The Remembrance Codes

Quiet Power: Finding Your Full Voice

• Susan Sutherland

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What if your truest voice isn’t louder, sharper, or more frequent- but steadier, kinder, and deeply self-loyal?

In this episode, we explore what it actually means to use your full voice. Not as performance or confrontation, but as presence. We unpack the quiet mechanics of expression: how to pause without shrinking, how to recognize when you’re swallowing truth, and why your body is often the most honest gauge of integrity.

Through a candid story about rewriting college essays for reception rather than truth, we trace how early conditioning teaches many of us to value acceptability over authenticity-from being praised for being “easygoing” to learning which answers feel safe to say out loud. These subtle patterns don’t disappear in adulthood; they simply become quieter.

We move into discernment: not all silence is self-abandonment. Some silence is stewardship. You’ll learn to tell the difference between fear-silence and sovereign silence by noticing breath, tension, urgency, and contraction. We also explore relational “containers”-how your body signals when a space cannot hold your full voice, and how boundaries, renegotiation, or distance can restore integrity without drama.

From public teaching to intimate conversations, this episode models how to speak from resonance rather than opposition. Full voice doesn’t require full disclosure. You can share what is true without sharing all of it. We talk about timing, regulation, and the wisdom of waiting for invitation-especially when offering intuitive insight or guidance.

We close with a short reflection to help you notice where your voice leaves you, where it already feels whole, and how to welcome it back without rushing, sharpening, or over-explaining.

SPEAKER_01:

