Speaking Our Truth

"Anything you lose for speaking your truth isn't a loss. It's alignment". Author unknown.

For many years, I held back. I knew I had a powerful story to share, and as life went on, so did my experiences. Many of which I did not expect, but there were lessons in each.

The fear of speaking my truth stemmed from post secondary. Largely because they tell us to not share our personal stories, especially with the clients that we are working with. While I believe there is a time and a place, and the intention for sharing has to be for the betterment of that person, our clients need to know that we are human. We don’t need to go into detail about our experience, but it helps to build relationship. After all, we are all human and haven’t experienced life unscathed.

This followed me for many years. Fear of speaking out, speaking my truth, because I thought there would be consequences in doing so. As I grew and learned, I began to understand there are always consequences to any decision we make. Much like sharing our story with the clients we serve, our stories must come from a good place for it to have impact.

It took a lot of healing, a lot of understanding, and eventually not giving a shit. In order to make systems change, and create meaningful impact, we have to share our stories. Stories make things real. They add faces to experience. Not just numbers. Data, research and all of that is important, but so are the voices behind the numbers.

I have come to learn that you will never be able to make everyone happy, and you are always the villain in someone else’s story. I am no longer choosing silence. I am no longer giving those individuals the power to keep me silent.

An elder once told me, as long as you speak your truth and from the heart, then you have done so with good intentions.