Finding your voice

Zentangle - Musical clef and notes

There are many voices that we hear during the course of our lives as we try to find our own voice. There are those of our parents - the first voices. Those voices tell us we are loved and cute as a button (at least that is what we wish all babies would hear), but later, they don't mean to, but there come the messages about how to behave, how to fit in, what we should do, and what we shouldn't do. There are expectations and dreams communicated to us.

Then there are the voices of teachers, friends, authority, and society. Influences and lessons. Words of support or words of oppression. Sometimes there are just too many voices and we can't hear anything else. Very often we can't hear our own voice.

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir by Jennifer Ryan is the story about a group of women in a small English village who struggle to find and hear their own voices. It is 1940 when the story begins with the vicar's decision to disband the church choir since all the males have taken their voices off to war. One brave woman suggests that they can still have a choir - an all women's choir. That sparks controversy and dissension.

The story is told through journal entries and letters written by a small handful of characters and is  reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer. Each small village is struggling with the changes that the war have brought to them. Most importantly we learn how war changes and shapes people, and we see the evolution of the characters as they find their voices. The women of the choir become independent taking on jobs left behind by their husbands and sons. They struggle with the new morality that results from a changing world. They will not be silenced.

That leads to me finding my own voice. After many years, I've finally begun to weed through all the messages that the voices in my life have given me, sifting through and choosing the important and valuable and getting rid of the junk. My new voice is more willing to take risks, to speak out for what I believe in even when that might not be the safe or popular thing to do, and a whole hell of a lot more authentic. I've also come to value that I can use my voice and will do anything necessary to protect my right to use it.