Your Voice Is a Phenomenon (Yes, Yours)

Speaking — how often do you do it?
A lot? A little?
Is it something you choose to do… or something that just fires off automatically like a reflex…

Most people I work with describe speaking as one of those everyday tasks we barely register.
At work.
At home.
At happy hour or the pub.
With friends, partners, baristas, the Uber driver, the person on the other end of the phone

We just… do it.
Speaking.

But take a breath and sit with this for a moment:

Speaking is a phenomenon.

~ The synchronized dance of your vocal folds
~ The rise and fall of your diaphragm
~ The abdominal release that becomes breath
~ Resonance vibrating through bone and tissue
~ The intricate choreography of tongue, teeth, lips — turning impulse into language

(And honestly… just writing all that out is a little overwhelming 😅)

At its core, speaking isn’t just communication.
It’s being.
It’s survival.

Every word you send into the world carries something deeper than information.
It quietly declares:

I’m here.
I have thoughts worth voicing.
I belong in this space.
I — a living, breathing human — am phenomenally doing this.

I need.
I want.
Listen to me.

And yet… somewhere along the line, many of us learned to shrink our sound.

We soften our tone so we don’t seem “too much.”
We sand down our opinions so we don’t disrupt the room.
We tighten our throats — just slightly — to avoid being misunderstood.
We brace in the abdomen, the jaw, the breath…
until speaking becomes something we manage instead of something we trust.

Eventually, this fear of being “too much” stops feeling like a choice.
It becomes a reflex.

But here’s the truth:

Your voice was never built to hide.

It was made to resonate — in conversation, in conflict, in courage.
Speaking clearly, calmly, and fully isn’t about overpowering a space.
It’s about inhabiting it with steadiness and presence.
It’s about taking up space with grace.

So next time you feel yourself shrinking mid-sentence, remember:

You don’t owe the world a smaller version of yourself.
Your breath, your sound, your story — they are a phenomenon.

Because every utterance, every breath, every pause carries one profound message:

“I exist.”

And that alone is worth being heard.