Thursday: Sharing Our Voices
One of the things I seem to do best in this world is talk, and yes that means chat chat chat and more, but it also means that, due to my mother’s early storytelling, my weirdly large vocabulary (developed both as a reader and as a spelling-bee winner, oh that story will show up here one day), and my years of voice training, I have a strong and recognizable voice that many people seem to like.
After accepting that I probably wasn’t cut out for a classical performance career (a teacher in Germany wanted me to starting auditioning for roles in opera casts, which terrified me), I took my vocal chords to the Charlottesville, Virginia outpost of Recording for the Blind (RFB). Academics with sight challenges and reading challenges need a lot of textbooks recorded, and I was able to wrap my tongue around all sorts of sounds (a long history of ancient Aztec spirituality was a tough but satisfying example). I loved sitting in a soundproof booth, reading while another volunteer ran the giant reel-to-reel tape machine required then.
I never got back to RFB, although I’ve now lived in the Washington, DC area for a couple of decades. However, in 2021 I was hired to host the Missing Pages podcast from The Podglomerate. Due to the seamless professionalism and creativity of our team, we’re now an award-winning podcast, and we’re producing Season 2 (stay tuned!). And that led, earlier this year, to the great team at Audible buying the audio rights to my new memoir Life B — and hiring me to narrate it. A wonderful experience, start to finish, working with both Audible and the lovely folks at DC’s Creative Cuts/Cerebral Lounge studios.
This time, I don’t think I can go back to not sharing my voice. My book-launch events have reminded me that I have the aforementioned strong voice, one that I can use to describe my individual experience so that it encourages others to share their own. After my event at Politics & Prose with Alexandra Zapruder, we hosted an afterparty nearby. I tried to get to each table and speak to the wonderful friends who showed up for me, and at one of those tables we all started discussing my description of how tough I’d found it participating in family yardwork on the weekends.
One of the people at that table looked at me and said “Bethanne, look how you’re getting us to share our own stories! I’ve never talked about this before, but I had a tough time with that family yardwork, too. It feels great to say so and to learn about everyone else’s family dynamics, too.”
Other debut authors might want something else. We all have different goals for our books. But for me, that friend’s words were enough. I really mean that. I have had some lovely things happen this week, in the media and online and in real life. But knowing that my words encouraged someone to share their own? That’s enough.
Each Thursday I plan to share things, and I hope I’ll be sharing things from others, too. Perhaps I’ll tell a story, drop a little interview, put together some links of great stories about creativity and mental health. Get in touch if you’d like to take part. Thank you for reading and thank you for supporting me as a voice in the world.