I was in my happy space. Though every detail might not have been perfect, it happened where it felt right, and that’s not a bad place to start.
Today, I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the times I’ve been overwhelmed with frustration at work. Once, I advocated fiercely for a student, who was a war refugee from Liberia, to have a requirement waived. It didn’t happen. I cried when I told him the decision was not in his favor, and he smiled and shrugged, and took that last extra class the semester before he graduated. It was so not the worst thing he’d had to do. Years later, I have befriended the person who made the decision about that student (just now, I nearly wrote “against that student”, and realized I’m not over it, yet). We even did a shared-inquiry course together which was very cool and found we enjoy each others company, but we are going to come down on opposite sides of this one issue, always. He knows where I stand, and that I never wavered.
Recently, a student told me that my office was like a McGruff safe-house, that he could come in frayed and afraid, stressed and a mess, and leave with calm. That’s actually a function of the space, at least as I define it. Step in, step away from everything else, say it all out loud, sort it out. Maybe I believe in you because it’s in my job description, but I believe in me, too. And I have found that believing we can do hard things together is like a little Prana force within. You’ve got to be able to say, here’s where I am, here’s what is important, here’s what is scary. The key here is the sorting: know what is essential, and what is slag and dregs.
Putting feelings into words is not easy work. One classic well-known movie scene shows a man nearly second-guessing saying what he feels, so he says it like this: “Parce que chaque jour j’ai pensé à toi.” (look it up.) Dude, it’s so much cooler in French. But we can’t all think bilingually on our feet, so we have to trust our gut a little more. Sara Bareilles is right: let your words fall out. Those familiar with “Hamilton” know it includes a song that revolves around the placement of a comma. Truly. And a relationship hinges on it, with Angelica consumed with wondering if this was intended. Well, I’m intentionally not leaving room for guesswork; Warren Zevon was onto something when he advised to leave nothing unsaid. Wendell Berry has it going on, too, encouraging us that “the line ought to be drawn without fail wherever it can be drawn easily” — you know, so people can see where you stand. Like channeling your own Crash Davis “I Believe” speech, say your truth. I believe in waking up before sunrise, in glaciers and tides, ballparks and beaches and the fourth estate, that dogs make your heart bigger, in bridges not walls, wallpaper nothing, hard pass on scented candles, Catawba peaches are the gold standard, Will Ferrell is not that funny, condiments are unnecessary, that small acts make a big difference, boots and jeans are my default setting, in coffee black and whisky neat, “Tupelo Honey” is nearly perfect, Harper Lee had one good book in her, cornbread isn’t sweet and neither is iced tea, wait don’t go, you had it all along, the answer is yes, just drive, text when you get home, be kind. I believe in using my inside voice.
