SPEAKING.APP

She’s nineteen years old, and she’s terrified of public speaking. Still, she volunteers to give a speech during our workshop for young women. She walks nervously to the front of the room. She can’t quite make eye contact. She starts talking about herself and her family in Egypt, where she’s from. Then she shifts to women in Egypt, and the change she wants to see. And as she keeps going, something changes. The more she talks, the taller she gets. She finishes with this powerful call to action, surprising herself and surprising all of us. When she’s done, she looks at us and says, “Do you think anyone really cares?” We’re riveted. In that moment, I realize there’s magic here. I couldn’t name it yet, but I could feel it. It’s like a spark. That moment sent me back to my own nineteen-year-old self. When I was nineteen, I left the field of opera. I had lost my passion for it, and my teacher told me I wasn’t good enough for a singing career. For over ten years, I believed her. Then something happened. I started to play the guitar, and I stumbled onto something, literally, and I’m going to show you. I’m in the privacy of my living room, and I’m trying to play E major. Can you hear that? But I make a mistake, and I don’t play E major. It’s not what I meant to do, but it sounds really good. It haunts me. It reminds me of my favorite song by the Indigo Girls. So for the first time, I sing and play. I stood without clothes and danced in the sand. I was aching with freedom and kissing the damned. I said, “Remember this is how it should be.” I played those two chords over and over again, and I sang until I lost my voice. But actually, I had found my voice. Instead of singing what I thought people wanted to hear, I was singing what I really wanted to sing, and I was so much better at it. And that’s what happened to that young woman. In a classroom, in a safe environment, she found the courage to talk about something that really mattered to her. It mattered so much that it animated her body and energized the room. That’s the spark. The spark is what shows up when someone stops performing who they think they should be, and starts speaking or singing from what they actually care about. The phrase I keep coming back to, again and again, is: “Find your voice.” So here’s the question I want to leave you with. How can we create a safe space for people to realize they have something important to say, and that they have a right to say it? Because when they do, something powerful happens. To quote the author Marianne Williamson: “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.” Last summer, I threw everything to the wind, and I went to Europe with my guitar. I was sitting on the steps of the Paris Opera House, where I had always dreamed of performing, and instead I wrote a folk song. It’s called All Along. So I left a great apartment on a quiet Cambridge street. And I moved in with some good friends who had a room just for me. And I bought a round-trip ticket, all of Europe for me to see. Packed my life into a suitcase, left Boston by the sea. There I was in an airport bar with a backpack and guitar, saying, “This is who you are.” And all along I found myself searching for you, burning for you. And all along I told myself you would appear. If only I’d stop my searching, I’d find you here. I don’t know what happened to that Egyptian woman. But I’ve realized this. Finding your voice is not the end of the journey. It’s just the beginning. Thank you.