Episode 120: How to Unveil Your Voice

[00:00:02] What you want when you want it, where you want it. This is the MESH. For you in doing that, we're going to get inspired and I am so excited to share. Let's get started. Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of The Written Compass.

[00:00:45] Shayna here. I'm so excited to join you today and I've got a really fun, exciting topic that I want to talk about how to unveil your voice. If you have not been hanging out with me, then I want you to go back

[00:00:59] to episode 118 and listen to the story around our new unveiling the secrets book series. We have been having so much fun, book 2 is coming out later this year.

[00:01:13] And we have officially put out our call for submissions. Yes, you can now become a part of the unveiling your voice and unveiling the secrets book series, The Movement.

[00:01:27] And easily participate become a published author with way less words than writing your own book. You can just head to shainaheartman.com

[00:01:35] slash author submissions. But today I really want to dive into part of the why behind this book is we are really trying to create a collective movement

[00:01:46] around sharing your voice. And so it's today's episode is going to be a mix of kind of a teaser for the upcoming second book unveiling the series as well as a teaser for what you can expect when you become a part of our community.

[00:02:02] We are really on a mission here at Synergy Publishing Group to support people who have something to say, maybe have not always been encouraged to share their voice or felt like writing has just been too hard for them for various reasons.

[00:02:17] Either the way they talk or the way they write, doesn't match up with what they think and a published author is supposed to sound like and we are really here to shift that narrative to really help support you in realizing that writing is not that hard.

[00:02:32] It is actually something you are born to do and we want to support you in sharing whatever it is that you want to share in the world. So I'm going to start by reading a little something from our upcoming book unveiling the secrets,

[00:02:49] the it's actually the secrets of being too much and finally taking up space. And I'm going to talk to you and share a piece by our amazing Melissa Graham. Melissa is our publication goddess that's what we call her, but she's also published author herself.

[00:03:10] If you have not checked out her book, a poetry called Use Cal for Sale, it is divine and I read it probably every other week. It is just this cutest, most amazing book that just meets me right where I am.

[00:03:24] And in this piece, Melissa really helps me understand from an outside perspective what it is we're doing in these communities we're creating for our collaborative books for our individual authors at our writing retreats. I'm going to talk about our upcoming one here in September.

[00:03:43] And the title of this piece is called pointing so I'm going to read it and then let that kind of inspire me to talk about the power and importance of unveiling your voice. Pointing by Melissa Graham.

[00:03:57] A room full of women and one man gathered in a rough circle on our last day together as a group. The past few days have been a nonstop exchange of ideas feedback and ringing the words from our brains onto each person's writing medium of choice.

[00:04:14] In moments of rest at this embodied writing retreat, we had stared at gaggle a gaggle of geese, a lone white squirrel or ripples on the lake. Or we've gathered around the kitchen island, nibbling the various snacks Cindy, our own personal chef, day cuisine, had laid out for us.

[00:04:34] Once in our rough circle, Shayna did as Shayna does and invited us to close our eyes, breathe and ground ourselves in the moment. Then Cindy introduced an exercise called pointing before the explanation I'd imagined fingers pointed in my face with cries of jakekuz echoing around me.

[00:04:55] That was just my inner stress bunny making up stories though. I needed to have worried. In the real world we'd each read a few sentences or paragraph from something we'd written that day and then the others would say two words that stuck with them from the reading.

[00:05:11] So pointing in this case meant highlighting, reflecting, echoing or amplifying, a vote for an aim change. Before the exercise began I got the feeling I needed to record it that we needed to do something with these echoed words and feelings.

[00:05:27] I asked the group's permission and set my phone on the center of the room. The words that emerged calm, chaos, invincible persona, powerful delusion, sowing music, breath, sound, radical healing.

[00:05:44] Gradually formed a picture in my head independent of each reading but very much tied to my feelings about this group of people and our time together. The day after the retreat, some of us gathered again online for our bi-monthly virtual writing group.

[00:06:00] I pulled out the recording of our pointing exercise, transcribed the words and described the picture they'd formed in my head. And thus our rightly-cubbin was written with a piece of each person from the retreat fused in free verse.

[00:06:15] You will find essays from many of them within this book. I should note for those a verse to the notion that no actual witchcraft was performed at this white writing retreat, unless you count breathing deeply into one's intentions, drinking herbal teas,

[00:06:32] communing with nature, gathering two or more women unrelated by blood, having one or more moles or distinguishing scars on one's body,

[00:06:40] mumbling to oneself while working out a troubling bit of wordsmithing, being stubborn or being old, all of which in darker times could have led to a woman's execution. If you believe any of those things qualify as magic or otherwise subscribe to the tenets of the malias,

[00:06:57] and you can call it a maleficaram that, indeed, much witchcraft occurred. Some of us as peace really for one, captures to me and reflects the power of what it takes to invite your words,

[00:07:18] to truly embody your words, to be inspired by the communities that get created when you say yes, to sharing your story. To me that is one of the first aspects of unveiling your voice.

