From feeling invisible to finding my voice

And a new realisation that I wasn't shy at all...

For years I have been telling the story of how I went from a “painfully shy kid” to speaking in front of over a thousand people in another language, with no notes. I’ve told it in these Diaries.

But as I have been creating more, both here on Substack and now, especially, on my new YouTube channel - all of which being the result of tuning into, you’ve guessed it, my Soul’s Own Signal - I have realised that I have been telling someone else’s version of my story, using other people’s labels.

This week I participated in the final edition of Evo Revo (Evolution Revolution), an online event aimed at (and delivering) radical transformation and awakening. Like the first time I participated, back in 2020, I went more for the community, the container, the beautiful souls to bear witness to and be seen by, but, again, underestimated the life-changing impact it has already had on me.

I met its founder, Jamie Skagen, through one of those weird, apparently random events that brings two people together from across the world. I know better, but am always still in awe of what happens when we trust our instincts to lean into things that seem irrelevant or a distraction.

Jamie is a force of nature and an expert on authenticity, vulnerability and unconditional love. Oh and a transformation coach, of course. I had already begun my journey of sharing more of who I was online, but that event ripped me wide open as I saw her brand of radical openness. I lost my Facebook Live virginity, singing, no less, an improvised serenade in homage to a fellow participant who had just spent 15 minutes plucking up the courage to begin her professional singing dream by singing live to the group.

This safe container has seen the dismantling of so many walls and blocks, such outpourings of love and support in response to the live processing of people’s deepest fears, traumas and programme-breaking. In one of my lives in this last edition, I reconnected with the power of such live processing. And I almost missed it, if it were not for this comment:

“How profound, I needed to hear this. Thought I was a painfully shy kid, turns out I was just very insecure. **** me, thanks for that!”

In telling my story of finding my voice and so finding myself, I pointed out that my sensitivity and empathy had led to a lack of identity as I tried to mould myself to others in order to fit in. Because when you do something that people like, they give you love and when you do something that goes against the grain, which I have always done, you experience rejection.

So you become increasingly insecure and learn to stay silent, giving the impression of shyness - driven by the fear of talking to people.

But something in me was more powerful than all that. And I know it didn’t come from me but through me. There were things I had to say, questions I had to ask. And eventually I learned to speak up, hardly able to hear my own voice through the pounding of my heart in my ears, trying my best to steady my voice as I felt as if my heart would burst through my chest, my face burning up and cold sweat pouring down my back.

When I listened to that voice - which didn’t shout like the other, critical voices, but rose up gently but relentlessly as the tide - I found not rejection but interest, even admiration from others who felt the same but were even more terrified than I.

Gradually I learned, through those experiences, to speak more confidently. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was also sowing the seeds of remembrance, the encoded DNA that knew who I was supposed to be. Not the innocuous and inoffensive grass, but the striking climber that unapologetically shows its beauty and sends out its heady scent.

As I write this, I feel the echoes of what I talk about in the first video of my new channel (second if you count the short intro video). That old fear of being or being seen to be a narcissist. But once again (though in a different medium), I feel like I am not writing but being written, and that these words have to come out as an example for others to follow. Not because I am special, but because I want everyone to feel as free to do the same - to be themselves and shine, to allow themselves to be loved and admired for who they are.

And I have realised that when we find our voice, we find ourselves. Because it is that voice that speaks the truth of who we are and the more we speak in and listen to that voice, the more we become that being, embodying the qualities of our unique personality and soul expression.

I leave you with the introductory video that sets the intention for the new channel, much as I have begun to do here in these Diaries: