257. What it means to speak your truth
What does it actually mean to speak your truth?
Is it the same as speaking the truth?
And how do you know when you’ve truly spoken yours?
In this episode, I dive deep into these questions and share one of the most personal and powerful excerpts from my upcoming book VOICEPRINT. It’s a raw story of losing - and reclaiming - my voice, and the life-changing lesson I learned about the difference between speaking with confidence and speaking your truth.
✨ Inside this episode:
Why speaking your truth is not the same as “telling the truth”
The messy, courageous reality of voicing what’s real for you
How silence, shame and gaslighting suppress your authentic voice
The energetic shift that happens when you speak in alignment
My personal story of rediscovering my voice after losing it in a toxic relationship
If you’ve ever struggled with saying what’s really on your heart - or feared being “too much” - this episode will remind you that your voice matters, your story matters, and your truth deserves to be heard.
Transcript
Hello, welcome back to That Voice Podcast. So last week you heard from the amazing Katie Delimon about breaking the cycle of secrets and having the courage to have those hard conversations and speak your truth. But what does it actually mean to speak your truth? Is it different from speaking the truth? And how do you know you're speaking your truth? Those are the questions we're exploring today and, and I'm going to share with you one of the most powerful and personal excerpts from my book Voice Print, which as a listener of this podcast, you really must read. And if you have not pre-ordered, please click the link in the show notes to pre-order.
You can also get the Oracle Card Deck, and after this episode, you might also be tempted to buy the audio book version, which I still need to record. Actually, that's on my list this week. So when did I learn what it meant to speak your truth? Well, my whole childhood and into my teenage years, into my twenties, I was a confident speaker. You know, I know all the techniques to control your nerves and engage with your voice and speak with confidence. That's the surface level stuff. And any number of speaking coaches out there can teach you, myself included. You know, I share all the techniques and strategies for this in my one-on-ones and in Soul Speakers. And if you wanna sharpen your communication skills, it is a no-brainer to come along and learn how to do this. And you get so much more because about 10 years ago, I learned there is a huge difference between speaking with confidence and speaking your truth. And here starts the excerpt from the book. By day I was a confident TV news reporter broadcasting my voice across the state. By night, I barely even had a voice.
I was in a relationship where I felt like I was walking on eggshells. Of course, I was initially walking on cloud nine, a smart, handsome doctor. I met through a friend. We were crazy about each other. On Tuesday evening, I walked into my apartment and the living room had been transformed. Tea light candles all the way along the wall, up onto the TV cabinet and along the sash window sill. There was a plush blanket and pillows draped on the floor with a beautiful cheese platter and a bottle of champagne. This was no occasion, it was the kind of everyday romance I experienced. So it was a real shock. When the cracks began to show things weren't adding up, money would appear one minute to vanish the next. The drinking got heavier, his mood more erratic, and it turned out this dashing doctor wasn't all that dashing, and it was doubtful he was even a doctor. I felt so confused. My questions to him were shut down. My words were twisted and thrown back at me. Self-trust evaporated and my voice began to retreat.
I never saw proof of him being a doctor. No record at the university, no record of the hospital. The document I asked him to provide is proof of employment. I later found under the lid of my printer, a cobbled together sticky tape and liquid paper arts and crafts job. He later told me all this confusion was because he was in witness protection and worked for a national intelligence agency. As you can imagine, that really cleared things up for me. before voice print came along, my book was going to be titled The Spy Who Shagged Me . You can laugh, it is funny. What's funnier is I believed him and I stood by him and I got to a point where I didn't care who the hell he was or what he did, or even if he was truthful about it, because I loved him and wanted to be with him, and I wanted to be right. I didn't want to admit to myself that I'd got it so wrong.
Family members weren't quite so sympathetic. They were on the futile war path to help me see the truth. So I did what any love blind woman in my situation would do. Told my family, we broke up and continued to date him in secret. I was the keeper of lies. I couldn't keep track of them, and I felt so ashamed of the whole thing. The lie addiction crash was real swept up in the exhausting love bomb cycle of highs and lows. I withdrew from everyone and my voice withdrew from me. I'd look at him across the room, lost in his dark features and tell myself, this is love. This is worth it. Love means standing by someone no matter what. But deep down, a truer voice whispered that something was wrong one night. That voice of doubt found the courage to come out in the messy way.
