Chapter 2 - Whose Voice is it Anyway?

With Chapter 2 of Writing and Healing we enter the essays that make up the core if the book that should lead us to a better understand of this new and often confusing field. The first essay, by Anne Ruggles Gere, tackles the concept of voice and how she believes our experiences and relationships are affected by the construct of the individual voice. Gere starts with her personal experience, telling the story of the day she realized her voice was not loud enough, classically enough at a junior high cheerleading tryout. Gere praises this moment of criticism she received after being rejected from the team for being the first time she realized her voice might not be representing her in a way she agreed with. She then delves into her childhood and how she believes her relationship with her parents and teachers shaped her to be a quieter person, and how she would grow up battling with her own voice attempting to be heard. We also get some brief family history and background socioeconomic information that paints the full picture of Gere's life. The meat of the essay comes when Gere introduces the concept of being someone else's voice, and the power that it can have to stand in for someone. She uses her mother and daughter as almost bookend examples of times she has had to be someone else's voice and the tremendous responsibility that brings. Her mother suffered from dimensia and quickly lost the ability to communicate effectively--a common side effect of memory-loss afflictions like dimenia or alzheimers. This part struck me personally because I watched my own grandother struggle with alzheimers, and just as Gere described in her book, have her own voice and language dissolve right before our eyes. My own mother had to become the voice for my grandmother, exactly as Gere describes, and it truly is a position of power and extreme love. When another human loses their voice, those who truly care about them are the only ones who can be trusted to portray their needs accurately. I had never thought about this relationship from this perspective, but it makes complete sense when laid out by Gere. This made me think about who will speak for me when I lose my voice someday, and I became very worried about who would be able to do the job. Who could possibly know me well enough to step in and ensure I can communicate what I need. On the other end of the example, Gere tells us of her adopted daughter, Cindy, who not only suffered from a scattered foster childhood, but also from fetal alcohol syndrome. Because of these factors, Cindy's own language skills were often not sufficient and Gere often had to speak for her or help her find the words she needed but didn't yet know. Gere takes the concept of individual voice and elegantly displays how important it can be to someone who's voice is not 100% capable. I think the takeaway from this chapter is that we must not take our own voices for granted, and in return we must speak for those who can't speak for themselves. I had never thought about voice in this way, and this whole chapter really changed my view on the topic. I think we should all focus on the delicacy and effort that it takes to stand in as a voice for someone--what kind of person would it take for someone to be your voice? How often do you think people who cannot speak for themselves are burdened with someone who doesn't know how to represent them correctly? How can we learn to better understand each other in a way that could make us all proxies for each other?