What happens when we lose our voice?

And how do we find it again

Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive.

Last night I re-watched the ‘90’s classic action/thriller The Fugitive. Watching the new TV series Shrinking rekindled my interest in Harrison Ford so I have been going through his movies, especially from his golden era in the 80s and 90s. What I didn’t remember from having watched it in my teens is that Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble spends the majority of the movie silent, his voice taken away by the terrible (and false!) accusations of being a wife killer. (Read this great Atlantic article on why The Fugitive still holds up all these years later.)

I was struck by how much beautiful acting by Ford happens in the silence, despite the action-heavy nature of the plot. In between the almost constant chase scenes and gun fights, there are moments of emotional heaviness where you can feel the burden his character carries with him, the isolation and the grief of having lost his wife, and everything he knew with the false conviction.

Besides the exciting cat-and-mouse game between Kimble and Tommy Lee Jone’s Agent Gerard, a major theme is the lack of social agency and resources Kimble is confronted with in his new, post-conviction life.

Dr. Kimble’s new identity as a criminal and fugitive offers him no platform to get redemption for his wife’s murder and or direct his own fate through legal channels. And despite saving the life of an officer and a young man at his former hospital, he is not valued as a contributing member of society.

In the film as in real life, the world of the voiceless is made up primarily of impoverished people of color, criminals, and immigrants. He escapes capture by relying on the anonymity of the people he encounters: the immigrant Polish family that rents him a house, the Latino janitor whose uniform he steals at the hospital, the black prisoner he helps escape.

This theme of voicelessness had me thinking about the many democratic platforms we now have for storytelling, and how easy it can be to internalize the idea that your voice doesn’t matter. I think to a lesser degree, finding your voice and staying true to it is part of the human experience.

When I was around 9 years old, I underwent a series of invasive surgeries on my face. I had been born with a birth defect and there were preventative measures the doctors wanted to take so that I grew up to look “normal,” which I now more or less do.

At the time I had a conversation with my parents about the surgeries and I was very clear: I liked my face as it was. Looking back I am pretty sure that any child given the choice would say no to an invasive surgery. But more than the fear of what might happen during the procedure, I genuinely liked how I looked. I didn’t feel like appearances didn’t matter that much, and I was confused why that wasn’t being reflected back to me.

When I was made to go through with the surgeries despite my protests, I felt as if all my credibility and agency had been ripped from me. Where my parents were just trying to help me avoid the pain of being teased or bullied, I felt as if my voice had lost its power. I took away the message that my sense of self-worth was nothing compared to winning approval from others and fitting in.

After that I became deeply depressed. I sat on the couch in my parents’ basement watching TV for hours, eating junk food to numb my feelings. Other times I would climb the pine tree in my yard and hide up there trying to figure out how to move forward. I had a rage but no longer felt like my voice carried any weight, so I turned it inwards. I knew that on some level my parents and the doctors were wrong, but I couldn’t articulate it and didn’t feel that they would listen. With nowhere to put this energy, I started to doubt myself. Maybe I couldn’t trust my instincts after all?

For years I created a shell around me that hid my true self. I became secretive and tried to project a false confidence. As I grew up, I subconsciously became determined to prove my parents and the doctors wrong about me. I worked hard on my friendships and to achieve external success in school, but ultimately the inner wound never healed. I turned to painting as a safe haven where I could express myself outside of language. I used it to distract myself from having to say what I really felt, which was still too big and too scary to talk about. I burned out time and again trying to get to a place where I felt something different, but the core truth was that I didn’t feel like it was safe to be myself. And so I kept silent about what mattered most.

Finally during the pandemic, I shared a tiny sliver of my story with my writing group. Their generosity in receiving it made me feel safe to open up more. A couple of years later, inspired by my co-host’s candidness on The Side Woo, I decided to open up about my story in an episode with Desiree Holman, an artist turned aesthetician. We talked about plastic surgery and what we owed to one another, if anything, in terms of upholding or breaking down existing standards of beauty. Later I talked about beauty and aging again with musician Inara George, who considered that perhaps the relative invisibility of being an older woman is a gift.

The answer about what and who is right when it comes to beauty is inconclusive, but I have felt a weight lift from my chest being able to contextualize my story as part of a larger conversation. And as Lizzo says in 2 Be Loved, the journey of self-love is one that might take my whole life just to do.

Is there a time when you lost your voice? What was the process like regaining it?

Dance break: