Part 1: Midlife Women and the Voices We Stopped Trusting

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Welcome to the Unfolding Podcast, a space where we explore what

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it looks like to really trust yourself,

say no without guilt, and live your

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life like it actually belongs to you.

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I am Erica Voell, a Decision Mentor

and Inner-Trust Guide, and I help

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women in midlife untangle from the

life patterns of shape-shifting

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and keeping everyone else happy.

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Claim how they are uniquely

designed to make decisions.

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Understand their unique strengths using

human design as a lens, we clear the

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noise of conditioning so their no feels

powerful and their yes feels true, and

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they can move forward without self-doubt.

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Guilt and pressure to prove anything.

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On this show, we have honest conversations

about self-trust, boundaries, energy

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and identity, especially for women

in midlife who are done living by the

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shoulds and second guessing themselves.

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If you've taken every personality

test, followed the recommended path,

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and still feel like you can't shake

that feeling that you've been spending

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your whole life trying to fit in.

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When all you really wanted was to

belong, you are in the right place.

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You'll hear stories, insights,

and tools rooted in human

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design, coaching, and real life.

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Not to tell you what to do, like

another self-help book, but to help you

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really hear yourself so you can stop

overthinking and start making decisions

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that feel grounded, clear, and true.

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A friend said something to me over

breakfast recently that stopped

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me and I had to write it down.

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She said the hardest thing is managing my

rage about not being heard and believed.

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Whew.

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Midlife women are speaking and

because they have been dismissed or

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told to speak a certain way to be

more masculine or to be taken more

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seriously, they don't feel heard and

even I have felt this way and it is.

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I mean, is it any wonder the

messages we all get are about being

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different from who we already are?

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After I wrote an article about losing

my voice while being sick, I suddenly

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had a bunch of ads on Instagram and

YouTube pop up about how to sound more

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confident and speak more eloquently.

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And while they appear well intentioned,

they make me grit my teeth.

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Every time I see them, they

are still popping up because

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they all sound so masculine.

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One was from a brand coaching women in

business on how to sound more articulate.

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Instead of saying to be honest, saying

something more like, here are the facts,

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or instead of, I feel to say the best

course of action is, and definitely don't

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say absolutely amazing and saying, I

recommend instead of, I think we should.

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One ad that came up recently was a man

speaking to a woman who was clearly

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not in midlife or near perimenopause.

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He was telling her that with his

training, she'll never forget her words.

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And as many of us know, forgetting

our words is a symptom of

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midlife and perimenopause,

and we don't exactly love it.

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It's not like we try to do

it, but seriously, what a dig.

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Never forget your words.

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The more eloquently you speak, the

more acceptable you'll become to

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the corporate white male crowd.

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But those ways of communicating

completely dismiss what women see.

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What they notice, what their intuition

is telling them, and it tries to put us

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back into these masculine stereotypes

and expectations of what's acceptable

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to a specific part of the population.

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Back to when women wore power suits to

even try to have a seat at the table.

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And yet here we are still

having these conversations.

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This episode, which is also a

subset article, started small.

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It was going to be my story about my

relationship with my own voice, but after

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a conversation with Lana Jean Telles,

I knew this episode needed to include

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more voices than my own, and I was

blown away by the response I received.

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I put out a call to three different

communities that I'm part of,

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my SUBSTACK readers, fellow

coaches, and former clients.

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And I wanna be clear that the

women who share their stories

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here are not a research sample.

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This would not pass the muster

of, you know, a university study.

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What I have received are 15

women who identify as being in

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midlife, and they responded.

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I was not looking for data.

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What I found was something

that I did not expect.

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Thread after thread of similar stories

told from different voices, from women

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ranging from their mid thirties to their

early sixties, from different parts of the

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world with different backgrounds and work.

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But there was a similar message that was

absorbed early and so completely that most

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of us actually stopped questioning where

it came from, what started as one short

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episode and article has grown into two

parts, and I feel a deep responsibility

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to share an honor what these women trusted

me with, and I don't take that lightly.

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So this is part one and part

two will be published next week.

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As I said this episode actually started

a few months ago after a conversation

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I had with someone who was planning to

host a workshop on the communication

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center in Human Design, and I said I

was really hesitant to share it with

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my community, but I wasn't sure why.

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It was a part of human design that I

was so unsure of, and as I personally

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started to dig into the story behind why

I was so unsure, I had a realization.

