I knew healing work was my calling.
I got into it for a very specific reason. I wanted to ensure that women’s voices were listened to and being heard.
At one point, I worked with women who had been physically and/or sexually assaulted or abused. You can’t be heard if you are too afraid to use your own voice.
At another point, I did needs assessments for social agencies to ensure their programs to women and families were what those families actually needed. You can’t always speak up to the hand that is giving you support.
Another time I worked as a community developer, advocating to government decision makers on things that mattered to women and their families. You can’t be always be heard if you stand alone.
That’s just a taste of my past, I’ve been around long enough to have a hefty list of different roles but each one had that common element of supporting women to use their voices.
It was all healing work to me and I loved it. It loved it because I felt like I was making things happen for women. And I loved it because it gave those women a platform to use their own voices, and to understand why being heard was so important to them. Interestingly, my business at that time was called Voices Consulting.
Then I decided to train as a coach. And through that training I came to realize that I hadn’t been using my own voice. Holy shit!
It was a weird revelation at the time, but not one that I rejected. I knew there was truth to it but I had never allowed myself to consider the impact that it was having on my life or my choices. Speaking up for others is not fully using our own voice.
Fast track to today and I’m still coaching and still loving it!
My practice is totally about women using their voices to support themselves in a way that serves them and serves the lives they really want.
As women, and this is no surprise, we are not always taught to be strong and independent. And even if we are, there are challenges all through our lives that silence or quiet us down. If you think that the line “be a good girl” is from past, it’s not.
It’s alive and well in social influences, in our beliefs about ourselves, in our thoughts, and in our behaviours. We don’t speak up if we don’t think we can.
My coaching practice is about getting women to understand themselves on a deep level, to identify those things that are controlling us yet don’t serve us. Things that don’t get us what we really want.
Using our voices is another way of saying we’re being true to ourselves, whatever that looks like for each of us.
What does all that look like for you? I’d love for you to hit reply and tell me what’s up with your voice these days.
After I understood what was happening to me in my life because I wasn’t using my own voice, I learned to know myself to be myself. Be myself in ways that work for me, with grace, love, and no apologies.
My voice expresses the life I want.
And isn’t that the way it should be?
Dianna xo
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