My name is breana and this is breana Radio.
These words are the first words that I've spoken in three days, except for a very faint
Hi on day one.
I started my silence nervous, sort of counting the minutes up until midnight.
I felt this fear that I wasn't sure what this process was going to look like and feel like,
how I would be able to care for myself and interact with the world.
But by the time I made it to maybe the second day, somewhere within the second day, I wasn't
sure if I was going to speak again.
This feels good.
I like this.
This rest.
I've been thinking a lot about rest.
Rest for the body, for the mind.
But over the last 72 hours, I tried resting the voice.
And not all of those moments were in solitude.
I did different things.
Like I got an oil change, I went to 10,000 Waves, which is splendid and also a sort of
spa like Disneyland now.
Got food.
I was curious to watch the way that folks related to me in silence.
Overall, there was a lot of kindness and sweetness that I received.
There are so many moments that I use language to interject.
Verbal language, when body language is sufficient, eye contact.
It was sweet to notice how these tools were available to me and how often folks were ready
and available to help me, connect with me, even without conversation.
I also noticed folks seeming kind of anxious.
Like my not speaking affected their ability to be a person in some way.
Good number of people that I connected with believed I was deaf and in relationship to
that spoke louder or softer.
Maybe stopped speaking altogether.
And shout out to the homie Monica Watson who encouraged me to try this practice.
Gave me some tools like touching one's throat to indicate that you aren't speaking.
But she hit me well before I began this practice that people might whisper if you said that
you weren't speaking or if you gestured to it.
And that did happen.
I found myself interested in being able to use gesture to communicate.
I took ASL in high school but haven't used it in so long that it's not available to me.
I want to recommit to that practice.
Recommit to that form of communication in solidarity with our deaf comrades.
I came to this decision as a way of saving energy.
Throughout my life I've felt this requirement to fight to be heard, to be understood.
And in this season of my life, I've been really falling back on that fight.
I have a mentor, Susan Raffo.
She authored the amazing text, Liberate to the Bone, and is currently walking across
the United States if you want to track her progress.
She said something to me multiple times that plays and replays in my mind that anything
can be a tool or a weapon.
So I've been considering how do I use my voice as a tool and when do I use it as a weapon,
a weapon against myself and against others.
One of my comrades and long-time friends, Mara is a speech pathologist in San Francisco
and I remember her sharing with me that the larynx and the trachea anatomically look very
similar to the vagina and the uterus, that our throat and the facets of our throat that
offer us speech are so interconnected in form and shape to our reproductive organs or some
of our reproductive organs.
This thought around the vocal cords and the pelvic floor and her work to support folks
with speech and noticing how prevalent sexual assault, sexual violence has been for these
humans that are trying to find their way back to speech.
Having this connection between loss of voice, loss of agency makes me think about when it
is no longer safe to inhabit our body, to use our voice.
About ten years ago, I was prepping for an interview and an elder shared this book with
me mailing the interview.
It was an hour-long audio book.
In listening to it, they speak about voice in the interview process.
I remember them saying to take pauses, to drink water, that if you enter an interview
space and they offer you water, say yes.
Finding your way to the breath.
They also share how in our society, folks who are conditioned as girls or as women frequently
are taught to end their statements in a very specific way.
At the end of every sentence, maybe we lift the voice and as we lift the voice, we come
on a little less strong.
Like everything is a question.
I have been noticing this more and more in conversation.
Femmes and thems who at the end of sentences leave a little bit of their power to be taken.
I have done this a lot.
There is a California girl deep within here.
It's sweet to use my voice, this instrument, in a different way.
Thinking about the rate of speech and how it connects to my nervous system.
How speaking quickly, speaking without ceasing affects my internal world.
Versus a measured speech.
I grew up listening to vocal gods and goddesses.
James Baldwin comes to mind.
A timber that will live in me forever.
Dr. Maya Angelou, orators who understood the use of voice in such a powerful way.
Dr. Angela Davis.
Such sweetness.
My father has my favorite voice.
I remember one of his former partners talking to me about going to a concert with my dad.
They are at this concert and they are at a table with all these women.
The microphone is going around for folks to sing a little bit of this song.
And the microphone makes its way to my dad.
And in this deep timber that he holds, she said all the women turned and looked like
who is he?
That's my dad.
That's that voice.
That story is probably 30 years old.
If you call my dad's phone now, the voicemail is dejected.
Sad.
It sounds like he recorded his voice memo after like four days of doubles or something
like that.
But that voice is still in there.
That sweet depth.
I can hear him in my mind calling me breezy.
It's one of the things my family calls me.
So I ask you, how do you use your voice as a tool?
A tool for yourself, your relationships, community.
How do you use your voice as a weapon?
Again, against yourself, against others.