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I have an undefined throat center,

and I don't have a consistent

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way of expressing myself.

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I've always struggled with that old story

of I don't have anything important to say,

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and I talk about that in an episode that

I published in early March, and that story

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was keeping me from leaning into sharing

this powerful part of human design.

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And then about a month later, I

was watching a class with Charlotte

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Webb, who is actually one of the

women in this article and episode.

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And I felt this energetic nudge

that this is what I needed to share.

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And this episode and an upcoming

workshop for my paid Substack

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subscribers have come from that nudge.

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But there was something deeper that

I felt like I needed to explore,

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and then a conversation with some

friends brought this back up for

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me, and I began to explore why

do women not trust their voice?

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There are a whole host of reasons

and the stories of the women

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who shared their stories this

episode touch on several of them.

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From the messages we received growing

up to the experiences we have in

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the workplace, and a culture that

many times labels women's voices as

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not as important, or even judging

the sound of our own voices.

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All you have to do is Google women

trusting their voice, and you

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get a wide range of results from

articles to voice coaches and the

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voice coaches are not for singing.

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And as I explored more,

it struck something in me.

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Why was I so hesitant to share this

workshop, but not one that's as complex as

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the fears within our human design chart?

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And it came down to my

complicated relationship with

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my own voice and communication.

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When I was a kid, I did not

like the sound of my voice.

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I was afraid I sounded like a boy when I

really wanted people to see me as a girl.

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I was constantly mistaken

for a boy because I had this

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flat Dorothy Hamel haircut.

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Hers curled under beautifully.

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Mine did not, no matter

how much my mom curled it.

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It would look great when I left

the house, but by the time I got

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to school, it was a flat bowl cut.

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And then as I got older, I really

started to not like my voice.

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My singing voice was too whispery.

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And I sang with my grandma all the

time who had a beautiful singing voice.

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And in middle school, I didn't

qualify for the special choir.

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As an adult, I started to believe that

my own voice was grating and harsh,

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and my view of the sound of my voice

completely changed when I took a

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storytelling class in library school.

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I was in my early thirties, and I

had a professor who told me in my

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feedback session to be proud of my

voice because it was crisp and clear.

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He could see that I was so unsure of

myself when we performed in class.

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And from then on I had this

completely different perspective

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on the sound of my voice.

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And when I was a librarian,

I would visit schools.

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I would always do a bit of a double take

when I would first hear my voice on the

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speakers when I would use the microphone,

and then a crazy thing started to happen.

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I really started to enjoy hearing

my voice over the speakers, and it

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felt weird to say that when so many

people talk about how they don't

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like the sound of their voices.

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I almost didn't.

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I didn't wanna tell people that out loud.

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Too much because I thought it sounded

egotistical, but what liking the

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sound of my voice did not change was

my confidence in what I had to say

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when I was speaking about a program

or books, and no one else was there

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that it could judge what I was saying,

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I was fine.

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But when it came time to talk

about something that someone

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else might know more about, then

those fears came up super strong.

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And as I began to read and to listen

to the stories of the 15 women who

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share their stories in this article.

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And podcast episode, I noticed that

each woman had a distinct relationship

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with the sound of her own voice.

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It was fascinating that almost every

woman had a specific moment when

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she heard herself from the outside,

either on a recording, a radio ad, a

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cassette player, or editing a podcast.

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The voice she knew from the

inside did not match what she

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heard when she was played back.

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But it wasn't just the strangeness

of hearing themselves recorded.

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For many of these women, what they

heard played back, had already

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been judged by someone else first.

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Of the 15 women I spoke to, nearly

all of them, described some version

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of discomfort or disconnection

with the sound of their own voice.

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For most, it wasn't a single moment.

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It was like this slow accumulation

of other people's reactions that

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shaped how they heard themselves.

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In high school psychology class, Jen

read that high voices were associated

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with perceived low intelligence.

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That low voices belonged to smart,

confident, and commanding women.

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She immediately started

working on lowering her voice.

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She wanted to be taken seriously.

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Quote, as I got older, I don't think

that ever went away, she said, but as I

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matured, I also desperately wanted the

content of what I said to have the same

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impact, and that cost me, I think I have

cared too much what people think of me.

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Instead of being free to

learn and gain knowledge.

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I was scared to say

something that wasn't right.

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End quote.

