When I woke up this morning, I did my small, beloved practice. With my eyes still closed, I stretched a smile across my face (even when nothing was funny), and I woke up my brain to be happy.
Then I felt my breath, my warm body in my cozy bed, and I activated my happy heart as I said thank you to my soul as it returned to my body. It took me years to allow myself to simply be before I do.
“Something wonderful is about to happen today,” I told my guardian angels, and they answered, “As you wish.” That always makes me smile.
As I slowly began to enter my morning, I got a phone call from my mother. She had been sick recently, and I was worried about her, but she sounded happy.
“I have to tell you something. Do you have a moment?” she asked.
“Of course,” I answered.
As I started making my coffee, she continued slowly:
“I organized my papers and found things I wrote, and letters you sent me. Sit down for a moment. I want to read you something.”
And then she began.
“I always had a problem. Since I was a child, I had a voice that was harsh and strong.”
I smiled.
My mother’s angry tone accompanied me throughout my childhood. She continued, reading a story about herself as a girl, her voice sounding rough. She wrote what we had spoken about many times before.
“I’m not angry. That’s just how it sounds. That’s my voice,” she wrote.
I found myself enjoying her story and once again realizing what a good writer she is.
A few years ago, when my mother allowed herself to step out of the box she had lived in for so long, she joined a theater group. When she finally dared to step onto the stage, she freed herself.
Her voice, her presence, and her comedic talent burst out and shone.
She became an actress at the age of seventy-one.
My mother also paints. She creates unique, traditional Yemeni embroidery pieces. There was always talent in her. All of her sisters are creative too.
And I realized that my whole life I had grown up next to a frustrated artist—and that this frustration was part of my own journey of healing and repair.
So I sat with my coffee and kept listening, curious.
She read: “I had low self-esteem because of my voice. Many silenced me. And my parents,” she paused, “my parents used to joke in Yemeni that this girl was born with a wooden spoon in her throat.”
I was in shock. I had never heard my mother tell this story. Suddenly, I saw her as a young woman, afraid to express her opinion at work because her voice felt too strong, too unpleasant.
The wound of self-expression she carried became clear to me.
Then she continued.
“When we lived in the village,” she said, referring to the home where I grew up, “at a family gathering, someone casually told me, ‘Be Quiet.’ And then Galit stood up and said, ‘No one silences my mother. She’s had enough of that her whole life.’”
In her writing, she added: “My daughter recognized my wound before I recognized it myself.”
I was moved that she noticed.
She continued describing how she began her journey to discover who she is and what she can be. How to allow her talents to come out. She studied, became a therapist, and explored so many paths. I always admired the courage that grew within her.
I said to her, “You know that I also struggled with my voice. With self-expression, with allowing myself to be. The fact that you were the first to open the door and ask how to become more empowered affected my journey. And it also affects the next seven generations.”
We spoke about intergenerational trauma, about healing within the family.
We looked at my grandmother, at her mother, and the women before them, and saw how deeply their expressions were suppressed.
I sometimes wonder, after thousands of years in which mothers were silenced, diminished, and unappreciated, how quickly we, as humanity, can truly heal.
My mother said,
“But you always expressed your opinions. I raised you to be free.”
She was right. She respected my voice. I grew up with my own mind.
“Yes,” I said, “but I couldn’t sing. I didn’t have your trauma of a strong voice. Mine was different. I didn’t have a voice.” I reminded her.
Most of my life, I was hoarse, with throat issues, infections, and a continuous struggle.
My journey to find my voice was real. Physical, emotional, energetic. That journey, to find my voice in order to exist, became my work.
What I write about, what I teach, what I perform, and how I help others.
A silence fell between us for a moment, as we thought about the long journey of the right to exist.
As human beings. As women. As artists. As mothers. And recently, also as a Jewish woman.
And I felt that this is not the end, but a beginning.
The beginning of more stories.
More intergenerational stories of voice and expression.
Freedom begins with awareness.
Then expression brings joy, acceptance of what was, forgiveness, and then more expression, and more joy.
This is how we rise higher, as individuals and as a society.
So what is your story?
Are you like me, or like my mother? Or perhaps something else?
What can you tell about yourself, and about the generations before you, and about the right to exist as a thinking, creating, loving being who longs to reach the stars?
So I sat with my coffee and kept listening, curious.
