A Spell to Expand Your Capacity for Speaking Your Truth

In every relationship we have -

from the most fleeting interaction

to the longest, deepest friendship -

there are moments when we must choose

to declare our truth, or hold it in.

This spell will help you recognize when

you can no longer afford the energy

it costs to keep your truth to yourself,

and how to claim the awesome power

your truth brings with it.

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Mentioned:

Author, educator, researcher, and podcaster Brené Brown.

Make Magic:

When you’re faced with the decision about

whether or not to speak your mind, remember;

your truth is making itself known,

whether you choose to speak it or not.

You get to decide what serves you and the relationship.

Is it to let your truth manifest in a million small ways,

or to declare it openly, and allow the change to come.

Transcript: A Spell to Expand Your Capacity for Speaking Your Truth

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, hello. You and I are enjoying a little miniseries right now [laugh], this miniseries, a sequence of spells and episodes about expanding our capacities. And maybe you have written me to say that these are right on time for you. If so, thank you so much. It is really—oh, it feels really good to hear from you. 

So, if you haven't written me, you are always welcome to. You can do it through the website or, if you receive my Sunday Letter, if you're on my mailing list, you can just hit reply. And it actually, your message actually comes to me, and I actually read it.

OK. So, today's episode is just a really impactful one, and I will [laugh]—well, it's a spell to expand your capacity for speaking your truth. And I will begin by speaking my own truth. This one makes me a little bit nervous [laugh] because I think I know what's at stake here. I know from personal experience just how much power we access, just how much potential and potency we step into when we speak our truth. 

And I think for that reason I'm like, oh, OK, I'm going to share this, and I know that this one really creates big changes. So, you know, click two episodes back for the very first expanding capacities episode about expanding your capacity for change. [laugh] It might be helpful in combination with this episode today.

All right. So, what do I mean by speaking your truth? I guess, really, what I mean is that you are being radically and outwardly honest when you are speaking your truth, so, "radically" meaning to the root. I love that definition of radical. "Radical" is all the way to the center; all the way to the root, so a deep core sense of, yes, this is what I'm thinking; this is how I'm feeling. And then honesty in that you are really honoring how you are thinking and feeling. 

So, when we speak our truth, we are sharing that in an overt way. Yeah? So, for this episode, I would love for you to bring to your heart and mind a situation where you are feeling and thinking a certain kind of way that you are not necessarily sharing directly with the people involved. 

So, this might be, yeah, I've been thinking and feeling a certain kind of way in my romantic relationship, or I've been thinking and feeling a certain kind of way at work with my team or with my fellow leaders. It might I am thinking and feeling a certain kind of way in a family relationship or in a friendship. So, just bring to heart and mind one of those. [laugh] 

You might be saying, "Natalie, I am thinking and feeling a certain kind of way in (e) all of the above," which I totally hear you and I understand. But bring kind of the first one that comes to mind, central for this episode, so that you can actually kind of think through what I'm talking about.

So, here is the first thing to know. In this place where you are thinking and feeling things—maybe a discomfort or maybe a divergence, right? Notice I'm using that prefix "di" like divorce, diametric [laugh], you know, diametrically opposed; "di" to indicate like two. I'm experiencing a division from the other person or the organization. 

Wherever this is, you may not be speaking your truth, but you are definitely communicating your truth. In your vibe, in maybe subtle ways, you are communicating your discomfort. You are communicating your separateness. Right?

So, just take a moment and get really clear about that. How is that? Hmm, that's true. How am I communicating my truth? I'm not using words. I'm maybe not speaking it out loud, but I am making it known. And, listen, this is not necessarily conscious. In fact, it's probably not conscious, but it is happening. You are communicating the divide.

How are you doing that? What does that look like? And please be just exquisitely self-loving and self-compassionate here. It is not bad or wrong that you are communicating your truth. The truth is just bubbling up, and it's flowing out, right? And, in fact, the more you have tried to contain it and press it down, the more pressure [laugh] is created that kind of pushes it up and out, right?

