I started The Healthy Voice to teach people how to reclaim and love their voice.
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The anger that stayed in your body.
Published about 1 month ago • 10 min read
A weekly dispatch on voice, healing, and the inner life of a working artist.
I want to say something before we get into this week's content.
I promise — you will never hear me talk about politics. I have no interest in the topic and no intention of covering it. My work is here to serve everyone, regardless of their beliefs or where they land ideologically.
But I've been holding off on one particular article for a long time. And this week I finally wrote it.
The topic is war. Not as a political subject — as a psychological and sociological one. The trauma from war. Because war does real damage to people that has nothing to do with party affiliation. The kind of damage that stays in the body. That shows up as anger, depression, flashbacks, nightmares. That silences bright, talented people for decades. And that gets passed down to children who never saw a battlefield and still carry the weight of one.
I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida — a military town full of unquestioning patriots who never challenged any international conflict. Talking about war felt like bad manners. So I stayed quiet.
I understand that. When you're surrounded by people who sacrifice so much for what feels honorable, the last thing you want to do is stir up defensiveness or shame.
But I realized recently: I'm over here talking about trauma and what it does to the body. How it manifests. How it lives in the voice. How it keeps people small. I've written about domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse — but I haven't said a single thing about the trauma that started the whole PTSD wave to begin with: war.
And when wars started breaking out over the last few years, I desperately wanted to share what I know — what I lived — as a child of a Vietnam veteran. I wondered if other people stay quiet for the same reason I did. Because they see it as political. Because they're being polite. But it isn't political. It's a reality that affects civilians, veterans, and their families alike.
Every time I file a claim with USAA — an insurance provider available only to military families — the operators thank me for my service. When I explain it was my dad who served, they thank me for my sacrifice.
So I wrote the article.
And alongside it — another piece on anger and the voice. The two are connected. Because those sacrifices inspired a lot of anger in me as a teenager. And expressing anger was absolutely forbidden in my house.
So I found a loophole. Singing.
I learned how to belt. I learned how to be heard all the way to the back of a theater — and I was rewarded for it. My parents didn't scold me when I sang at the top of my lungs. Everyone responded positively. I found a way to channel my anger through sound.
This week is about that. The anger we inherited. The anger we couldn't name. And the voice as the place it finally gets to go.
So I wrote the article. I shared my story about what it was like growing up with a Vietnam veteran — how it shaped my entire childhood in ways I'm still discovering, and how I've never once spoken about it publicly until now. It isn't even something I discuss with my closest friends. But I knew there were people out there who would recognize something in it. People who know what it means to be a child of someone who came home from war but never quite made it all the way back. People who grew up in a house where something invisible and enormous was always present, and nobody had a name for it.
This is one of the most serious and most overlooked aspects of trauma. The whole concept of PTSD emerged from war veterans — and yet we rarely talk about what happens to the families who absorb that unprocessed pain alongside them. It affects so many people, and the silence around it has always struck me as a kind of second wound.
$97.00
Voice Liberation Method Course
Your voice isn't broken. It's blocked.
Blocked by tension. By fear. By things that happened to you that you may not even... Read more
✍️ What to Do When Your Voice Breaks in Front of Someone → Read on Substack
The second article this week came out of a question from a viewer on my YouTube channel. She wanted to know what to do when her voice breaks — when she involuntarily starts crying just trying to talk to someone. And I completely understand this, because I've been there more times than I can count. There were long stretches of my life where my response to this was just to stop talking altogether. To make myself as quiet as possible and hope nobody noticed. A lot of it had to do with social anxiety, and a lot of it had to do with not knowing how to stay in my body when things got hard.
So I wrote a full article on it, because I felt like this question deserved a real, thorough answer — not a quick tip. What I found myself writing about was dissociation: that particular vanishing act the nervous system does when it decides the situation is too much. How to recognize the early signals before you're already gone. And how the daily practice of attending to your voice — really attending, physically, sensorially — can become the thing that keeps you present when presence feels impossible.
🎬 Repressed Anger Lives in Your Voice — Here's How to Let It Out → Watch on YouTube
And then there's this week's video. Repressed anger is something I know intimately, so when another YouTube subscriber made a comment about anger being a valid trauma response, I decided this would be the perfect week to address it.
You can alchemize your anger into something magical and beautiful through your voice. It's cathartic, it's powerful, and — I'll just say it — people respond a whole lot better when you sing your anger than when you shout it. The release is real either way, but one of them leaves you with an audience and the other one just leaves you alone in a room.
