Losing my voice, but not my voice

totally not kidding about the white board!

Last week I got hit with a nasty bug. It's been working it's way through our house, and as usual, I got hit the hardest.

This resulted in ,probably to the happiness of my children, me losing my voice.

I talked funny for a day, then could hardly talk for a day. Then was under doctor's orders to STOP TALKING AT ALL.

For real.

I texted people, who were standing right next to me. I walked around with a white board and wrote things down.

It was lovely. And by lovely, I mean, not lovely at all. It was annoying. It was frustrating. It was a pain in the rear. I mostly kept things to myself because it was too much work to relay information to others. Not to mention I was tired and exhausted and kind of just wanted to sleep.

But, I realized, that even though I lost my voice, I didn't lose my voice. I can blog here. I can blog at CureDiva. I can go to facebook. I can go to twitter. I can share photographs on instagram. I have a voice. But not only that, I have a voice that some people listen to, read, and tell me later it meant something to them.

That is an amazing gift.

I can't tell you how grateful I feel when people tell me that something I've written has impacted them, or made them think, or made them look at something just a bit differently than they did before.

One time, someone walked up to me and said "Brandie? Are you Brandie? From the blog 1000 stitches?" I walked on air for a few days after that. I enjoyed it - I doubt it will happen again and I treasure it (though I'd treasure it even if I thought it would happen again).

There is something wonderful about having a voice. Having a space to say what I need to say. Having the feeling that I am being heard.

Someday, I will tell you about the flip-side of this: of how sometimes knowing people are listening, reading, hearing, leaves me feeling paralyzed to write more.

But today, today, I'm very glad that I have a voice. And that my voice is heard.