So, this might be, OK, I haven't actually said to my parent that I am sick of hearing them complain about my siblings. But I've started not answering the phone when they call, or I've started leaving way more time between calls, or when they begin to talk about my siblings, I get really quiet, and I check out. I absent myself from the conversation, right? So, that would be an example. I am communicating my discomfort in all of those ways kind of covertly and subtly rather than directly and overtly. 

Why is that? Why is the truth coming out in this kind of like insidious way [laugh], this subconscious way, rather than a conscious way? I want to be really clear here. It is because there is a lot of power in your truth, and that power may not feel comfortable for you. Like, actually claiming it and channeling it may not be comfortable for you. And, listen, this may be because you have been conditioned to avoid power [laugh], like, avoid taking power for yourself. 

If you are in any minoritized community, culturally speaking, you have definitely been conditioned to keep your head down, and to stay quiet and complacent and agreeable. And, yeah, you have not really been encouraged or taught how to step into power, and there is power in speaking your truth. So, we who are conditioned to eschew power, to avoid it, to give it over, for us, we are conditioned to believe it is dangerous for us to speak our truth. 

And, in reality, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to the status quo. It is dangerous to whatever system—and that could be, again, a family; that could be a workplace; that could be an intimate relationship—our truth is dangerous to the assumptions of that system. And, so, I don't want to hold that lightly at all. I don't want to brush that off. I really want to honor that. 

If you're feeling like, whew, this is scary, this seems dangerous, you are right. [laugh] Likely, you are. You are right. It is actually a big thing to speak our truth, so let's honor it. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's a big thing. It's a big step. That's why we're here. That's why we're expanding our capacities to do it.

So, it bears saying also—here's my next point—that you have a lot of options, and speaking your truth is one of them. It's one of many options. You know, Brené Brown writes that "not everyone gets to hear your shame." So, you know, she writes about how the best way to get shame to evaporate is to share it in a compassionate space. And she says, you know, "Not everyone gets to hear that. Like, people need to earn the right to hear that."

And I was thinking about that kind of position as I was thinking about, yeah, who is it that gets to hear your truth? Like, with whom is your truth worth sharing? And what I came up with, as I thought about this for many days [laugh], is I think it is the people with whom you will stay in relationship. And by "stay in relationship," I mean active, co-creative relationship because, you know, you don't have to do that with anyone.

You don't have to stay in the job. You don't have to stay in the marriage. You don't have to stay connected with the friends or the family. You don't have to. You have a choice. And when you are choosing whether to stay in relationship, you can also choose how to stay in relationship. 

So, here's what I mean. I have a relationship in which the other person and I have a few shared interests. I do not have an actively communicative, co-creative relationship with this person, and I don't speak my truth to this person because I have found—again and again—that my truth doesn't have any place to land with them. My truth just gets kind of like whipped up into something else, and it is not productive and not helpful.

So, I don't speak my truth with this person. I don't choose to speak my truth. I have decided instead to allow these other ways of communicating my truth—like keeping communications to a bare minimum; holding a lot of energetic space and a really firm energetic boundary with this person. I communicate my truth with this person in other ways but consciously, like, decisively. It's not because the truth is kind of like bubbling up and out. It's like, oh, no, this is how I've chosen to communicate. It's not with words, because words have not proven effective. OK?

So, that is absolutely a choice, you know, severing a tie is absolutely a choice. But what I came to, this idea that if you are going to stay in relationship with the other person, in active relationship, in communicative, active relationship, it very well may be worth it to speak your truth, because—here is the thing—it is very expensive to not speak your truth. That pushing it down, that pressurizing of it, that unconscious or subconscious truth seepage, it is so costly, it's exhausting. 

So, this is a vital, vital question. What is it costing you to not speak your truth? What is it costing you to say nothing? So, just think about it, and here are some places you might kind of check for debits [laugh], debits on your energetic account. How's your sleep? How's your stress level? How are you feeling generally? How's your energy? Are you having mysterious aches and pains? Are you having headaches? 

Of course, I am not a doctor, and there are many reasons for all of those symptoms. And, at the same time, I personally have found that the stress of withholding my truth exacerbates all of those symptoms. Oh, I should mention digestion too. I actually have great digestion. [laugh] There you go. There's a little something to know about Natalie. I don't usually find that upset manifests in my guts, but I know a lot of people who do find that. So, just kind of checking in with your health. How are you feeling?

