When You Have Nothing to Say

I was never really that good at writing, but it was always something I found to be therapeutic. For me, and I’m sure a lot of you reading this as well, being vulnerable was never something I was really good at either. But whenever I would journal I was able to let down the mask of “I’m fine” and expose the “for the love of God please somebody help me” side that was shameful for me to verbally express.

Now it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and it’s because I always feel as if I have nothing of importance to say. Even writing this, all I can think is, “Ok Jess, where the hell are you going here?” So without trying to do linguistic acrobatics and paint a nice pretty picture for you all, I’ll just get right down to it.

It’s not that we never have anything to say, I think it’s that small little voice of insecurity that makes us believe what we have to say isn’t worth saying. I’ve been listening to a ton of podcasts by one of my heroes, Glennon Doyle Melton, lately. She always talks about being vulnerable, authentic and being a truth teller. If you haven’t heard her speak before I really encourage you to go find her TEDx Talk she did. Writing for me was always my way of being vulnerable. If you’ve read this blog for some time now you know this is the place where I can lay it all out there and say “here is my pile of garbage I carried around for years, I hope you like it”.

So lately, being in one of the most vulnerable states I’ve been in in my entire life (I guess living in a foreign country does that to you), I’ve been really struggling to find anything to write here. But really what it is, it’s that stupid little voice in my head saying “what you have to say doesn’t matter or isn’t important”. Ok so here’s where I get all knowledgeable and preachy. You can stop reading now if you wish….

Still here? Ok brace yourselves……..

We were all born with a voice, an opinion, a personality, and insurmountable value. We all have things that stir us up, get us excited, anger us, make us question things, and so on. So going back to being vulnerable, when we feel these things and they don’t fit in with what is “normal” to those around us, what do we do? We shut up. We don’t say a word, and we walk around making ourselves believe that we don’t have anything to say. But we do have so much to say, it’s just one of two things. Either we’re too scared to be vulnerable out of fear of being judged, or it’s because we know what we have to say isn’t something others want to hear. It boils down to those two factors.

Some of the greatest movements started and changed the lives of so many because someone took that chance to be vulnerable. If MLK never spoke out against civil rights, who knows where our country would be today. Imagine what voting rights for woman would look like if people like Susan B. Anthony never spoke up. Mental health awareness movements would be nonexistent if people let vulnerability hold them back.

Ok so I feel like I’m running out of steam here for this so I’ll wrap this up and you may continue on with your days. I probably could have just used the next sentence as my entire post:

It’s not that we don’t have anything to say, we just have that small voice we listen to that is scared of being vulnerable and authentic.