How to Speak Your Truth (Even When You’re Not Sure What It Is Yet)
Originally shared as a letter on Substack.
I’m archiving it here for anyone who prefers to read on the blog or wants to return to it later.
A letter to anyone who feels like they have something to say but can't quite figure out what it is
I've been sitting with something for weeks now. Two conversations I encountered—both from Reflections of Life—that keep circling back in my thoughts, revealing new layers each time I return to them.
There was Harry Owen, a retired English teacher, sharing about his wife's observation. She had said to him, "You are... you're angry with the world." He realized she was absolutely right. But as he explained it: "I was angry because I felt trapped. I had something to say and I didn't know how to say it. I had strong feelings that somehow were being forced back into me instead of finding an outlet."
I'm not angry at the world—not exactly—but that feeling of being trapped? Of having something to say but not knowing what it is or how to get it out? That's been living in me too. It's like carrying a message you can't yet read, feeling the weight and importance of it without being able to access its meaning.
This is exactly where I find myself—embarking on what feels like an adventure of creative pursuit, trying different things, different ways of being in the world while I figure out what wants to emerge. I suppose my current strategy is just to live life while wearing different lenses and write about what I see, to try to get it out in whatever creative manner presents itself.
Harry's journey offers me hope in this uncertainty. He spent thirty-five years as a teacher, and looking back, he realized: "I suddenly thought I'd been pushed into a way of thinking. And it's a corporate, a capitalist, a globalized world. And I didn't like it. I thought that actually is not me now. And if I think about it, it never has been."
The weight of carrying that disconnect for decades must have been enormous. But it wasn't until retirement that he discovered his true calling: "my calling, if you want to call it that, is poetry. The reason I write is because I have to... it's like breathing; I have to do it."
There's something so honest about that necessity, that recognition of what you simply must do to feel alive.
He wrote this tiny poem called "Blessing" that's been sitting with me ever since:
Are you doing with your life what you want to do, or what you think you ought to do? Seeing the difference is wisdom. Finding they're the same is blessing.
I'm definitely still in that first phase—learning to see the difference clearly. But there's comfort in knowing that wisdom begins with simply recognizing this distinction. Sometimes I think we're so busy trying to get to the blessing that we skip over the wisdom part entirely.
Harry's transformation deepened through encountering Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey"—about finally knowing what you have to do despite all the voices around you shouting their bad advice, and ultimately discovering "a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own."
He reflected: "The phrase that I like in there that most chimes with me is 'finding your own voice'. Finding that you have something to say and noticing that you say it in a particular way. And it's yours, it's yours, it's you. That's important. But there's no point in just recognizing it. You have to follow it. You have to do it."
This feels both terrifying and necessary—the gap between knowing and doing, between recognition and action.
The other conversation explored something different but equally important—the foundation that makes authentic expression possible. Someone speaking about the exhaustion of performing for acceptance, spending so much time "making sure that I belong and that I won't be rejected," constantly putting on masks. That relentless internal critic they described—"It's like this constant voice, this constant shadow. Everything I did, it was like it's not enough... it's not enough, it needs to be more"—has been my companion too.
But something beautiful shifts with experience. They begin to understand that "if I am rejected by some people, that's OK. Because there are so many people in my life who will always be there and who will always accept me."
What began to settle in me over time was how they described learning to receive love and recognition: "And I've started to believe what people say about me. To actually start believing when people say, 'You've been a good friend.' Or 'This work you've done matters.' Or 'This poem you wrote is good.' And to just slowly start believing that. It's not this sudden revelation. It's this slow, incremental accumulation of allowing that to settle."
That phrase—"allowing that to settle"—has been echoing in my mind. The difficulty isn't just in receiving compliments; it's in allowing myself to believe them deeply enough that they actually change how I see myself. It's not about sudden self-confidence—it's about gradually, carefully learning to let genuine love take root.