This video is a quick, practical exercise on how to engage your diaphragm — your power center, the thing that makes your voice loud and powerful without blowing out your throat. If your anger has been sitting somewhere in your body with nowhere to go, this is a place to start putting it.
Voice Lessons this week: Emotional Expression + Diction. 🎤
Open Throat. Breath Support. Resonance. And now — the human layer on top of everything. Expression and Diction working together in The Water is Wide.
This is what the whole month has been building toward.
And coming next month: Fly Me to the Moon. First lesson: Open Throat. A new song, a new month, the work deepening.
The name is Bond. Vox Bond. And starting Monday, your voice goes on assignment.
Seven days. Seven missions. Each one targeting a different vocal problem — delivered as classified intelligence by an agent who has never once apologized for the sound of their voice.
The dossier:
🕵️ Day 1 — DR. YES (open throat)
🎤 Day 2 — GOLDSINGER (forward placement, the ring)
💨 Day 3 — THUNDERBAWL (breath support — the diaphragm strikes back)
🎵 Day 4 — THE SPY WHO SANG TO ME (tone, truth)
🎸 Day 5 — LICENCE TO BELT (full voice, no apology)
😮💨 Day 6 — SIGHFALL (when the voice falls open)
🎙️ Day 7 — NO TIME TO MUTE (everything, combined)
Each morning: a new briefing, a field exercise, and a watchword to say out loud.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: find the voice that was always licensed to sing.
Seven of the best play-based voice activities from the archive — available to everyone, no membership required.
A noir mystery. A Grimm-style fairy tale. A vintage romance novel. A punk week. A comedy week. A Shel Silverstein poetry week. A 1950s newsroom. Every one of them secretly a technique lesson.
Your voice doesn't need more pressure. It needs permission.
A monthly editorial magazine — deeper into the science, the philosophy, the voice. Issue 5 is about The Emotional Dial, the shadow, and the voice that was always yours. Four back issues included when you sign up.
Clients and students are aware that their hard work is paying off. It's inspiring to see people continue to strive day after day to achieve the healing voice goals.
What anger are you carrying that was never yours to name? Not just the anger you felt — the anger that was handed to you. From a parent who couldn't process their own. From a family system where certain feelings weren't allowed. From a culture that punished the expression of it.
Where does it live in your body? And what has it cost you to keep it stored there?
The voice is a safe place to put it. That's the whole point of this week.
$97.00
Voice Liberation Method Course
Your voice isn't broken. It's blocked.
Blocked by tension. By fear. By things that happened to you that you may not even... Read more
Place one hand on your diaphragm — just below the ribcage.
Take a breath all the way down into that hand. Feel the expansion.
On the exhale — let out a sound. Not a pretty sound. Not a controlled sound. Whatever wants to come. A hum with some weight. An open vowel with some heat.
Feel the diaphragm engage. Feel the sound being powered from below rather than squeezed from the throat.
Do it three times. Each time, let the sound carry a little more of what's been stored there.
The body doesn't need you to name it. It just needs somewhere for it to go.
Seven weeks of trauma-informed voice work — vocal technique, speech exercises, guided visualizations with original music, nervous system education, and journal prompts — all inspired by the same methods I use in my private coaching sessions.
A single private session with me is $150 for 60 minutes. Seven sessions would cost you $1,050. The Voice Liberation Method gives you over 7 hours of that same work for $97. That's a savings of over $950.
This is the course I wish I'd had when I was a young classical singer with tension in my shoulders that nobody thought to ask about. Now it's yours.
"Voice Liberation is full of tools for my toolbox! It's working. I'm trying to get through the vocal exercises then go back and do the lessons! The content. Wow." — Belinda Williams, VLM student
"Once I let go of the fear of singing the song wrong in our last Courage Circle, was when my voice was able to be unleashed. This journey of reclaiming my voice has taught me so much of myself so far." — BellaShanti, Foundation member
"This was a fantastic session. I learned so much about how the vocal instrument works, and the emphasis on somatic awareness opened up a whole new approach for me. It's amazing how one can go for decades using the voice without ever really understanding it, and what a difference it makes when knowledge and experience are put together in a structured way. Also, it was just plain fun." — Steven Brent, Practitioner member
"Working with you has helped me to overcome my fear, follow my own inner voice and give it expression. The Community is very supportive and the content is extremely rich." — Stephanie, Zürich, Switzerland — Mastery member
The harmonium changed my practice. There's something about the drone — it drops you into your body faster than almost anything else I know. I've had both of mine for years and I wouldn't trade them.
Old Delhi Music is where I got them. Colorado-based, independently owned, exceptional quality.
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