The journey to the part that loves to sing
They say all roads lead to Rome and it certainly has felt like that when it comes to finding my voice.
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with my voice — leaning more toward hate than love. And when I started my business 10 years ago, the spotlight on my lack of voice grew even bigger. My manager parts became determined to fix it, find it, strengthen it, or change it. Mostly from a well meaning self-like part, one that mimics the qualities of Self but is still a part. Yet I always felt the agenda behind it.
I come by it honestly though, I often heard my mother say that I must have somehow known she needed a quiet, well-behaved baby —instilling the message that being silent meant being loved. All of my report cards described me as a very quiet polite little girl —and it was true. The cost of that silence caused me to miss opportunities and endure traumatic events. Another message I received from my mother was that loud voices were scary and a sign of anger. Combined with everything else I learned, my parts came to believe that anger was unsafe and should be suppressed. More evidence that quiet was the answer.
It’s a spiritual mystery to me, how our souls know what needs to come to the surface and when, but in late 2016 I got the nudge to go to Toastmasters. I definitely had two parts polarized about this decision as it took me six months to get to my first meeting. But when I walked in the door with my racing heartbeat it felt very welcoming and I felt determined. I was there every Thursday morning at 7:00 am for the next three years, stretching, strengthening and trying to finding my voice. I felt comfortable enough giving a speech by the end of those three years, but there was something missing —a voice coach.
Amy’s the real deal, she’s a trained opera singer and has an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Music as well as just a lovely human. I worked with her quite regularly in 2020/21 where she taught me another layer of finding my voice. This time through a combination of anatomy, proper breathing and imagery. It was enjoyable to do this work with her, but it still felt like my parts had an agenda, that something must be ‘fixed, found, or changed”. Eventually, life got busy, and I felt I’d learned enough, so our time together came to an end.
Fast foward to the early summer of 2024 when Amy reached out to see how I was doing. I was about to leave to walk the Camino, so we decided to check in later in the fall when I got back to Canada. I reached out to her in October and we did one online session as a little tune up with the intention to meet up in person when I got back to Victoria. Somewhere along the way that fall I got the notion that I wanted to see if I could sing. I’m not sure if it was all the time I spent alone, music cranked, trying to learn the Cajon or it was the words my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Shaw, wrote on my final report card. ‘Margo has finally mastered carrying a tune'. Either way something about it intrigued me.
You’d have to know me to see this was a far fetched idea. But you can gather from my childhood messaging that I would have never thought singing was for me. I trusted the instinct anyway and booked the lesson, and it felt different before I even showed up. Partly because I’d already been singing along to a couple of songs I enjoyed and partly because there was just curiosity with no agenda. I was just curious if I could carry a tune and I felt even if I couldn’t, I’d be able to access compassion for myself. And in the world of IFS (internal Family Systems) that points to self-energy.
So off I went to my very first singing lesson with Amy and it was everything I could have hoped for. After some warmup drills and her confirming that I’m not tone deaf and can carry a tune (Yay!), she asked me to play one of the songs that I have been singing along to on Spotify. A shy nervous part came out for a minute or two but then it disappeared and I felt confident to sing in front of her which was a little surprising. The most interesting moment though was near the end of the lesson when I was able to really belt something out. It surprised Amy as she’d never heard that much power come out of my mouth, and it surprised me because just for a moment I got a sense of “I shouldn’t be that loud, that strong, that powerful”. The parts with the old messaging tried to take up their old space but I had enough self-energy to reassure them I could handle this. The agenda to fix, find or change it was no longer there, though it easily could have been. Because singing is a great way to strengthen the vagus nerve, which is directly related to our sense of safety and social connection and it also will strengthen my voice with consistent practice. But for me, it simply makes me happy —end of story.
Thanks for reading and I hope this story inspires you to keep following your own roads to Rome as you never know where it might lead you. And it it’s singing you can find Amy here https://www.amysteggles.com