The Things We Do to Silence Voices

I’m sitting in a space right now where something has become painfully clear to me:

The world isn’t always about helping you find your voice. Sometimes, it’s about learning how to shut it down.

No — not the world.

People.

I keep running into what I’ve started calling the shut-ter-downs.

They shut down the conversation. Shut down the learning. Shut down the curiosity. Shut down anything that might stretch us, move us, change us.

They make it acceptable to stay stuck. They normalize not moving. They reward comfort over courage.

“It’s fine,” they say. “We did okay,” they say. And every day, we pat ourselves on the back for surviving instead of becoming.

But every day we choose that — every single day — something else happens too.

We grow stale.

We don’t notice it at first. Staleness creeps in quietly. It sounds reasonable. It dresses itself up as stability. It convinces us that plain is the same as peaceful.

And then one day, we look around and think:

What the hell happened? How did we get here?

We didn’t just settle into a norm. We conformed.

We conformed to muted lives. To small truths. To swallowed words.

We allowed people systems, rooms, expectations to shrink our voices and keep our desires safely tucked away where they wouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable.

And the most dangerous part?

We started doing it to ourselves.

Pulling back. Pulling in editing before we even speak. Softening truths before they’ve had a chance to breathe.

This is not growth. This is containment.

So let me say this plainly:

Stop pulling back. Stop pulling in.

Let your voice out.

Let it be inconvenient. Let it be unfinished. Let it disrupt the polite silence that keeps us small.

Because truth doesn’t begin when we’re ready. It begins when we stop retreating.

And if your voice shakes as it comes out good. That’s how you know it’s alive.

Your story is not unique but your voice is.

Let the truth begin.