This International Women’s Day, we asked 5 women to share how they’ve found their voices:

curated by Silvia Akwetey

Every year we celebrate International Women’s Day, a reminder to champion women’s rights and level the playing field. As a wellness space created by a woman and with women first in mind, polltherapy is its own revolution in a world that pushes silence and superficial connection. In the journey to authenticity, we often find that our voices have been subdued, ridiculed, or stereotyped by the cultures and societies we find ourselves in. This #IWD, polltherapy got in touch with 5 incredible, everyday women in different cities about how they found their voices in a world that often pushes women to be quiet.

1. Anjola, London

I found my voice when I stopped minding how badly it shook.

I stopped waiting.

I stopped longing for my voice to steady enough to say something worthy of hearing.

I started quiet and continued quiet long enough to be heard.

So even now that I am louder and my voice is more sure, there is a quietness in there that remains. It is my gift to allow my voice to quiver loudly and for that to be called art. I believe I found my voice because I no longer despised it.

2. Suga, Accra

You will spend your whole life finding your voice. They don’t tell you this — that it’s a thing that can waiver, that can desert you. That oftentimes you will have to go looking for it, retrace your steps to the moments that stole it from you, and challenge your own trauma to get it back. They don’t tell you that your voice is a reflection of the individual and the community. It’s not a self sufficient thing — it’s fed by the people, ideas and the love that surrounds it, and if we are intentional in what we choose to surround ourselves, it flourishes. Voice isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.

I found my voice by accident-- threaded through novels and characters that oftentimes felt realer than me. I felt my throat tighten every time Hermione Granger’s hand reached for a teachers attention, when Nyasha felt the limits of her existence, when Tambu defied expectation. I was right there with them — pushing against the boundaries of my own existence. Desperate to understand why — and what I was to make of my place in the world. These writers put their words in my mouth, put names to the tightness in my chest  and dared me to open my mouth, and speak about it. 

Community can do that. Give voice to things, remind you where you left your voice and how to go back and take it.

I found my voice surrounded by love. When I laugh sometimes I sound like my best friend, like my mother, like my sister. An echo of moments shared--where I have been made and unmade in their presence. My voice carries them with me always-- one part of a chorus that only I can hear. Stronger because we are together even when we are alone. Community can do that. Give voice to things, remind you where you left your voice and how to go back and take it. Community can hold your hand through quiet moments, and make space, when you finally have the words to speak. 

My voice is borrowed from the women who came before me and after me, who’ve taught me to accept the things I feel and how hard I feel them. There is no simple way to exist in this world— and these women — artists, philosophers, theorists, relatives and friends — put the language of that struggle into my mouth and ask me to talk about my corner of it, without fear. To honor the truth of that struggle, by putting words to it. When I speak I am beholden to them — to a community of people whose beliefs I share, who I learn from and who learn from me. As a feminist, the first thing I learnt was that the personal was political and that our individual struggles are worth more when we understand them as a part of a collective. There is a power when we speak together, that we will never find when we speak alone. 

After all, what is one voice when you can have a chorus?

3. Eudora, Abu Dhabi

“You’re too opinionated.” He said to me.

His friends echoed his sentiments. Deep down I knew what they were really saying: “You’re too opinionated for a woman.” Because men voicing their viewpoint in a conversation were never considered ‘opinionated’, no matter how boisterous, unfounded or far-fetched their opinions might have been. A woman on the other hand, no matter how well-researched, educated, or thoughtful she might be, and no matter how calmly she presented her case, would always seem too ‘loud’. But even though I knew how to decode his statement and just how misogynistic it was, something in me broke. Slowly, I began to choose silence. I decided that being just a pretty face was better than being unloved, unwanted and unwelcome. Even when I knew better, even when I thought bigger, I chose to keep those thoughts to myself, because ‘men don’t like women who seem/are smarter than them’. 

It’s amazing how a series of statements like this over decades can seep into your psyche and cripple you from within. I silenced myself on so many occasions that the words that once flowed naturally to me seemed to be caught up in my head, and I found it more and more difficult to string thoughts together. Eventually I chose silence not necessarily because I didn’t want to be heard but because I had been silent so long that I had lost the courage to speak, and the confidence that anyone would want to hear what I had to say. The relationship ended, but the insecurity stayed behind. 

It was Steven Furtick’s Crash the Chatterbox that led me to my first breakthrough. In it he writes about how Adam and Eve had no shame to begin with. But one day a ‘voice’ appeared and told Eve that God had deceived her and she wouldn’t die if she ate the forbidden fruit. And Eve believed the voice she heard over the voice of her creator, and the rest is history. 