It does. He didn't like it. Dislike quickly turns to danger. Fueled by his drunkenness, he chased me down the hallway into the bedroom with the four points of an upturn chair before kicking me in the thigh, sending me onto the bed. Why didn't I scream or at least say something? My voice dove back to the safety of silence. And I was paralyzed, frozen in fear. My body was pinned to the mattress by an invisible weight of guilt and grief and shame and anger. How did an educated privileged woman like me get herself into this? What a idiotic disappointment to society. The self-loathing pummeled and crushed me against rock bottom.
The next morning he was gone. I hadn't moved morning sunlight beamed through the shutters with the joy I yearned to feel lying there drunk on a cocktail of crappy emotions, something stirred in my belly. The sensation was hot and otherworldly. I took a deep low breath in, and as I exhaled, I felt that fiery sensation rise up my windpipe past my vocal cords and out of my mouth. The guttural whale took on a life of its own. It wasn't a scream, it was a sound forged in the depths of my being, primal, raw, and undeniable. As it surged up through my body, it didn't just echo in the empty apartment, it echoed through me. I felt it reverberating my bones in my throat, in every space where my voice had once been swallowed.
In that moment, I knew I was done being silent. In that moment, I reclaimed the voice. I knew I had in that moment. I put a stake in my sound. I realized there's a big difference between speaking with confidence and speaking your truth. And I realized my life's mission was to help people find their inner fire and channel it through their soul stirring voice. And that my podcast friends ends my reading and gives you an insight into why I do what I do. Into why working with your voice is not just physical, it's emotional, it's mental. Above all, it's energetic. And speaking your truth allows all those elements to click into place. Speaking your truth is speaking in alignment. It's not speaking as a mask all the time. It's not putting it on. Returning to those questions from the start of this episode, what does it actually mean to speak your truth? It means letting your voice carry your authentic self, your values, your stories, your feelings. Without disguise, without dilution, without apology. And yet, as Katie shared last week, it's probably going to be messy.
The expectation of saying things just right often means the thing doesn't get set at all, and it retreats, hides, becomes trapped in your tissue. Vest is in your body. I experienced this firsthand, and you know, I shudder to think of how heavy my energetic weight would be had I continued lying, lying to my family. And worse than that, lying to myself. And that brings me to the next question. How is speaking your truth different to speaking the truth? Well, you know, you could say the truth is objective fact, whereas your truth is subjective, authenticity. It's what's real and alive for you.
If you've ever felt gaslit by anyone in any situation, that's a sign that what they're telling you is different to what is real and alive for you. Oh, you don't feel nervous speaking? Ah, you know, you're all right. You don't feel nervous. Well, you know, if you feel nervous before speaking, that's true for you. Oh, you've got nothing to be upset about. You know, and these are the light examples of gaslighting. The objective truth can often be wielded like a weapon. Phrases like, well, that's not true. Or What about the old? Well, I'm just telling the truth, . You know, sometimes what's true for you is at odds with what everyone around you thinks about relationships, jobs, what you should and shouldn't do. Where are you doing what other people say you should do that's contradicting what your inner voice, your intuition is telling you to do.
And remember, your truth doesn't erase other people's truth. It just validates you. You know, you could say speaking the truth is a clarity of facts. And you know, in many situations there are many different versions of facts speaking. Your truth is about clarity of self, clarity of self. And how do you know you're speaking your truth? Well, you feel it. It's light, it's aligned. Have you ever said something and it's been a weight off your chest? You felt that lightness because when you do speak your truth, it's light, it's aligned, it resonates. People don't hear your message. They feel your message. And sure, as Katie said last week, it may not feel light in the moment. It will probably feel clunky and messy and hard, but such as the nature of clearing energetic blocks, right? If it flew right out easily, it may not be the thing that really needs saying. And only you can know that. And if you're not quite sure, I can help tease it out. And this is the main work I do with clients, especially one-on-one, teasing out your truth so your voice can function as a clear, uncluttered, energetic channel for the message you will put on this earth to share.
Big episode this week, I'd love you to reach out in my DMs at @SallyProsserVoice or @ThatVoicePodcast. Let me know how this one landed for you.
You might need to re-listen. Book a new client one-on-one, join Soul Speakers, and you know you need Voice Print on your shelf, so make sure you have pre-ordered the book. I'll see you next week.