Words Aloud

My best friend is training to be a counsellor (probably after having so much practice with me haha).  Over the New Year period she had to write an essay about how she had changed since starting the course.  Since we have both been on a massive journey this past year I decided to do it too.

The idea was that you write down how you remember that you used to be and how you think you have changed.  But then you have to read out your essay out loud to the group, and they then analyse what you have said.

We agree to both read our essays to each other.  I have known my best friend for nearly twenty years so she knows every nook and cranny of the way my mind works and the person that I am, so I have no qualms in reading mine aloud.

What reading my essay turned out to be was something I hadn’t anticipated. 

Writing down how you feel can be incredibly cathartic and I have experienced that many times during the course of writing this blog.  But actually speaking the words out loud seems to release the words and bring them off the page and into reality. 

It makes sense really, you think all the time and you may come to conclusions in your head, decisions are made and you may write those thoughts down, but they are rarely in spoken form.  Those thoughts become tangible the moment that they pass your lips.

I could hear the rise and fall of confidence in my voice.  The passion that I felt about some issues practically sung out of me.  You could hear the conviction and strength behind the words I spoke, but then with other matters I wasn’t so sure about, the voice softened and became quieter.  Things that I thought that I had gotten over completely produced tears that I didn’t expect to come.

After finishing there was such a feeling of release and like absolution of sins, the thoughts and feelings that had been trapped in my head and on paper had been liberated.  I felt free of them.

When I got home from my holiday, the thing that had made me cry, I immediately ejected from my life.  The dead wood has been cleared and I’m ready and excited to see what lies ahead of me.

Try it.  Find something that you have written, something where you are talking about how you feel, something powerful.  Say the words out loud, let them take their own flow and don’t stop.  If you have someone you trust enough to say them to, do that.

It was amazing for me; hope that it is the same for you.    Now I'm aware that this post was a little "deep hippy trippy" so in case you didn't want to read all that, here's a singing weasel.  Enjoy.