[00:07:33] Simply deciding that yes, I am going to do this. Yes, I do have something to say. And then finding a community, a collective of some sort like Melissa shared in her experience at our writing retreat,

[00:07:50] and then speaking to our writing days in our writing community that we all have ongoing all year long. The power of being in the presence of others and sharing your words is going to provide you with affirmation.

[00:08:05] So you provide that first yes, and then others provide you with the next yes, keep going we want to hear more what about this. You all those said that, can you share even more, can you go even deeper? What's coming next?

[00:08:18] That affirmation that we really need and that's the power of being in a collective. And the power of when you say yes to unveiling your voice, you want to be in that collective so that they can continue to support your yes along the way.

[00:08:34] And what I love to about Melissa's peace and what it represents is that we never know what is going to show up. So Melissa didn't sit down saying, I want to write a piece about the retreat.

[00:08:47] Right? She was in that community. She was in that space being inspired by other people's words and probably did some little this in that writing probably had some moments of reflection in between probably had some conversations with us about it and the other members of the community.

[00:09:06] And then suddenly this piece emerged. And so it was really this kind of meta experience, this back and forth if she had not said yes to sharing her words and committing herself to writing her words.

[00:09:19] And then yes to coming to the retreat and yes to being a part of the writing community and yes to listening to what others were saying and letting that inspire her.

[00:09:29] And so we talk a lot about and on the written compass and in the community that I have worked really hard to create with our writers about embodying our words. And I feel like this is the enactment of that. This is the true example of that.

[00:09:51] What you want to share with the world is important. It doesn't matter if it comes out in a book or if it comes out just for you.

[00:09:59] Or if it comes out of the retreat and you share it at the end and let others reflect back to you what they hear with a simple pointing to your powerful words.

[00:10:09] It doesn't really matter, but what I'm really committed to is making sure that you do honor and let your voice come out in some way shape or form.

[00:10:20] So if you aren't in a collective I want to make sure you know about our fall retreat that is happening. So if you're listening to this when this is coming out or on or before September 8th then you are invited.

[00:10:33] If you're listening to this after we're probably going to have a retreat soon and so make sure you send me a message and know that you're always invited.

[00:10:41] We have day passes. We have the opportunity for you to stay in the beautiful space that we do. We always do our retreats through the most part on Lake Norman and North Carolina. It's just a beautiful backdrop and setting to have a moment of calm space.

[00:10:57] We have nourishing food so you don't have to think about any of that. There's opportunities where you are invited to see what wants to show up. We begin each day together. We get grounded. We set our intention much like Melissa's piece described. You have time together.

[00:11:19] Time to yourself, time to each other, time to write, time to do yoga, time to walk, time to float, time to be and of course you have time to write.

[00:11:29] These retreats and these times together in this collective, help you unveil your voice because you get this shift and perspective. I'm always impressed at how much gets written like books full on getting started multiple chapters or sections or pieces.

[00:11:45] Books getting finished wrapped up ready to head to the editor all over two three days at a retreat.

[00:11:52] It's such a short amount of time but when you have that new perspective shift and really allows you to get connected to your voice and really get out what you need to.

[00:12:01] Like I said, your voice is encouraged the entire time and we're able to get out of our head and get into our embodied words to really really find what wants to be said, what wants to be shared.

[00:12:14] So if you're interested in becoming a part of this unveiling your voice collective movement and you're interested in the different ways that we do that like this upcoming retreat, then I want to make sure you send me a message over on Instagram, the Shena underscore v or you can send me an email, shena at chainaharmand.com to make sure we find the right fit for you to support you in unveiling your voice.

[00:12:41] It's not about having the right plan or the right idea for a book or a piece you want to write. It's simply about honoring the tug that you're feeling inside and finding the support to help that be revealed and that's what we are here for.

[00:12:58] As always, I want to thank her sponsor, Dr. Heather Bartos and her menopause mothership experience that she is creating and we are so proud to promote.

[00:13:09] I have been a part of this community for a couple of weeks and actually more than that now and it has just been like changing for me.

[00:13:17] So head to our show notes if you want to learn more, she is an MD, she is committed to women's health and she cannot wait to support you right where you are. As always, thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.

[00:13:31] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Written Compass. If you are enjoying this content, do me a favor and go and review the podcast.

[00:13:41] This allows me to share and get these messages out to the people who really need them, who we want to read their books in the future. You can also go and share your thoughts and tag me at Shena Hartman underscore on Instagram.

[00:13:55] Again, this is just a way for us to get connected and share the writing love.

[00:14:00] And if you know that you are ready to write your book, that message that's been burning inside of you for a long time, then I want to talk to you and my team and I want to talk to you.

[00:14:11] Head on over to shenaheartman.com and click work with us. From there, you'll see an application to explore and see if writing your book is your next best step.

[00:14:27] You've been listening to the mesh and online media network of shows and programs ranging from business to arts, sports to entertainment, music to community. I'll program our available on the website as well as through iTunes and YouTube. Check us out online at themesh.tv.

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