Trusting My Voice

So I’ve been talking abt working on my media kit and the hardest part for me is concision (big surprise there).

Under your name, you have to put your “mission statement” which is kind of like your “elevator pitch” for yourself.

I’ve been working on this for weeks because there are so many things that I want to put into it but I think the biggest thing for me is valuing one’s own voice.

It took me so so long to value my own voice, which is why I don’t ever want to give it up. It took me years to finally trust it—and it’s something that I’m constantly working on. My mantra for lizzy has always been “don’t harm yourself; don’t harm others” because as long as you’re doing that, you really don’t have a reason to doubt yourself.

But I’ve been in so many situations where people convinced me that harmless things I was doing were harming them or they even convinced me that I was harming myself: setting boundaries, working, existing, having an opinion, dressing any way I wanted, the music I sing, the names of my bands, running errands, sleeping, eating, taking care of myself, having friends, and more.

The only reason I would have been able to believe those things is because I wholly disregarded my own voice. I allowed my existence to be swept up into others and because I could understand their perspective, thought they were right. I thought that if I came from their background, with their experiences, maybe I would also feel the way they do and agree.

However, that meant disregarding my own experiences, my own childhood and how I was raised, the things that I believe, and I didn’t fight for anyone else to see things from my perspective the way I saw things from theirs. But I also cannot make people see things from my perspective. I cannot do a mind-meld and fill you up with my lifetime for us both to have that knowledge.

The only thing I can do is just trust that through my experiences, my life, I know what is causing harm to myself or others. Sometimes it’s not even about “avoiding harm” but rather “causing growth”—because I’m now at a point where I’m not worried abt hurting others because I know myself and frankly, so far it’s always been someone else’s projection or trigger. Now I’m looking for things that actively add to my life. Does this better me in some way? Does this benefit my brain or my heart or my life? Does this help me be a person in alignment with my values? If the answer is yes, then I want to move toward that.

Through all of my experiences, I’ve journaled.

Something that helped me know when others were wrong and I should have trusted myself was journaling: from writing down how a fight happened, why I was upset or depressed, the ways I tried to communicate that were good or not, the ways that I needed to work on my communication and when I did—how it was manipulative or invalidating when it wasn’t heard still—to bullet journaling: careful tracking of my sleep snd water intake, tracking if I exercised, meditated, took my vitamins, showered, tidied my living area. Because sometimes, my anxiety and depression can easily be explained purely by my sleep, water, and diet.

Doing this, and having a log of progress and set backs that I could look at objectively, taught me to trust myself. And I want other people to do that too.

I believe that it is through setting the example that we show how to live better, how to heal, how to learn from our mistakes, how to hold ourselves accountable—but when you don’t trust yourself, you might need an actual physical log to go back and see how things actually went, how you actually took care of yourself.

I personally am motivated by making things beautiful or beautiful things. I love make up and fashion and vintage paper and ornate brass antiques. I love making journals with whimsical places because I feel like filling them up with my own words becomes a part of some kind of treasure—and I get to treat my life like a treasure in that way. I get to doodle the Ferris wheel we went on, add a business card for the coffee shop we stopped by, include a small picture of a weird shop we entered. If none of those thing, just gluing in a leaf that’s changed colors because I have lived through another changing of seasons and I think there’s value in that and it’s worth documenting.

I want to try new things and find humor and adventure in the act. I want to admit what I failed at the first few times and show what I learned or what my thought process was as I improved.

I’m slowly turning my content into an online journal of sorts, because I like transparency in existence. I don’t hurt myself or others and if I do, then I want to admit it and show what I’m learning from that and how to handle that in the future without wallowing in self-debasement, getting into the practice of giving myself grace because it’s the only way to truly move forward as a better person.

None of this is concise.

But I guess it’s more that as I make journals, painstakingly considering every detail, wanting them to feel magical for the person filling it up, I want people to want to fill them up. I want to imagine the life and experiences that will go in them, the little receipts and tags and napkin bits and labels and pictures someone might put in, as they learn to love their life for all of its complex simplicity. And I want to set that example so that others don’t feel silly for wanting to do it too. We can just be silly together.