Check in with your other relationships. Are you showing up to your other relationships, to your partnerships, your friendships, with conversations that are laden with complaining, that are laden with outrage, that are laden with actually [laugh] the truth that you're not speaking over in the place wherever that is that you are pushing the truth down or you're withholding speaking it? Right? It comes up and out somewhere. Is it coming up and out in your other relationships?

And I'll share with you here probably the biggest truth-telling moment I've had in the last many moons. And I was in a leadership position in a company where the direction that it was evolving was completely unaligned with my values and, frankly, with what I thought were the values of the organization. And I would speak up in small ways, kind of small ways, but [laugh] I was sharing like a little bit of the truth. I was sharing a little Baskin-Robbins pink taster spoon of the truth, when I really had a whole banana sundae's worth of truth to speak. 

So, I was like, "Here's a little bit of truth," and not the whole truth. And when I look back at that time, I see that I had whole friendships that were repositories for complaining and for commiserating—for misery, for [0:18:57 co-misery?], collective misery [laugh]—which, again, is not a bad thing. But, actually, there were so many better ways to be with these people. Like, I loved them, and we were friends, and we had so much in common, and there were better things to talk about than like how much things sucked, you know?

I look back at my romantic partnership at that time, and I can remember at the beginning of a work day, at the end of a work day, lying in bed at night just like, "Oh, just I don't know what to do, and I just don't like it." And I wasn't speaking my whole truth. I wasn't serving up the banana sundae of truth, and so it became just this kind of, ugh, like quicksand of conversation with my beloved partner because that was a person that I felt really safe talking to, who I knew would honor my truth. 

So, it turns out that in this organization, my truth was really not welcome. And those little, tiny taster spoons that I was serving up eventually got me a reputation for being very argumentative and negative, which is sort of funny because [laugh] like, I'm like, "If you want negativity, I've been withholding this, like, large dish of it," right?

But, actually, when I had a conversation with my sort of leadership people about that, I stopped withholding my truth. I served up the whole thing. And [laugh], Reader, it got me fired. I was fired from that position. And this is where I want to underscore. I get it that speaking our truth is, whew, a little scary because, yes, it can initiate, it can facilitate big, deep changes. 

In that moment [laugh], it was not a financially secure moment in my life, I will just let you know. I had many, many life events that were extremely expensive in that moment, and I was the income for my household in that moment. 

And I can look back from here and I can see that that moment of speaking my truth, and putting it in writing—I actually put it in writing, my truth, what I was experiencing, the way that I saw the situation. I can see that that opened up access to integrity, access to power, access to deep self-honoring and deep self-trust that all of my taster spoons, all of my attempts to kind of package and diminish, like, make my truth very, very small and palatable [laugh]—I actually love this taster spoon analogy—it was like, "Here you go. Just in case you don't like it, I'm just going to give you a tiny, tiny bit." Right? 

All of my attempts to do that were costing me a great, great deal in my relationship with myself. I was not being true to me. I was not living in full integrity with my own values. I was closing off my access to so much power. So, yeah, I was fired, and [laugh], you know, you would think that that would have been completely terrifying because I was—it was not elegant or generous or kind, the way that I was fired. I really—I had no cushion financially or energetically. I was very, very restricted in what I could do.

And you would think [laugh] that that would have been the worst; that that moment would have been just so terrifying, just the very bottom. But, for me, it was a huge relief because all of the pressure that had been building up, all of that pressed down, withheld, carefully packaged truth, was finally just alleviated. With it, the kind of open channel in me, where I could live my values, where I could move in the direction that I wanted to move, where I could create what I wanted to create, that expanded hugely. 

Actually [laugh], you can get a picture of it maybe. It's like I was so full of compressed truth, like, compressed things I wasn't saying, and when I said them and, yeah, got fired, all of this space opened up, and it actually wasn't so scary at all. It was a strange relief. And maybe you've experienced this too. 

