Who Gave You Your Voice?

There are things we say to ourselves so often that eventually we stop questioning where they came from.

I can’t wear that.

That’s too much for me.

I should probably wait.

I don’t want people looking at me.

What are they going to think?

At some point, those thoughts can become so familiar that they sound like our own voice.

But are they?

This month, we are talking about breaking down internal walls to make room to grow, and I think one of the first places we have to look is at the voices that helped build those walls.

We learn who we are from so many places.

Our families teach us things.

Our friends teach us things.

Relationships teach us things.

So do school, work, culture, community, media, and life experiences.

Some of those voices encouraged us.

Some corrected us.

Some protected us.

Some challenged us.

And some said things that we may have carried much longer than the moment required.

Maybe someone made a comment about your body years ago, and you still dress around it.

Maybe you were told you were too loud, too quiet, too emotional, too ambitious, too sensitive, or simply too much.

Maybe somewhere along the way you learned that being noticed could come with consequences, so you became comfortable making yourself smaller.

Maybe someone else’s definition of what was beautiful, professional, successful, appropriate, feminine, masculine, respectable, or acceptable became the standard you started measuring yourself against.

Sometimes those things happen in obvious ways.

But often, they happen little by little.

A sentence here.

A look there.

A correction.

A comparison.

An experience.

Until eventually, we no longer hear the person who originally said it.

We hear ourselves.

That is what I have been thinking about lately.

Who gave you your voice?

Not the physical voice people hear when you speak.

The one you hear when you talk to yourself.

The voice that tells you whether you belong before you ever walk into the room.

The one that determines how much space you are comfortable taking up.

The one that decides whether something feels like “you.”

The one that speaks when an opportunity presents itself.

And yes, even the one that speaks while you are standing in front of the closet deciding what to put on.

Because sometimes the conversation is not really about the clothes.

Sometimes the clothes simply reveal the conversation that was already happening.

I have learned that growth does not always require immediately changing everything we think or feel.

Sometimes growth begins with noticing.

Listening closely enough to recognize when an old voice is still giving instructions in a new season.

And that does not mean every lesson we received was wrong.

It does not mean blaming everyone who influenced us.

Some things served us well.

Some things helped us survive.

Some things gave us structure when we needed it.

But something being useful in one season does not automatically mean it should have authority in the next.

There comes a point when we have to decide what still belongs.

What do I still believe?

What have I outgrown?

What did I inherit without ever choosing?

What am I repeating simply because I have repeated it for years?

And what would happen if I gave myself permission to think differently?

Maybe breaking down an internal wall does not always begin with a hammer.

Maybe sometimes it begins with a question.

Is that actually my voice?

And if it isn’t—

do I still want to give it permission to speak for me?