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Every time Linda called a friend's

house as a kid, the father would

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pick up and announce there's

a boy on the phone for you.

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And when she moved to Hawaii as

a teenager, the first thing a boy

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she was introduced to asked was,

what was wrong with her voice?

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As a young adult, men would suggest

that she be a phone sex operator.

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She spent years wishing that her

voice were higher and more feminine.

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She said she likes her voice now,

but it took a long time to get there.

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And when Charlotte thought about

liking the sound of her voice,

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she thought about what that phrase

meant when used about a woman.

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Arrogant.

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Self-centered.

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Attention seeking.

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Superior.

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She used to cringe at her own voice

rather than risk being seen that way.

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. Getting used to her own voice

is still a work in progress.

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For Danielle, she said a teacher laughed

at her during a show choir audition,

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and for years her own voice felt

like nails on the chalkboard to her.

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She has been recording guided

meditations to slowly desensitize

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herself to the sound of it.

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Now people tell her it's soothing,

and what strikes me about all of

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these is how early it started.

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Most of us formed an opinion about our

own voices before we were old enough to

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question where that opinion came from.

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And at some point we all

learned to go silent.

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I grew up in a family where

everyone talked over everyone else.

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Large family gatherings were loud

with multiple conversations happening

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across the room all at once.

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And my brain, it wanted

to be in all of them.

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I didn't wanna fade into the background.

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I felt like I needed to

have something to say.

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What I didn't realize was that I was

learning to talk to fill the silences.

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I was so uncomfortable with quiet that I

thought being a good person meant having

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conversations and filling the gaps.

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And I'll never forget being

in the car with my mom.

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We were on a three hour trip and she said,

how about you stop talking for a while?

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I had talked for almost three those three

hours, and at the time I was so hurt.

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But now as a mom, I completely get it.

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When I was in high school, I

had no problem speaking up.

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I usually knew the answer

and I loved to prove it.

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It brought that approval that I was

seeking that external validation.

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And then in college,

things started to shift.

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I will never forget being in a

Western civilization class and

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getting into a heated discussion

with a guy over women's rights.

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I eventually backed down,

not because I was wrong.

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But because I felt I couldn't make a good

enough argument against his certainty.

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I felt defeated because once again

the louder white male voice won.

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I found myself talking just to be heard.

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What I didn't know then.

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Was that that silencing and the

overtalking are often the same things, two

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different responses to the same message.

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You don't have anything important to say.

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The women I spoke with found their

own ways to manage that same feeling.

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Some learned early that quiet

was simply what was required.

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Ellen described it simply.

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She learned to stay silent as a kid,

a good girl, and a people pleaser.

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Katie learned to go along flexible and

agreeable, not because she was silencing

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herself because she didn't yet know.

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She could say, I don't want

that, or I don't like that.

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Heather shared that she talked too much

as a kid and was told so, but she also

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absorbed something quieter from her

mom who was shy in social situations

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and would go silent in groups, and

Heather caught herself doing the same

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thing, staying quiet when she didn't

feel like she knew enough to speak.

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In Danielle's home, her parents

wanted her to be seen and not heard.

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Authentic thoughts were not appreciated.

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She was to fall in line and her mother

used to use the silent treatment.

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She said, we didn't talk.

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In my family it was

either yelling or silence.

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And as a child, Erica was told to be quiet

and not to speak up, to not take up space.

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It wasn't about talking too much.

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It was about learning that her voice

wasn't welcome in the first place, and

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that conditioning followed her for years.

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She became someone who held things

in, who questioned whether what

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she had to say even mattered.

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She learned to shrink and to second

guess to allow herself to be talked over

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because on some level that felt familiar.

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I really learned to say silent.

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She said, until I became enraged.

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And growing up, Lana wasn't

told that she talked too much.

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She was told directly and

often that she did not matter.

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So she didn't learn to be silent.

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She learned to be invisible.

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She poured herself into school, into

achieving into the things that she

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could control, trying to prove her

worth in the only ways available to her.

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And when that didn't work, she

went the other direction entirely

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into struggle and self-sabotage.

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With periods of depression,

including moments where she

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didn't want to be here at all.

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Looking back, she could see it was

all the same thing, trying to be

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seen, trying to be heard, just in

ways that weren't always healthy.

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A 8-year-old, Veronica was visiting

her cousins on a farm, and she

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desperately wanted to go into

town with them, but didn't ask.