That in a moment where you've finally said something, where you've finally shared your truth, you realize, actually, holding it back and holding it down was so much worse. It was so much more painful. It was so much scarier in that moment that I was scared about what would happen when I shared it, and when I was holding back from connecting with myself, and connecting with authenticity and with integrity, that was actually [laugh] so much worse than just speaking it, and letting things evolve. 

So, I wanted to share that because—I don’t know—I mean, I think it helps to know where this spell is coming from. OK. So, number one, you are figuring out how are you already communicating your truth. 

Number two, you are kind of acknowledging that you don't have to say anything. Yeah, saying something may feel really scary. We're conditioned to think it's scary. And you don't have to say anything. It sort of depends on what is the nature of this relationship. Is it something where you are trying [laugh] to actively co-create? 

Like, I'm staying in this job with this company, or I'm staying in this marriage. I'm staying in close relationship, because if you are planning to do that, to stay in close relationship, especially, you'll want to ask yourself, "What does it cost me in my body, with my own relationship with myself, with my relationships with others? What does it cost me to withhold my truth?" 

OK. So, maybe all of this has you saying, "OK, I think I might want to speak it." So, then, how do we do that? I just have two ideas here for you. One of them is that when you are telling someone that you've decided is worth telling, you don't have to be crystal clear. Like, you don't have to have it perfectly figured out. 

One of my favorite ways, actually, to acknowledge the messiness sometimes of truth, or the kind of complexity of it is to say, "Part of me is thinking this, and part of me is thinking that." Right? So, I acknowledge. I say, "You know, there's a part of me that just like really kind of loves connecting with you in our misery, and commiserating. But then there's other part of me that, like, just finds it really heavy, and wants it to feel better." 

"You know, there's a part of me that's just kind of decided that, you know, sex is not the most important part of our relationship. But then there's another part of me that is like wants to have great sex." You see? So, you can use that kind of "part of me is thinking this, part of me is thinking that" to convey that your truth is not necessarily monolithic; that your truth is complex. 

Here's another piece, and I think this kind of ends up being the spell [laugh], the spell to expand our capacity to speak our truth, and that is this. Truth unfolds. Truth evolves. Right? Everything is always changing, including our understanding of our truth. To me, this feels important because we recognize that we are always existing in co-creation. Right?

How someone responds to us will affect how we feel. Right? What is true for us is something that we will gradually uncover and understand more and more. Hmm, I thought that this was the thing that bothered me but, actually, now that we're talking, I'm realizing that it's actually more that is the thing that is bothering me. Do you see? The truth unfolds. The truth evolves. 

If the truth is unfolding inside of you, contained inside of you, it may create pressure. It may create pressure that you feel in your body, in your energy, in your mood, pressure that's unpleasant. If the truth unfolds outside of you, if the truth unfolds outside of you, it will expand out and beyond you. This most definitely happened in the situation where I spoke my truth in the organization, and was fired. 

That truth has unfolded. It has unfolded gradually, and to great effect in ways that made my speaking that truth more than worth it because it was not actually only about me. It was about the whole community. It was about the whole organization, and that's what happens, right? 

When we conjure the courage to speak our truth, we open up that channel, we open up to greater integrity, greater power. And where we are more open in that way, it flows through, and it can—not necessarily, I don't think—but it can amplify the truth; make the truth even bigger, even more present. Is that a little bit scary? Sure. Is that also requisite for the change that we want in this world? Yes, I believe it is.

I know this one is a real call to integrity, a call to self-honoring, and perhaps even a call to action. So, I want you to remember you can go slowly. There's actually nothing wrong with serving up little taster spoons of truth. Who knows? Maybe you will find that when you serve up little taster spoons of truth, the person really likes it, and asks for more. Maybe you will find—like I did—that the taster spoons are quite offensive, and [laugh] as the truth unfolds, it unfolds in dramatic ways. 

But what I invite you—and me, frankly, for me too; this is important for me too—what I invite us to remember is that when we are in integrity, meaning, when we are integrated body, mind, and soul, outward voice and inner thought, when we are integrated, when we are in integrity, that is actually where we have the most access to choice, the most access to agency, the best most fully supported ability to create what we really, really want: expanding our capacity for speaking our truth.

Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

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