Use Your Voice
Showing up to write on Substack scares me. It’s like walking into a bookstore. I want to run back out.
I’m intimidated by all the other writers here. I see their great works and a voice inside starts to whisper, “Why bother?” Pretty soon it’s shouting, “You’re not worthy!”
All those great books. All those better writers. All those voices that are more profound, poetic, vibrant and important. Why bother?
You might ask yourself the same as a writer, artist, singer or performer. Why create? Hasn’t it all been done or said by someone better? Smarter? Younger? Older? Wiser? Bolder? Someone more talented. Someone worthier than you.
I know that lie too well. I’ve heard it all my life. It’s the core of that shame that dwells deep in my being: You’re not worthy.
If you were raised Catholic like me, blame the church. Our first-grade catechism book showed our souls were already black from sin. We were only 6. Six!
The nuns made the girls wear toilet paper pinned to our hair if we forgot a scarf, as if God would rather see TP than a crooked part in our hair.
They gave us this response to say right before we were to receive the sacrament of communion: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you...
One of the pillars of recovery, Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, once wrote, “I had to be first in everything because in my perverse heart I felt myself the least of God’s creatures.”
Amen, brother.
It’s so bad, I was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. Twice. My brain told me, You failed. Twice. You didn’t win, so you’re a loser. Life is pass/fail. If you don’t win, you lose.
My first book God Never Blinks made the New York Times bestseller list three weeks in a row. You guessed it: Why did it fall off the list? Why didn’t the other two books I wrote after it make the list? That voice is relentless.
I write to silence that voice. I type to quiet that noise. I’m on Substack to strangle the life out of that lie.
I’ve been writing professionally since 1986. Newspaper columns since 1994. Books since 2009. Substack for one hour and thirty seven minutes ago.
Words saved me. Ever since I got that passport to the world that some people call a library card. The librarians at Reed Memorial Library in Ravenna, Ohio, population 12,000 including 11 Brett kids, opened up the world of words to me.
Words that saved my life.
The words of others saved me. Thank God those writers and artists never let shame stop them from saving me. And you.
Poet and performer Sean Thomas Dougherty wrote this poem that quiets the noise:
Why Bother?
Because right now there is someone
out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
That’s reason enough for me to write.
I hope it is for you, too. Reason enough to sing, write, sculpt, paint, create, speak up or speak out.
The world needs the voice only you have been given.
What happens if you stay silent?
I tape inspirational quotes all over the area where I write. This tiny paragraph from a New Yorker article on Gospel singer Mavis Staples gives my fingers wings. The Grammy winner said kids used to tell her, “You sound like a boy.” Her dad told her to sing anyway.
She used to hate to come to rehearsal, until one day he told her: “Mavis, your voice is a gift that God gave you. If you don’t use it, he’ll take it back.’” She was the first one in rehearsal after that.
Boom! My biggest fear now isn’t that others won’t like what I say or think I’m not worthy. It’s that if I don’t take the risk and use the gift of writing God gave me, God will give it to someone else.
Activist Maggie Kuhn told people: “Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.”
Write your truth. Use your words. Speak your truth.
Even if your voice shakes.
Someone somewhere needs to hear what only you can say.
Photo by Katie Montague Malone
This is Little Detours with Regina Brett.