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Her aunt had a way of making her

feel small and she wasn't willing

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to give her another opportunity.

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She watched her cousins drive away and

she cried so hard that her grandmother

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heard her from across the street.

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And when her grandmother came

to check on her, she wiped her

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face and she said she was fine.

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She said, I didn't just

learn to be polite.

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I learned it was safer to not

speak at all rather than to

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risk being made to feel small.

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Several women described a different kind

of silencing, not being told to be quiet,

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but being told that they were too much.

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Lizzie was told she was too

dramatic, too intense, and too much.

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She wasn't told to talk less.

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She was told to feel less so that

she got quieter in a different way.

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She stopped getting excited.

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She filed herself down to fit what

people around her seemed to want.

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She said, I didn't know I was

negotiating in order to survive.

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I just did it.

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Erin was labeled dramatic accused of

blowing things out of proportion and

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seeking attention, labels that felt

deeply wrong to her as an introvert

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and an empath who only spoke up when

things became truly unattainable.

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Talia said she was the one in her

family who spoke up the most, and

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she was shunned for it for years.

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Treated a certain way, labeled and judged.

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Even people she called friends would

admire it and judge it at the same time.

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Other women went quiet in

a different way entirely.

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Not silenced so much as

turned inward as a kid.

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Jen was naturally shy and

introverted, but an astute observer.

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She watched and listened to

the chaotic adults around her.

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It might've been that I didn't have

the right words to talk about what

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I was seeing and feeling She said.

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and she said she had a boyfriend

who was verbally abusive.

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She said she was gaslit into

believing that she was wrong about

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him and his lies, and she said,

that silenced my voice for a bit.

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And Charlotte remembered that the

children should be seen and not

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heard energy was present in her home.

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She wasn't told she talked too much, but

she felt this particular powerlessness.

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Of never being able to win an argument

against someone more dominant or

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better at rhetoric than she was.

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: 00:20:22

We learn these things so young and we

absorb them so completely, and somehow

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: 00:20:27

we're surprised when they follow us

into adulthood and into the workplace.

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: 00:20:32

. There can be an unwritten pressure

to sound like someone else.

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: 00:20:37

In the workplace, I was rarely afraid to

ask questions, but they always came with a

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: 00:20:42

hesitation, a worry of being misunderstood

or seen as not knowing enough.

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: 00:20:49

I asked questions to help me

understand, to know why and how things

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: 00:20:53

worked, and how decisions were made.

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: 00:20:56

My questions many times were not welcomed.

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: 00:21:00

I saw it constantly at my library job.

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: 00:21:02

I would name something I was observing,

something I was sensing from the room

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: 00:21:07

or from people around me, conversations

I had with other people, but because

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: 00:21:12

I could not back it up with hard

data, it made me less of an authority.

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: 00:21:18

And a lot of times the weird one, and

nearly after a year since I've left

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: 00:21:23

that library job, I've heard from

former coworkers that things I was

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: 00:21:27

picking up on and was pointing out

are now being noticed by managers.

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: 00:21:34

We are taught that to be taken seriously.

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: 00:21:36

We should say things like,

I think instead of, I feel.

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: 00:21:41

That we should state facts rather

than name what we sense that

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: 00:21:46

we should lead with logic and

leave our intuition at the door.

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: 00:21:50

But those ways of communicating completely

dismiss what women see, what we notice,

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: 00:21:55

what our intuition is telling us.

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: 00:21:58

They push us back toward the

version of authority that was

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: 00:22:01

never designed with us in mind.

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: 00:22:04

Those ads I told you about earlier

are still showing up in my feed two

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: 00:22:09

months later to learn to be more

articulate, to be more assertive.

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: 00:22:14

Instead of saying, to be honest,

saying, here are the facts.

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: 00:22:18

Instead of saying, I feel

to say something stronger.

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: 00:22:22

To say I recommend instead

of, I think we should.

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: 00:22:27

Back to when women wore power suits to

try to even have a seat at the table.

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: 00:22:33

The packaging is different.

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: 00:22:35

But the message is clearly the

same, and the women I spoke with

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: 00:22:40

knew this pressure intimately.

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: 00:22:42

It's not a cultural observation.

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: 00:22:44

It's something that has happened to

them in rooms with specific people on

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: 00:22:48

specific days that they still remember.

