The courage to use our voice

How rare it is to find a woman who speaks her mind with ease.
How rare it is to feel comfortable hearing ourselves.

This is something I noticed when I began writing.

When I first started—while working on a research paper on reflective writing—I was analysing my own practice. I kept a month’s worth of writing for the study, and when I looked back, I noticed something.

I was mainly writing about the things I could not say out loud.

I looked back at my pages and found emotions I thought were too much.
Thoughts I believed were too dangerous to share.

Seeing them there, on paper, felt unfamiliar at first. A little intimidating.

I’ve met many women in my life who speak plainly.
But I’ve met more who don’t.

And I find myself unsettled by that—
by the subtle rules imposed on us when it comes to self-expression.

The fear around a woman’s experience.
The fear around her voice.

I don’t mean speaking without care.
I mean speaking from the heart.

Writing, then, becomes a space for that voice to emerge—
slowly, with hesitation at first,
but with power, eventually.

It becomes a form of resistance—
to the subtle management of how we are allowed to speak, feel, and exist.

Sharing our writing isn’t necessarily the end goal.
But to have a piece of our inner world exist—on paper, in front of us—
shifts something.

Maybe it softens the fear around what we feel.
Maybe it makes our experience easier to face.

Over time, the walls around our authenticity begin to fade.

And we learn that being ourselves is more than okay.

Y.