So I learned to start questioning all the voices I had listened to, and all the statements about me that I had taken as truth, or allowed to twist what was meant to be a gift into something I had come to despise. Suddenly I found the voice I had allowed to be silenced for so long, and I saw the power it had to inspire and change, and I haven’t shuttup ever since.

Your voice is your purest, most authentic form of power.

In your life, there will always be voices that will try to silence yours.

It might be siblings who don’t give you a chance to share your views.

Or an English teacher who rips up your poetry and calls it trash.

Or a coworker who constantly mansplains you.

Or a boyfriend who thinks you’re prettier when you’re silent.

Or, like me, all of the above. 

I see sooo many young women who have so much to say and have such power in their stories, but have been silenced by voices that make them scared to speak out. But you must realize your voice - whether it’s actual speech, or writing, or art, or negotiation, or some other craft - was given to you for a reason. And not just so you could speak up for yourself, but so you could speak up for all those who cannot yet speak up for themselves. Your voice is your purest most authentic form of power - it’s why social media is the force it is today. Someone out there is waiting for the ‘words’ deposited in you to come out, and you cannot allow the voices of those who did not create you and do not know the purpose for which you were made stop you from speaking. Your voice is literally someone’s healing. 

So the next time you hear the voice of the naysayers, the critics, the pundits - the ones that call for your silence - question it before you internalize it. Ask them, ‘who told you?’ then continue to do the very thing you were created to:

Speak. And make it loud, just in case they can’t hear you.

4. Karina, Lagos

Finding my voice is a journey I’m still on. I’ve always been aware of the fact that I have strong opinions which take their time to form in my mind yet, I haven’t always known how to express these opinions. 

A couple of years ago during a cross-over service night, I had a conversation with myself. Think Meg The Stallion @ Meg The Stallion in a flashy car, but make it Karina in a Nigerian church auditorium while speakers blared ‘o sing o sing o’ through speakers that were far too loud and uncomfortably pitchy.

I told myself it was time to stop mindlessly going through life and feeling like I was ‘floating’ because I was watching my life happen instead of living it. I put practical steps in place to make myself become a doer. I started journaling again. When I couldn’t sit still to journal, I would record voice memos on my phone (which I still do) to arrange and articulate my thoughts. I pushed past my empty excuses and started my blog. I started writing. I wrote about my experience with bulimia and watched as women identified with my story. I asked questions to listen to others’ perspectives. I started taking care of my body and my mind again. I started listening to podcasts.

I wrote about my experience with bulimia and watched as women identified with my story.

I slowed things all the way down on weekends. I confronted situations I wasn’t comfortable with. I cried as I came to realise painful parts of me I had never seen or expressed. I celebrated as I got to know the badass I am. Daily, I say prayers of gratitude as God holds my hand through it all.

I find my voice through doing life intentionally-accepting all that it comes with-one day at a time. 

5. Olufikeyinmi, Lagos

Finding my voice has been a journey. I think I can confidently say I have found it now.

I used to be very self-conscious and not very confident but the older I got the more I started to realise that if you don't ask, often times you will not get. In secondary school, I knew from the start I wanted to be a Prefect, but then I got in my head and got really shy because we had to do a whole campaign that ended in you reading your manifesto out to the whole school. This completely put me off but someone, I don’t remember who, pushed me and a dear friend of mine offered to become my campaign manager. I wrote my speech and at the point of reading it out, I remember looking at the crowd and thinking... “This is weird, I don’t feel shy at all”. I read my speech and was elected as one of the Prefects that year. That moment of me using my physical voice has become a defining one for me because I faced what had been a huge fear and I just never looked back.

I remember looking at the crowd and thinking... “This is weird, I don’t feel shy at all”.

Several years later, my voice is very self-assured and confident but sometimes I do get a little scared and then I remember my 15-Year-old self, standing in front of that crowd, not feeling fear at all. To me, finding my voice has meant speaking up on issues that I think are important, it has meant contributing to conversations where I can. It means me writing again. It is acknowledging that I have important things to say and no one can say them for me. This International Women's Day, to acknowledge my strength I am reflecting on all the times I have faced my fears and how much further that has taken me.

Finding my voice has meant cheering other women on. This is my favourite thing to do because sometimes hearing other women’s voices can help us find our own. Special shout out to all the women using their voices and to those still trying to find theirs, I can’t wait to hear from you.