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: 00:22:51

And for women working in a male

dominated field, they can feel that

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: 00:22:55

their voice is regularly dismissed.

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: 00:22:58

Standing up publicly for

women being dismissed at work.

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: 00:23:01

Kelly went to bat for people she

genuinely cared about, and afterwards

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: 00:23:06

she was pulled aside and asked if

her company knew what she said.

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: 00:23:11

They implied that she

had embarrassed them.

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: 00:23:14

She remembered that internal struggle

of knowing she had done the right

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: 00:23:18

thing while facing a wall of men

calling her the overreactive woman.

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: 00:23:24

She said it was all men, like an old

boys club, being the hysterical woman.

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: 00:23:29

And in the army, Heather spent

years learning to be careful about

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: 00:23:33

how she said things so she wouldn't

be compared to a wife or a mother.

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: 00:23:39

She said quote, men don't have to

tiptoe around in fear of sounding

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: 00:23:43

like a father or a husband.

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: 00:23:46

She hated that.

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: 00:23:48

She thought it wasn't

fair, and she was right.

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: 00:23:51

Veronica shared that during a high

pressure customer cutover at work, she

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: 00:23:56

was overwhelmed and ended up crying.

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: 00:23:59

She said quote, instead of support, a

woman director mocked me and laughed.

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: 00:24:04

I felt completely

blindsided at that moment.

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: 00:24:07

I learned that showing

emotion wasn't safe.

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: 00:24:10

It was something that

could be used against me.

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: 00:24:13

The unspoken message that I was too

sensitive and too emotional, and it

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: 00:24:17

wasn't the first time I had heard that.

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: 00:24:19

End quote.

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: 00:24:20

She became guarded.

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: 00:24:22

Careful and trying not to reveal too much.

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: 00:24:26

For a long time, she said that she carried

that into how she showed up everywhere.

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: 00:24:32

Sometimes these dismissals are subtle

and sometimes they are more overt.

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: 00:24:38

Erica was asked to step

back from a community she'd

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: 00:24:41

been part of for four years.

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: 00:24:43

She was told that the way she showed

up, the way she communicated the

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: 00:24:47

work, she did no longer fit the

direction the group was heading in.

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: 00:24:52

It was framed as a mismatch but what

she recognized was a confirmation she

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: 00:24:57

had outgrown that container, not that

she needed to become small to belong,

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: 00:25:02

she said, but that she was being called

into spaces that could actually hold

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: 00:25:07

the fullness of who she truly was.

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: 00:25:11

Lisa spent years consciously adapting her

communication, her voice, her tone, her

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: 00:25:16

pace based on how she was being received.

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: 00:25:20

She noticed herself raising her

pitch at the end of sentences, making

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: 00:25:24

statements, sound like questions,

and trained herself out of it.

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: 00:25:29

She did what she thought she

needed to do to be heard.

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: 00:25:32

Several women described being told

directly or indirectly that their

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: 00:25:36

way of communicating was a problem.

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: 00:25:39

Ellen and her ex-husband had a

nationally syndicated radio show, and

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: 00:25:44

if he felt she was talking too much,

he would kick her under the table.

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: 00:25:48

She said It undermined my autonomy and

my confidence, and they stopped listening

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: 00:25:53

to my intuition and trusting myself.

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: 00:25:57

Erin was told to hold her tongue at

work, even when others agreed with her.

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: 00:26:02

And Talia was called controlling

simply for sharing how she felt.

388

: 00:26:07

And Lana was told that she elaborated

too much, that she needed to get to the

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: 00:26:11

point and that she was too passionate.

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: 00:26:13

The truth is, she said that

passion was always tied to purpose.

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: 00:26:19

And then there is what Jen

named so clearly the game that

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: 00:26:23

none of us agreed to play.

393

: 00:26:25

The patriarchal game meant to keep

women from their inner true voices.

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: 00:26:31

She said a game that keeps women

trapped in a loop of looking outside

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: 00:26:35

for validation and changing their voice

to gain what we think we need to get

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: 00:26:40

ahead, or even just to fit in end quote.

397

: 00:26:44

And it turns out there's actually

research that agrees with her.

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: 00:26:47

So it's not just you.

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: 00:26:49

Multiple studies have looked

at what actually happens

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: 00:26:52

when women are in the room.

401

: 00:26:54

Scholars at BYU and Princeton

studied students at a top accounting

402

: 00:26:58

school and found that having a

seat at the table wasn't enough.

