speaking-out

Speak up and speak clearly. I want to hear what you have to say because it matters. Let's listen to each other and respect one another's opinions. Although, they may be different, wisdom allows us to be responsible for our own feelings and actions.

In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.

Your voice could go to where your feet could not go.

What good are words if no one believes them?

Young children begin very early to internalize information that either encourages or discourages self-disclosure. Cues are intuitively understood. Most of what we feel is unexamined and articulated. Cultural norms are unwittingly absorbed. We learn when to speak and when to stay silent. - Pam MacRae (Ch. 2)

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs.Giggles can spread from person to person.So can blushing.But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth.

I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.

It__ not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it__ the most patriotic thing we can do.

Sometimes Truth cannot be silenced.

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists.Don__ let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired.

Yes, you can make a difference! You can speak on behalf of those who are voiceless.

Only by speaking out can we create lasting change. And that change begins with coming out.

I am strong and human with a mouth that works like a man__ and a more intelligible brain, and I demand to be heard.

Even to me the issue of "stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest" sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices.

When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.