For so long the voices had been there. The voices of the people who came before her and the voices of those who grew up with her, of those who went to school with her. Some of those voices probably meant her no harm but they inadvertently did their damage.
She had her own voice, deep down inside her but she learned, early on, to doubt that voice. She stopped trusting it. She stopped believing that her voice was the only voice that would never steer her in the wrong direction. She let all the other voices in more and more. She believed and trusted what they told her.
New voices joined her on her journey over the years. They told her different things than the voices from her past but they still told her who and what she should be. Once in a while she heard the faint whisper of her own voice from deep inside of her but the other voices were louder and they began to argue with her voice and with each other over which of them was right.
She gave up and just did what the voices told her to do and she became increasingly more unhappy with each passing day. But still, she listened.
One day she had become so weary and the voices grew so loud that she broke down and realized she needed help. She was lost. She was stumbling through the wilderness and all the voices were pulling at her, telling her to go in many different directions. She needed to find stillness and quietness to get away from them and find her way out. So she started running and covering her ears to drown out the voices.
After some time she found a quiet stream by which to sit for a while and as she became calm and still, she heard a familiar whisper from inside. Faintly, at first, her own voice emerged. She recognized it and she began to listen. And what she heard was this:
“You are beautiful, you are amazing, you are exactly who you were born to be. Trust yourself in knowing what is right for you. Honour yourself and do what feels good for you. Be good to yourself, love yourself fiercely, just as you are, ALWAYS. Don’t pay any attention to the other voices any longer. You alone know the right path for yourself. You have always known, you just got distracted for a while and you lost your way. Stay on your own path, the only path that is right for you. You will know and recognize when you start to veer off course. Trust that YOU and you alone will always know what is best for you!”
She emerged from the wilderness and began to feel calmer and happier with each passing day. Her voice became stronger and stronger and drowned out the other voices, which still tried to tell her who and what to be, where to go and what to do. But in time she learned to ignore them more and more and to trust herself in knowing what was right for her.
She continues on her path with more confidence than ever before. The other voices still haven’t given up on her completely and they probably never will. They will always be there and try to make her feel insecure but now she knows that all she needs to do is to find the stillness which gives her the ability to listen to her own voice; the voice that has steadily become her faithful companion; the ONLY voice that knows her very well and the ONLY voice she should count on; the ONLY voice she will ever need to complete her journey on this Earth. And then – she smiles!