I spoke up in a meeting today. Not to argue. Not to complain. But to question the logic of a system that keeps folding in on itself – one that asks more and more while delivering less and less.
It was about spreadsheets. Redundant ones. The kind that repeat information already in the system. But it wasn’t about spreadsheets at all. It was about weight.
The weight of a job that keeps building structures on broken foundations. The weight of expectations that ignore the cost of emotional and mental labor. The weight of pretending this is normal.
I asked, “Why are we doing this twice?” “Why are we being audited, and then auditing ourselves?” “Why are we duplicating effort instead of solving the root problem – lack of training, high turnover, disorganization?”
And the room – both digital and not – went completely silent.
Not the kind of silence that comes from listening. The kind that comes from discomfort. From fear. From people who have learned that silence is safer than truth.
No one backed me. No one pushed back either. Just that loud, heavy silence.
Some eyes looked away. Some faces froze. One or two backed out of the frame altogether.
I could feel the tension – my own frustration mixing with theirs. But I also felt something else: CLARITY!
I’ve realized that silence can mean many things. It can be protection for those who’ve been burned for speaking. It can be a strategy for those who play the game to survive. It can be a test: Will she keep speaking even if no one joins her?
The answer is yes.
Because the silence doesn’t scare me anymore. What scares me is the kind of workplace that teaches people to bury their voice just to stay employed. What scares me is how easy it is for dysfunction to become normalized. What scares me is how erasure happens – not through violence, but through systems that ask you to copy and paste your soul until there’s nothing left of it.
I’m not here to stir up trouble. I’m here to make sense of the madness.
So if you’ve ever been in that meeting where the room goes quiet when you speak truth – If you’ve ever asked the question everyone else was too exhausted to say out loud –
If you’ve ever walked way feeling like the only one awake in a room full of sleepwalkers –
You’re not alone. Your voice is not the problem. The silence is.
And I’m done being afraid of it.
My Voice Is Unchained.
My Voice Unchained 