Y'all, 2026 is inviting us into our full voice, into our authentic expression. So today I want to talk about what it actually means to use your full voice because I think many of us have misunderstood that phrase. Using your full voice does not mean saying everything you think. It does not mean speaking louder or harder or even more often. And it definitely does not mean becoming sharp or confrontational in the name of truth. For me, using my full voice has turned out to be something much quieter and much deeper. It's about whether I stay with myself when I speak and whether I stay with myself when I choose not to, because there is a difference between pausing and swallowing your truth. And from the outside, they can look exactly the same. A pause is full. And when I pause, my breath stays open and my body stays present, and my truth is still alive inside of me. It's simply choosing timing. But swallowing my truth feels different. My throat tightens and my breath shortens. And even talking about it just made that happen. My words start, oh my goodness. My words start negotiating before they're spoken. A pause delays expression without diminishing it. But swallowing alters the truth so it can pass safely. And my body always knows which one I'm in. And so does yours. I've learned that the voice doesn't disappear all at once, it fragments. And most of us didn't fragment because we were weak. We did it because we were perceptive without even realizing we're doing it. We learned very early where our truth landed and where it didn't. And some of us learned to soften our words to avoid conflict. Some of us learned to explain ourselves endlessly so we wouldn't be misunderstood. Some of us learned to wait until it was safe, only to realize that our truth was never safe, that time never came. Some of us realized that we or others were praised for being easygoing and going with a flow without realizing that what we were saying was they are praised for not speaking up, for not speaking truth. And we learned the conditioning that being easygoing for not speaking up is a way to gain praise. We learn that our tone matters more than our truth. And it's subtle things, you guys. With I was working with my high school senior the other day, my son, on his college applications. And he has to write little short essays for each of the universities. And some had similar questions like, Why would you choose our school? And so I started asking him questions, getting him to figure out why he would choose this school, and he would write the response. And for one particular school, which is in the mountains, they have lots of adventure around them. They've got skiing and river rafting and hiking, and that really appeals to him. And when he went for a visit, they had a student center where they had adventure equipment very reasonably priced for students to rent. And that kind of lit him up. And so he wrote about that. And then we explored the other campuses and what would draw him to them. And when he took his essays to his college advisors, he basically redlined the whole thing and was like, No, you need to write about why you want to go there academically. It needs to be completely academic focused, which I will tell y'all is not even a little bit in his highest truth. We wrote from truth, and it was X'd out. You don't actually want to answer the question and write why you want to go there. You need to write why they would want you to go there. So he had to change all of his essays. And it just kind of popped up for me as another moment where we are teaching children to dishonor their truth in the name of reception, betray what is true so that it is received in a way that is beneficial. And that's a little thing. And he did it. He he wrote it completely academically and submitted those. But it was just one more pass of how we teach children to abandon their truth in order to be received in a certain way. And we do this all the time. You do this in your holiday gatherings when you're like, you need to go tell your aunt that you love this present more than anything in the world. Like we teach them that even if it's not true, this is how you perform truth. This is how you perform what is. And so we're just conditioned to fragment our full voice in the name of reception, in the name of ease, in the name of, I don't know, acceptance, not being rejected. And it is a just a fragmenting, just a chipping away of how we express ourselves in the fullest voice. And it doesn't mean you need to go and be like, Aunt, I hate this present. But can we teach our kids to express truth and politeness, where they can say, thank you so much for thinking of me with this gift, something that doesn't abandon who they are, because we are conditioned over and over and over to do that. One of the most important distinctions I have had to learn in finding my full voice is that not all silence is self-abandonment. Some silence is wisdom. Some silence is stewardship. Sometimes it's simply knowing that clarity was not requested, and that offering it anyway would be about me and not about service. There is a kind of withholding that comes from fear, from peacekeeping and from avoiding dismissal, from wanting to stay connected at any cost. And there is a kind of withholding that comes from sovereignty, where nothing is swallowed and nothing is tense and nothing is urgent. The truth is simply held. And the reason matters more than the behavior. I can say nothing and still be fully voiced. And I can say nothing and be deeply contracted. And my body tells me which one I've chosen. I saw this clearly in my own relationship. There was a time when my knowing was dismissed and minimized as the book of Sue, or my intuition was framed as exaggeration or ludicrous. And in those moments, I held back, not because I didn't trust myself, but because speaking would have required standing inside of belittlement. And that silence had a cost, and my body knew it. That was swallowing. But as the relationship evolved, as growth softened this dynamic, something changed. And the same knowing could live inside me without urgency because I wasn't waiting to protect myself anymore. I was waiting for consent. Nothing was swallowed and nothing was lost. The content of the knowing didn't change, but the inner contract did. And that taught me something essential. When a relationship cannot hold your full voice, the contraction you feel is not failure. It is information. It's not telling you to speak louder, it's telling you that the container is limited. And sometimes that information is what invites relationships to change through boundaries, through renegotiation, through distance, or deeper truth. This is where biting your tongue gets misunderstood. Biting your tongue is not the same as swallowing your truth. Sometimes biting your tongue is regulation. It is choosing not to escalate. It is choosing to process before responding. It is choosing clarity over reaction. But if you are repeatedly biting your tongue because someone is volatile or dismissive or unable to receive you, that contraction is not asking you to be quieter. It is asking you to be honest about the relational field that you're standing in. Discernment of when to use your full voice matters even more when we speak publicly or when we teach. Using your full voice does not require sharpness. For example, I can say Yeshua is one light in the strand, as are you. That is spoken from fullness. I don't need to say Jesus is not your savior. Not because that truth needs to be hidden, but because that shifts the work from remembrance to debate. That kind of language doesn't come from compassion, it comes from anticipating rejection. And anticipation pulls me outside of myself. Full voice is not about opposition, it is about resonance. So here's what I have come to trust. My full voice does not require full disclosure. It requires self-loyalty. I can speak from my truth without speaking all of it. I can be silent without shrinking. I can wait without abandoning myself. And I can let my body tell me when silence is wise and when it's costing me. I had a friend recently who spent the weekend with another friend who is intuitive, and she was giving her all of these intuitive messages and asked, Does Susan do this too? And she's like, No, which is true. I don't. I have come to know that my silence is really important with regard to my gifts. It is really important to hold my clarity and weight on consent or invitation, or gently guide through questions because doing somebody else's homework does not make them wiser. Giving them the answers does not help them with the embodiment of a lesson. If their soul chooses to engage me in that way, if they book a session, that is a different container in which I know that request has been given. But otherwise, I am invited to hold space to ask a question, to be silent. And that silence is not contraction. That silence is wisdom and respect for their sovereignty and their timing and their path. So if you're wondering whether you're using your full voice, don't ask, did I say the thing? Ask, did I stay with myself? Because your voice isn't proven by sound. It's proven by integrity. And when you learn to trust that, your voice doesn't need to fight to be heard. It simply arrives. Before we close, I want to invite you into a moment of quiet reflection, not to fix anything, not to decide anything, just to notice. So if you can place a hand on your body anywhere that feels natural and take a slow breath, and I want you to ask yourself something. Where has my voice learned to leave me? Not where have you been wrong? Not where should you have spoken sooner? Just where your body learned it was safer to be smaller and softer or quieter than you truly are. And then ask yourself, where does my voice already feel whole? Where do your words come easily? Not because they're rehearsed, but because they're true. Where does your silence feel settled rather than tight? Your full voice is not something you need to build or to earn. It's something that remembers how to return when it's welcome. So if it feels right, you might welcome your full voice by quietly saying to yourself, you don't need to rush.

SPEAKER_00:

You don't need to sharpen. You don't need to explain. You are allowed to speak what is being held with care.

SPEAKER_01:

And as you move forward, I invite you to notice this, not with judgment, but with kindness. Does my voice feel intact right now? Because when your voice is intact, it doesn't strain to be heard, it doesn't disappear to be safe, it simply stays with you. And that is how your full voice comes home. Not all at once, not loudly, but honestly. It simply arrives. Thank you for listening or watching, and thank you for walking this path of remembrance with me. If you are called to go deeper, I will see you on Patreon in the Keeper's Garden. Have a great week.

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Susan Sutherland

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