I was born with a voice.
From as long as I can remember I would speak up, even if that meant receiving harsh physical punishment (for which I did many times). For me the urge to make right the wrongs would be stronger than the punishment I knew I would receive.
There was a time in my early 20’s where I felt the burden of this voice and didn’t wanna speak out anymore. I tried to hide my opinions, even when asked. I tried to sit back on injustices I saw and not get involved. I thought maybe if I just kept silent, I could train myself to be like everyone else around me. After all, at the time it seemed that the rewards of life were in silence.
I tried for a long time to hide that part of me. Because as I’d learned, when you stand up and speak out, you often get burned. People don’t like it. They curse you, they remove themselves from you, they even ostracise you. I came to the thinking that life would be so much easier if I’d just shut up.
But as time went on, I knew and believed that I was given a voice for a reason. I knew this because when I spoke it ignited something in me, that felt powerful and passionate. And that was important to me. It showed me that this was right for me. I knew that someday I would use this voice to inspire change in people.
This will be my blog, my chance to speak. The aim is to encourage and inspire people to change, to do something different, something positive that can change their lives for the better. To break destructive patterns, to ‘break the cycle’. As I use to say to my mum, if you want something different in your life, you have to change the dance, even if it’s just a step, just do something different.
I’m a big believer in explicit teaching. Some people simply do not know what to do when they are facing a personal crisis. And it’s in the ‘not knowing’ that they inadvertently continue the same patterns. These patterns are often passed down through family and environment, thus continuing the cycle of poverty, abuse, violence, neglect etc. But if people only knew ‘what’ to do, I believe this would make a tremendous difference in their lives.
I will explicitly share strategies that I used to overcome my own personal turmoil and how I changed my life so that my past would never be repeated into not only my future, but the future of my children.
One of my many favourite quotes;
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke
Beck