Episode 1 – The Silence Breaks

When I was a little girl, I have this memory of getting into a quarrel with an elderly neighbour whose kitchen faced ours. I remember myself as a feisty little girl with a loud voice, and apparently rude, because I was told off by my mother and grandmother that I should not have spoken to the elderly neighbour that way.

Without the full context, I have no idea whether I reacted because she was teasing me (as some older people do, pressing children's buttons just to get a reaction), or whether I really behaved rudely for no good reason.

However, what has stayed with me all these years is this: I was feisty, and I dared to argue back. Whatever the context was, I stood up for myself using my voice.

Along the way as I grew up, I lost that ability. To stand up for myself.

When I stepped into kindergarten, I think that was the beginning of my voice gradually becoming softer and softer, and I learnt to stay quiet.

I learnt that silence was golden, and that avoiding conflict was often the smartest way to stay out of my parents' and teachers' way.

I got used to that lump in my throat whenever I fought the urge to speak up.

I learnt to listen to teachers berate us and stay silent.

I learnt to listen to seniors in school rain down verbal abuse on us in the name of "toughening us up", and stay quiet as a school cadet.

I learnt to stay quiet when some boys misbehaved in class so that I stayed out of trouble.

I learnt to hold on to that silence because it was a way to stay invisible. After all, as everyone says, "Out of sight, out of mind."

For most of my primary school years, I didn't get to speak much.

I never learnt how to articulate myself properly as a child because the only times I was given a chance to speak were when my name was called in the middle of a dead-silent classroom, with the heavy expectation of giving the correct answer to a teacher's academic question. Speaking up, and projecting my voice always felt scary. 

Besides answering correctly so that the lesson could move on, there wasn't much genuine interest from the teacher—or from the curriculum itself—in helping us develop a sense of self. 

If we don't develop a healthy sense of self during our growing-up years, can we suddenly become sure of ourselves and who we are as adults?

Given that we spent six to eight hours a day in school over more than a decade, I became highly skilled in silencing myself. We were constantly told to "shush", with a finger placed over our lips, and were taught that quiet and obedient children were the "good" children.

We also saw how talkative children, or children who answered back, were dealt with.

I used to think those children were ‘stupid’, because why couldn't they understand that one simple rule? Just keep their thoughts and voices to themselves!

While I was busy judging the kids in the other camp, I wasn't aware of who I was slowly becoming.

That stiffness in my mouth from constantly holding my thoughts and truths in, and that lump in my throat - they became the daily bolts that built a safe harbour for my heart and my 'face'.

Whether it was holding back resentment to avoid conflict with adults, keeping my truths to myself so I remained invisible to teachers and rowdy classmates, or not calling out the bullshit that arrogant colleagues spilled just to avoid awkwardness, years of holding everything in made that safe harbour bigger and stronger.

Yet that same safe harbour made the real me, and my real voice, smaller and smaller.

At the age of 47, my relentless pursuit of singing throughout most of my life finally made sense.

While my younger self’s logical mind believed it was safer to hold my voice back, my body and soul needed a way for that voice to be expressed. 

And I found it in singing.

Through song lyrics, I found a way to release the rumblings of suppression that filled my everyday life.

I could sing about profound love and grieve losses my younger self had never experienced. Yet singing those emotions in imagined stories allowed me to feel them deeply, and express, what I wished I could authentically express in my own daily life.

And it also allowed the angsty teen in me to express the anger I had suppressed because I never found the courage to do so in real-life interactions. My suppressed emotions had to find a way out, and they found an outlet through my singing voice. Singing became the drug I didn’t know I needed to cope with life. It became the place where all the parts of me that had been silenced were finally allowed to speak. 

For whatever reason, expressing my voice and emotions has been deeply important for my life path. It was either sing through the suppression, or go numb.

The truth is, my inner voice was never truly heard, not because I didn't want to express it as a young child, but because society created a system that suppressed our voices and opinions so that the whole ship could be steered more smoothly.

We were all trained to become economic cogs contributing to a stronger ship.

But for whom?

And for what?

It dawned on me that I had never learnt how to express what I truly thought about people or situations, and feel safe doing so.

Whether at family gatherings, in the classroom, or even when writing a General Paper essay, taking a diplomatic position often felt like the safer path (and perhaps even the one more likely to earn higher marks).

I developed hypothyroidism in my early 40s. Looking back, it came after years of deliberately hanging up the microphone in my mid 30s, choosing instead to promote other singers in my company, and living with immense self-doubt and hesitation whenever I wanted to speak out against vocal coaches in the online space who were inventing methods that went against the fundamentals of vocal technique.

For years, I swallowed my opinions because I didn't want to offend anyone.

But recently, I realised that I was offending someone.

Myself.

I feel a shift coming.

This podcast is the result of nearly forty years of vocal suppression.

Here, I'll be sharing my stories of how I went from a young child who blushed tomato-red at the slightest attention in class to becoming a full-time singer-songwriter who released multiple albums and represented Singapore on regional stages.

More importantly, I'll be exploring what it really means to reclaim a voice that was never truly lost, only silenced.

Thank you for listening to The UnSilenced Voice of the Sleeping Phoenix Podcast.