403

: 00:27:02

Women spoke up less when they

were outnumbered, they were

404

: 00:27:06

seen as less authoritative.

405

: 00:27:08

And when they did speak.

406

: 00:27:09

They were more likely to be

interrupted and less likely to

407

: 00:27:13

be heard, and it actually gets

worse as the room gets bigger.

408

: 00:27:18

Researchers from Northeastern University

and the Harvard School of Public Health

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: 00:27:23

found that women were most comfortable

in smaller group settings and once a

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: 00:27:28

group grew beyond five people, it was

the men who dominated the conversation.

411

: 00:27:33

And even in the moments when women

did speak communication researchers,

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: 00:27:38

Barbara and Gene Eakins found that after.

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: 00:27:41

Analyzing university faculty

meetings that men spoke more often

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: 00:27:46

and for longer without exception.

415

: 00:27:48

As they noted, the women's

longest turns were still shorter

416

: 00:27:52

than the men's shortest turns.

417

: 00:27:55

And having a seat at the table

does not mean having a voice as we

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: 00:27:59

see in boardrooms over and over.

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: 00:28:02

They say, well, we have a woman

in the boardroom, but that is

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: 00:28:06

not giving the women a voice.

421

: 00:28:08

So we have multiple reasons that

women don't trust their voice.

422

: 00:28:13

The messages start at home.

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: 00:28:15

They follow us into school and

into the workplace and into the

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: 00:28:19

rooms where decisions are made.

425

: 00:28:22

And the women I spoke

with carried all of it.

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: 00:28:25

And for some that weight showed up in

ways that they are still reckoning with.

427

: 00:28:30

Something in these women refuse

to stay entirely quiet even after

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: 00:28:35

everything they've experienced.

429

: 00:28:38

15 women different lives, different

ages, different homes and workplaces on

430

: 00:28:46

different continents, and still there is

the same thread running through all of it.

431

: 00:28:54

Women who were told in large ways

and small ways that their voice was

432

: 00:28:59

either too much or not enough, that

they needed to be quieter, clearer,

433

: 00:29:06

more logical, less emotional, or

more like someone else entirely tire.

434

: 00:29:13

They learned to go silent

or to talk over the silence,

435

: 00:29:16

which is really the same thing.

436

: 00:29:19

Both are ways of managing a world

that wasn't sure what to do with them.

437

: 00:29:24

If any of this feels familiar, I

want you to know you are not alone.

438

: 00:29:30

These 15 women, and I suspect many

of you listening are also have

439

: 00:29:35

carrying this for a long time.

440

: 00:29:39

And what I've learned and what

several of these women have found is

441

: 00:29:42

that there is a way to come back to

your own voice, not by fixing it or

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: 00:29:49

taking a course on how to sound more

confident, but by understanding how you

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: 00:29:54

were actually, you uniquely designed

to communicate in the first place.

444

: 00:29:59

And what's amazing is that your

human design can reveal your

445

: 00:30:03

unique way of communicating.

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: 00:30:06

In part two of this series, we're

going to explore what shifted for these

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: 00:30:11

women in finding their confidence in

their voice and their communication.

448

: 00:30:15

And I'll talk about what their

human designs reveal about why

449

: 00:30:18

their voices work the way they do.

450

: 00:30:22

But there's something

bigger happening too.

451

: 00:30:25

We are in the middle of a major era shift.

452

: 00:30:28

One that's moving from structured logical

masculine energy that has shaped the

453

: 00:30:33

way we've communicated for the last

400 years towards something that's

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: 00:30:37

more intuitive, more individual, more

aligned with the way many of us were

455

: 00:30:43

already designed to express ourselves.

456

: 00:30:46

Midlife women are not

behind the curve on this.

457

: 00:30:49

Many of us have been living this way

all along, and our time is coming.

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: 00:30:55

That's what Part two is going

to be about, and I will be going

459

: 00:30:58

deeper into communication and your

voice by design in a workshop on

460

: 00:31:04

April 29th, which is exclusively

for my paid substack subscribers.

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: 00:31:09

I will see you next week for part

two, and if this episode resonated

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: 00:31:12

with you, I would be so grateful

if you would click the plus sign to

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: 00:31:16

subscribe or share it with a friend.

464

: 00:31:19

Thanks for joining me.

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: 00:31:20

Be well.