Finding My Voice Again
Trying to write after loss
Writing is different now
In the void of what was and is no more
Not empty
Not pointless
Not impossible
Just…different
I stand at the glass edge of a new chapter
Alone
Knock
Listen for the voice to echo back to me
Not voice
Voices
Husband, father, mother, sisters, brothers
Not alone
But
In the void
Of what was and is no more
Writing is different now
Different doesn’t mean worse. Different can mean a lot of things.
As a death doula, one of the things I witness often is that people think losing their voice happens only at the end of life.
But it happens in smaller ways long before then.
Through survival.
Through caretaking.
Through fear.
Through relationships where silence felt safer than honesty.
Through illness.
Through grief.
Through years spent becoming who others needed instead of who we actually were.
Also through more “simple” things, such as moving.
And then one day the soul grows tired of translating itself into something smaller.
Finding your voice again is rarely loud at first.
Usually it begins quietly:
a sentence you almost apologize for,
a boundary spoken with trembling hands,
a truth admitted privately,
a piece of art made without asking permission,
a body recognizing what it no longer wishes to carry.
People often imagine healing as becoming someone new.
But so much healing is actually retrieval.
The voice was not destroyed.
It was protected.
Buried carefully under adaptation, survival, and endurance.
I think that deserves tenderness, not shame.
And I want people to know this too:
your voice does not need to emerge perfectly formed to deserve space.
Even a whisper changes the atmosphere of a room.