I’ve lost my voice – and not in the “I’m sick and can’t talk” sort of way. I lost my voice for my blog. This tends to happen when I start to censor myself, my topics, ideas, thoughts and words. Now that I’ve started to censor myself, it is difficult to stop. For instance, I was going to write a post on LinkedIn about working in the non-profits and the difference between being inspired to give and being expected to give. But I decided against it because maybe that is too controversial of a topic and maybe I’ll offend people – people I care about, people who I care what they think of me. So I put the topic on my long list of blog post ideas that grows daily, but hasn’t been dusted off in a long time. I can’t write about the joys and challenges of parenting because my kids are old enough to read it or hear about what I write from others. If i write about the joys – and there are a lot of them – I’ll embarrass them. If I write about the challenges – and there are a lot of them too – they will be upset at best. The writer’s workshop I used to attend was a haven of encouragement and support from fellow writers and wonderful conversations about everything from oxford commas and em dashes to story development and adventures in publishing. For financial reasons, I haven’t been able to return to the workshop and now it is difficult for me to find the time to go. So, I’ve lost my voice and I’m sad about it, but I’ll keep trying and hopefully you will still be there to read it.
