BM (before motherhood,) I was a college English instructor. In the last few years, I found my niche teaching developmental English for the students who weren’t quite ready for college level writing courses.
I took this responsibility very seriously. I saw in my students people with enormous potential; they had so much to offer the world. Sadly though, most of them had no real voices in the world. They didn’t have the rhetorical tools to get their points across, and many of them had impediments which would have brought out the prejudices in others.
I worked tirelessly with my students helping them earn a voice and, more importantly, helping them see the importance and necessity of their voices. I was adamant. They had a right to be heard.
In that light, it’s interesting how I treat my own voice. It’s nearly impossible some days to believe that I have something worth saying. And even more difficult to believe than that is to believe that I have a right to speak, that I have a right to be heard, a right to make a mark on this world. Who am I to be heard?
And I don’t think I’m alone in that belief. How richer would the world be if we all got past our fear of inadequacy, if we all lived to the potential we we are blessed with, how much more varied would the world be, how much richer the tapestry of our public discourse and therefore our private lives.
And so I am making a vow today to try to overcome that, to try to give voice to my thoughts and believe in my right to exist beyond the four walls of my home.
And so I ask you, what do you have to offer the world that you have been too afraid to give? How might you make the world a brighter place? What step can you take today to change that?
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?” Marianne Williamson