Speaking of Burning

The other day I was talking about how hard it is for me to speak.  Which is ironic, but beside the point.  In every way, for all my life, I’ve had a hard time adding my voice to whatever situation I’m in.  I’ve been penalized for it in school or had silly things like stoicism, reticence, and straight up frosty bitchiness projected on to me for it.  None are accurate.  In a highschool yearbook, on the quotes page, I got a blank space next to my name.  How stupid is that? Recorded for posterity as having nothing to say.  

When I ask for help with this fear, I am often told to get over it by doing it.  Or that I’m being selfish by not contributing to the group. Nonetheless, no matter how many times I push myself to croak out a word or two, if there are more than a couple people around, my throat closes up, my heart pounds, and my amygdala tells me I’m going to die if I speak.  

For the record, my silence does not mean complicity and it never has.  It means I’m scared, frozen in survival mode. Why else would I not, in high school, confront a teacher who was standing right there and say, “Hey!  It’s not okay for a bunch of boys to throw crumpled up paper at a girl’s chest!  Why aren’t you doing something about it?!”  

Because the underlying belief is: “If I speak my truth, I will be hurt or killed.”  Which sounds nuts, right? Or so I thought until someone said, “That’s been a very realistic fear for women throughout history.  Think of the witches.”  

So I did.  I thought of the witches. 

But it was still kind of esoteric. An archetype rather than a historical fact.  Striped stockings curling up under a tornado-deposited house, and a lingering sense of, “Well, witches are bad, right? It’s good to get rid of them..?”  

Then my friend Amy sent me this article about a contemporary Scottish poet named Len Pennie who is young, female, and paying tribute in her work to thousands of women burned as witches in Scotland in the 16th to 18th centuries.  And all of a sudden it was like, WAIT!  THIS IS A REAL THING. Women have been persecuted and killed just for being women, much less speaking up.  It’s a legacy of fear--one of those woundings that gets passed down through generations--and well as a present day reality. 

Back in high school, no one stood at the chalkboard and said, “Don’t speak up or you’ll get hurt.”  The lesson was implicit, reinforced by the accepted actions and attitudes of the majority. I learned that it was safer not to speak or even to identify behavior as demeaning or harmful.  Sure, it felt like shit, but better to ignore that feeling and stay quiet than make myself a target. Better to keep believing witches were bad and got what they deserved.   

Thank Hecate there is now a growing multitude of voices filling the silence.  Voices like Len Pennie and many others stepping forward to speak, tell their stories, draw attention to injustices. It’s still a battlefield--a female senator gets accused of being unhinged for expressing her very valid anger, and BIPOC and LGBTQIA people are fighting for their lives and rights all day every day.  But we are getting louder. And as more of us make noise, more of us will feel safer making noise.  

I’m still scared of speaking up.  Nonetheless, consider this a loud and clear statement of intent: No more. This burning times legacy of fear and silence ends now. We stand together, we speak together. Put that in your stupid yearbook and smoke it.