The Voices I Could Not Ignore

For a long time, I thought having a voice meant being brave enough to speak.

I have since learned that sometimes you can have so much inside you to say and still be afraid to let it out.

I first became aware of this in my early twenties. I would watch documentaries and the news and find myself thinking about the people and situations I was seeing. Some stories would stay with me long after the programme had ended. I would feel the urge to say something, to write something, to somehow respond.

But another thought would always come quietly behind it:

Who am I to speak?

Am I good enough?

Will anyone care what I have to say?

My heart was sometimes too fragile to see certain things first-hand. But there was a young woman I knew who would travel to remote parts of the country and come back with stories and photographs of people whose lives were very different from mine. She shared those stories with me, and somehow they found their way into my heart.

I began writing.

There was another young woman who read some of my poetry and would always tell me, “You have a gift.”

I don't think I understood what she saw in me at the time.

I loved writing about emotions through nature. I could describe sadness through rain, anger through fire, resilience through an animal finding its way through difficulty. I wanted people not only to understand what I was saying, but to feel it.

Eventually, I wrote a newspaper article about people living in less privileged parts of the country.

I don't remember every word of that article anymore. What I remember is how it felt to write it.

There was no AI helping me find the right words. 😂 There were simply my thoughts, my emotions and the things that had been stirring inside me.

I was terrified when I submitted it.

I remember wondering whether it was good enough.

Then it was published.

And I was proud.

The encouragement I received from my parents and relatives meant more to me than they probably realised. For someone who had spent so much time questioning whether her voice was worth hearing, seeing my own words in a newspaper and having people I loved encourage me felt like a small door had opened.

Finding different ways to speak

Over the years, I discovered that writing wasn't the only way I communicated.

I became an art teacher. I taught English. I worked with students, facilitated projects, coordinated things and found myself constantly trying to help people understand ideas in ways that made sense to them.

Sometimes that meant using an illustration.

Sometimes it meant finding a different explanation.

Sometimes it meant helping someone find the words they couldn't quite find themselves.

And I began to realise that this was one of my gifts: taking something that can feel distant or difficult and finding a way to make it something people can see, feel and understand.

Art became another language for me.

I encouraged my students to use art to express both the emotions they were comfortable talking about and the ones they weren't. I learned that sometimes a person can put something onto a page or canvas that they cannot yet say aloud.

Poetry taught me something similar.

I once wrote about the experience of sexual violence through the image of fire the kind of fire that can make a person feel as though everything inside them is being burned to ashes. But I also wrote about the possibility of rising from those ashes.

Let the flames that burn you down be the flames that rise you up.

Perhaps that is what I have been doing too.

The woman who taught me how to keep showing up

When I think about the women whose stories have shaped me, I cannot begin anywhere other than with my mother.

Many people who were blessed to know her would tell you that she was a phenomenal woman. I know I am her daughter, so perhaps I will always be biased, but I saw something in her that I still carry with me.

She worked a nine-to-five job, yet every morning she made sure her children were ready for school. She came home and made sure we were okay. She cooked dinner. She was a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend and a pillar to many people around her.

She showed up.

Even when life hurt.

She lost her father. She lost her brother. She lost her mother, and I watched how deeply that loss affected her.

Yet she continued to show up for other people.

When she eventually became ill herself, she still had that same spirit. Right up until her final days, she was still giving, still caring, still being herself.

I was privileged to be there for her until the end.

I remember looking at her and thinking about the life I had watched her live. I thought about everything she had carried, everything she had given and the grace with which she had continued.

And I remember thinking:

If I could be even ten percent of the woman you were, the world would be a better place.

Losing her changed something in me.

It made me understand that sometimes a person's voice isn't only found in what they say.

Sometimes it is found in how they live.

Learning to rise

I started exploring entrepreneurship when I was young. I've taught art. I've taught English. I've worked with people from different backgrounds, dealt with stakeholders, facilitated projects and coordinated work.

None of it has been as easy from the inside as it might look from the outside.

There have been moments when I've questioned myself. Moments when I've fallen. Moments when I have had to start again.

But I have learned that courage isn't always some huge, dramatic act.

Sometimes courage is simply getting up tomorrow and trying again.

You fall seven times.

You rise eight.

That has become part of my story.

And perhaps that is why I have such a strong desire to encourage other people young people trying to find their direction, adults who feel they have lost theirs, women carrying stories they don't know how to tell, and anyone who has reached a point where they wonder whether it is still possible to begin again.

The voices I could not ignore

Eventually, I realised that I didn't only want to write.

I wanted to create space for other people to speak.

I started The Amplifier because I couldn't stop thinking about all the people who are, in some way, like the younger version of me reluctant to speak, afraid to speak, unsure whether their experiences matter or whether anyone will listen.

I write for the people who feel they don't matter.

For those who have something to say but don't know how to say it.

For those who have a story but are afraid of what might happen if they tell it.

For those whose voices have been buried beneath fear, circumstance, silence or simply the belief that nobody would care.

I want The Amplifier to be a microphone.

They whisper in my ear; I open their mouth.

Not because I believe people are without voices.

I believe we all have voices.

Sometimes we simply need someone to listen long enough for us to believe that our voice is worth using.

And I have come to understand that writing is not enough if nobody listens.

A story needs somewhere to land.

A voice needs someone willing to hear it.

And when different people, from different backgrounds and different circumstances, begin listening to one another, something beautiful can happen. We may discover that although our lives are not the same, there are places where our experiences meet.

That is where connection begins.

That is where understanding can begin.

And perhaps that is where change begins too.

I don't know exactly where The Amplifier will take me.

But I know why I am carrying it.

I am carrying it for the voices I could not ignore.

And for the people who are still whispering.

I want the world to listen.