A Personal Share About Owning My Voice

Note: I originally shared this on my personal facebook page.  I decided to share it here in the interest of showing that Owning Your Voice can take many forms, and that the idea of what Owning Your Voice means to you will change and grow and evolve along with you as you move through the personal and professional phases of your life. It felt important to me at the time of posting this to claim my evolution and put some new boundaries and clarity around the work that I was doing.  This process helped me build confidence and connect to my inner voice at a deeper level.  It was scary to post, and I feel vulnerable sharing it here on the blog.  But moving through fears and tackling vulnerability is the direct path to confidence and personal growth. I have turned off comments, but I’d love to hear from you directly.  Feel free to email sam at innervoicestudio.com<3

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Many, if not most of you, know me as a singer and a singing teacher. What you may not know is that I no longer offer standard singing lessons. I no longer book showcases and prep beginners for their first moment on stage. I don’t host karaoke nights or open mics anymore. In fact, for months I’ve been sending all inbound singing business leads to other local coaches and studios.

Over the past 5 years, and particularly throughout the past 2 years, I’ve been moving away from singing coaching and focusing more on what it means to simply have a voice. As it turns out, there is nothing ‘simple’ about the word ‘voice’ or the act of having one. It’s such a beautifully complicated and wonderfully human concept, and an absolute and total mystery. And I am completely in love with the fact that I get to help people find out what having a voice means to them, and then help them step confidently into their own version and experience of it.

I love singing. I love the power of singing for personal growth and professional development. And I love how singing dovetails with other tools to build healthy, confident humans. The benefits of singing are still evident and so singing is still used as a tool in this work, but it is not the only tool, nor is it the main tool.

These days, I work with clients who want to increase their overall confidence by tackling issues around the sound and perceived quality of their voice, building communication and self-expression skills, and gaining comfort around the idea of being seen and heard.

From my website:

“This style of coaching is unique in that it doesn’t focus on one type of vocal work (such as singing, speech, or public speaking). This pragmatic and holistic style of coaching will take you all the way to the deepest foundations of your voice so that you can feel more comfortable and confident in any situation in which you need to express yourself.

The Sound of Your Voice:

• Learning to speak or sing with clarity, power, control, and stamina.
• Understanding how the voice works and learning how to craft the sound so that it truly represents who you are.

What You Want to Say:

• Tapping into your authentic self and clarifying what you want to say.
• Addressing limiting beliefs and replacing old patterns with confidence and safety.

How to Say it Effectively:

• Developing the necessary skills to communicate and present your ideas with confidence and clarity in any situation.
• Cultivating the ability to foster relationships and deepen connections with others.

I love this work so much. I feel so lucky to be able to do this work, and even luckier that my clients trust me and trust what can be a really murky, scary, non-linear process of digging up old information in your heart and your body, and clearing it away to make space for your voice to rise up through.

Every day I watch literal magic and personal growth happen before my very eyes. There is no feeling that matches the one you have when you witness someone step into their body, then their voice, then their life in a new way. When they discover that they themselves are the safe container they’ve been looking for, that they themselves had the power inside of them all along, and that they can fundamentally trust who they are, and craft a new experience for themselves in their lives.

Why am I sharing this right now? I guess because I’ve been in a big, big, big growth spurt of owning my own voice. I’m incredibly proud of what I have accomplished in the past, and the deep personal transformation I am accomplishing now. It’s really, really hard…and a bit messy. And it’s really, really beautiful.

I guess I’m also sharing this in part because I want to take full, public ownership of this approach to vocal coaching. To fully own that this is a unique and special and important area of work, all on it’s own, and that I am the one who gets to do it. To acknowledge that singing has a very important and consistent place in my life, and that it’s ok that it’s not my main coaching or company focus anymore. To acknowledge that I am the safe container I’ve been looking for, that I myself have had the power inside of me all along, and that I can fundamentally trust who I am, and continuously craft a new experience for myself in my life.

#ownyourvoice #unlockyourinnervoice #singing #communication #voice #personaldevelopment #vocalwork #confidence