Month: December 2014

What is the sound of your own voice?

When I was younger, a friend’s mother told me I sounded “like Minnie Mouse.” To this day, I associate the sound of my recorded voice as being “like Minnie Mouse.” But that’s beside the point — when I read this prompt, I didn’t think of my literal voice anyway. I thought of how I felt like my voice — my writing — has been silenced, choked out by emotional and psychological trauma suffered for a year and a half of my life. Without dwelling on that same painful past, I’m incredibly desperate to regain my voice and make it heard once again.

My voice had been weak at first, floundering for the right words to attract an audience. Some days I felt like I was simply changing the medium from a locked diary to an anonymous page in the annals of the world wide web. And then I began to find a soft yet firm voice, speaking out for a specific group of women, culminating in my readership surge in November 2009 with the posting of my HBA2C story. Then I began the journey into Reverb, beginning with the Best09 series that December. My voice seemed to boom loudly, or so the statcounter said. 2010 was my best year to date. Then a series of events lead me down a new path — and things began to soften. I’ve slowly but surely been losing my voice, but I’ve been suffering from the writer’s version of laryngitis for much of 2014. In August I started to clear my throat with the help of Kat’s August Moon prompts. I even managed to channel inspiration with my September Equinox prompts.

Now, I feel like I’ve been floundering with my Cultivate series. I branched off of Reverb in 2012 because I felt called to the word “cultivate.” I felt like I was competing with several Reverbs in December 2012, though, and felt drowned out by the sheer numbers of people searching “reverb” while skipping over “cultivate.” In 2013, Kat and I co-conspired August Moon’s inception, and it was while working with her that I decided I wanted to leave room for Reverb — and hook my audience for January. It went over… like a whisper this year. I don’t know if writers were burnt out or if my line-up of guest prompts didn’t suit the readership. Still, I feel like my life’s circumstances hindered my ability to promote properly, that perhaps I just need to give next month a shot. If for whatever reason Cultivate 2015 doesn’t pan out for January, I can always dusted it off, polish it up, and deliver it in June. Maybe we need our Solstices for motivation. I won’t be discouraged. I will project my voice, and I will find my way once more.

It’s all too easy to put off loving where we are until everything is perfect. What can you love about where you are now?

It’s kind of a funny actually. This has me written all over it. I’m always dreaming of that perfect happy ending at the expense of feeling like Cinderella trapped with her wicked step-family. Of course, Cindy didn’t just mope about it — she made the best of her miserable situation, even before she had any idea they’d rip her dress before she could go to the ball. I don’t have my forever house. I don’t have my perfect “job.” I’m not in the best of shape. Know what I do have? I have my family all together. I have my husband and sweet kids. We’ve got a pretty decent roof over our heads that still has the charm of home sweet home that it did on April 1st, 2012. I’ve been working at my job for over three years, and I feel like I’ve become a fixture in our store. My job provides me health care and benefits — like paid sick days, which are especially helpful when every super bug that’s going around seems to be invading my family’s bodies at the same time. Our neighborhood is mostly quiet and pretty safe. The bank accounts are starting to look a lot healthier. I have family and friends who love me and make it known. I may not be where I want to be, but I can still love where I am. I’m alive, I’m apparently in good health, and my family is all home under one roof together. Life is good.

What unfinished projects from 2014 are you willing to release now? (Regret not required.)

I had planned to write a novel documenting what happened to my family during our year and a half ordeal. When I finally sat down last month and began recounting the earliest days of 2013, I walked away from my laptop with distress in my heart. Remembering the events and emotions scratched open the still fresh scabs that haven’t quite formed into durable scar tissue yet. Everything came flooding out, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I refuse to write that novel — EVER. While I originally thought it might encourage other mothers (and fathers) going through similar issues, provide a therapeutic outlet to process my thoughts, and perhaps even net some income to repay the debts caused by the events, I now know that this story isn’t meant to be shared further. What’s been published has been published. What’s been journaled has been journaled. There is nothing cathartic about it. I am releasing it and letting it remain in the past. I have learned from it, but it will not become my life. I will not make a living being known for THAT, nor will I spend my days torturing myself over how others tortured me and my family.

Today, I invite you to take a quiet moment to consider: what can you say right now with certainty?

With the utmost of certainty right now, I can say that I am ready for changes in 2015. I want to be happy and healthy. I am tired of feeling exhausted and defeated. I’m tired of feeling poor and indebted. I am tired of questioning what it is that I’m doing with myself and my life. I certainty don’t have the same drive and spark I did two years ago when I thought big changes were right around the corner. Of course, a lot has happened in those two years, but those happenings have left me worn out, embittered, and cynical. Reflecting back on the last two years, I say with certainty that I intend to unravel more than one year’s worth of baggage so I can work through these emotions on my own. I certainly couldn’t write them out as a novel — the anxiety and fear crept back in so quickly. It’s time to move forward, enact big changes, create my happiness, and cultivate good health.