When they talked about their father's death, they offered this powerful image: "I remember I would sit by his bed and feel like I was in front of this sheer cliff face that was stretching away to left and right. I couldn't go round it. And initially I couldn't go up either. All I could do was be present to the reality."
That metaphor of the cliff face you cannot circumvent—you must simply be present to it until you can slowly begin to climb—speaks to something I've been learning about difficult experiences. The process of actually inhabiting something challenging, rather than trying to escape it, creates space for unexpected growth to emerge. I think of it like a wildfire—the destruction is real and devastating, but it clears ground for new life that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
They put this beautifully: "When someone you love dies, it's not just their absence. It's that the world shifts. The world is not the same place it was without them in it. And you shift." This truth extends to any profound experience—birth, loss, transformation. We become different; our world becomes different.
Both speakers understood something I'm actively trying to navigate: how do we hold awareness of the world's brokenness without losing ourselves to cynicism? One expressed it as having "this fierce conviction that beauty and goodness are at the heart of everything. I believe that with every fibre of my being." But they're not naive about it. They acknowledge that "we are so bombarded with all the brokenness and the cruelty and the ugliness. And all of that is true. We have to be present to those things. We have to do the work needed. But if we don't have that sense of goodness and beauty and hope to nourish us, we get burnt out, we get angry, we get bitter."
This balance feels essential—remaining present to difficulty while cultivating hope. It's not about toxic positivity; it's about choosing what lens we look through while still seeing clearly.
They also offered something that feels revolutionary: "I do think that the way you show up for others is very often what comes back... if you choose to believe in the kindness and the goodness of the person standing in front of you they feel that. And that is often how they then show up to you." When we approach others assuming their goodness, they often rise to meet that assumption.
What I keep returning to from both conversations is this understanding that finding your voice isn't really about having something brilliant to say. It's about trusting that your authentic voice—however uncertain, however still forming—contributes something necessary to the larger human conversation.
I'm writing this from the middle of my own uncertain journey. I don't have clear answers about what exactly I want to say or how to say it. But these conversations remind me that perhaps that's perfectly acceptable. Perhaps the wandering itself, the experimentation, the willingness to be vulnerable and uncertain—perhaps that's part of what needs expressing.
Harry referenced Julian Lennon's haunting question: "What will I think of me the day that I die?" I hope when that moment comes, I won't be evaluating whether I found the perfect message, but whether I was courageous enough to keep searching, to remain present to both beauty and difficulty, to trust that my voice—however uncertain—contributes something necessary.
He also offered what feels like a benediction: "Find out what life is for you and what fulfills you about the life you live. And rejoice in that, rejoice in that whenever it happens. And never give up the thought, if you haven't found it yet, that it could still be, that you could still find it. It's never, never too late."
His poem for his grandson feels like a blessing for all of us, wishing for "your fullest vivid self, little one, whatever may befall, in all that you can do or be. For this is love, your birthright, and all the truth you'll ever need."
So here I am, in the middle of this creative adventure, living as an experiment, writing my way toward understanding, letting the small accumulations of authenticity build into something solid. The second speaker quoted Mary Oliver's instructions: "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." This feels like a framework for the whole journey.
Perhaps this is what the adventure of creative pursuit is ultimately about—not knowing exactly where it leads, but trusting that showing up authentically, speaking even in uncertainty, creating even when the purpose isn't clear—perhaps that's sufficient. Perhaps our willingness to add our voice to the human choir, however tentative it might sound, is exactly what's needed.
If you're in a similar place—feeling like you have something to say but not knowing what or how—maybe we can figure it out together. Maybe that's how we begin to heal what's broken: one authentic voice at a time, until the chorus becomes something almost tangible, something strong enough to hold us all.
The world needs our voices. Not our performance, not our certainty, not our perfection—just our willingness to keep showing up to the work of becoming who we really are.
The journey continues, one uncertain, authentic step at a time.
With love and solidarity in the figuring-it-out,
gris.
