A Little Life List: If You Doubt Your Voice
This is for anyone who thinks: You have nothing worth saying.
Little Life Lists are for the complicated, unruly things life throws at us. I encourage you to write your own, too. With coffee. xoxo
In the memory, I’m standing with my arms out, my hands small stars. I’m telling a story, loudly, trying to get the attention of the grown ups in the room. As my chatter becomes more frenetic they say things like: “What a chatterbox!”
Becoming less and less charmed, they say, “That’s enough now, Alice.”
I bite it back and try, oh, so hard, to stop talking.
In this memory, I’m younger. Sunlight filters through the trees and the ground is damp and muddy. Huge fallen logs lay on the ground. To my tiny mind, they look like sausages. I tell my parents, and they’re amused. Not when I tell them again.
“Alice! Stop talking.”
My memories are full of these scattered remarks, glinting like fake gold coins in a hidden treasure chest, buried in my mind. You have remarks throughout your childhood that are your own gold coins, sifting through, they drop, clink, clink, clink.
We believe the stories we’re told about ourselves.
Maybe you’re the good girl, or the wild girl, or the difficult girl, or the girl who talks too much. Maybe you’re the hyperactive boy, or the dreamy boy, or the troublesome boy, or the boy who won’t keep his mouth shut.
I talk too much: that’s a story about me.
My story becomes one I live by (and it’s one that I see many writers struggle with as they face the page and ask: what do I have to say?) What I take from my chatty childhood is: My words don’t have value. I use them carelessly. Keep those words inside.
This is what I believe: I have nothing worth saying.
(I’m not clear as I hold this up to the light that this is what I was being told. But it’s what I’ve tucked into that treasure chest.)
This is for anyone who thinks: I have nothing worth saying.
So, now, I hold my tongue as much as I can. It’s like fighting water. None of you, not one, would believe I’m fighting myself to stay quiet. See, I’m not who you’d describe as a quiet person. The water flows, chattering from my mouth in a stream of observations and stories.
(That’s what it’s like to be a writer, no? That’s what it’s like to be this writer.)
**********
In this memory, I’m standing in front of a man who has lost his daughter. He’s telling me about her last hours, in detail, in the grocery store. She suffered. He suffered. The story is full of grief and pain.
The thought this is not the time for my words shines like a gift. This is a sacred time for silence.
**********
In this memory, my daughter’s eyes fill with tears. She can’t tell me what’s wrong, but we go and sit in her room and I rest my hand on her knee. She needs my silence.
The stories we’re told about ourselves are our foundation. When we excavate, carving into the dirt and shattering the hidden concrete to find what’s hidden, the shining chest we discover holds currency. Fake coins. And real ones. Hold each to the light.
Sometimes, I do talk too much.
Sometimes, I’m able to listen.
If you doubt your voice, this life list is for you.
You are not the stories other people tell about you.
You get to write your own.
xoxox
Alice
Please share with someone you love to read (someone who bravely shares their voice, even if they doubt themselves).
Reading more: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain is one I’ve been reading slowly for a while. I love the resonance. As a writer, who talks too much, I recognise my need for quiet. I’m also still reading The Way of the Fearless Writer by Beth Kempton, which is full of grace and inspiration.
Follow this note from
to find so many inspiring new reads! I love and didn’t know he was on here until I read the comments. is ever inspiring with beautiful prompts for your writing. I enjoyed thinking about tea and potato bread with just the other day. This is a beautiful piece by . And my next three months look like a deep dive into the content that so generously shares. This has been my intention for a WHILE so I’d love to follow through!Finally, I’m reading my colleague at The Novelry Urban Waite this week. Staying up too late!
Please comment with a Substack you’ve loved reading, or your own! Or anything else you want to share. I LOVE hearing from you and reply to every message with deep gratitude.
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.
Join me for a coffee break on here.
Xoxo
Notes:
Images from Canva.
There are those among us who think we talk too much. My daughter, around age 16, said to me, "Dad do you know you talk to everybody?" "Yes," I said. "Is that OK?" She said, "Maybe everybody doesn't want to talk to you." Touché! I probably embarrassed my kids more than a few times because, "I'm a people person." Daughter is more mature now, at almost 62, learned over the years to celebrate me as I am. And yes, I talked in school when I was supposed to be quiet. At this late stage, I was honored with the title "Resident Rebel" by my former colleagues at leadershipanddesign.org
Oh, goodness, Alice--not only am I humbled to be mentioned alongside so many other incredible writers, I too have the story of 'talks too much' written on many report cards. The worst offense was in fifth grade during show and tell time. As I told a story about falling in the ditch along the highway on the way to school, my fifth grade teacher exaggeratedly rolled his eyes and asked when the story was going to end, because, and I quote after almost 40 years, "Do you have to tell stories about *everything?*
I was so ashamed that I quit sharing stories and only wrote them in my diaries and in letters to my girlfriends for years after that. Despite the passage of time, that moment sticks in my memory and fills me with sadness for 11 year old Beth who just wanted to share her experiences. For her, I'll keep at it!