Find Your Voice or Talents

I was asked in church last Sunday to talk to the Relief Society-our women's organization about finding YOUR VOICE, your talent or unique qualities that only you can develop. I not talking necessarily about just the arts, but people skills too-sensitivity to others, listening, nurturing, encouraging, teaching, leadership, as well as talents in cooking, sewing, crafts, music, art, dance, teaching, speaking, etc.

Stephen R. Covey, LDS Author and my former Bishop at BYU in 1961-50 years ago, said on his blog- The power to discover your VOICE lies in the potential that was bequeathed you at birth. Latent and undeveloped, the seeds of greatness were planted. You were given magnificent “birth-gifts”-talents, capacities, privileges, intelligences, opportunities-that would remain largely unopened except through your own decision and effort. Open these gifts. Learn what taps your talents and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul’s code.

I’ve tried many different avenues of expressing my talents-music wasn’t it, dance was-but my body aged. I love teaching, be it dance, family history, writing or poetry but WRITING really clicked for me: I wrote in a diary when in Jr. High, free verse poems in college, taught poetry in Relief Society while a young mother, was a newletter editor many times, gathered genealogy for 50 years, and wrote 10 or more family histories, then my own bio when I turned 60, a weekly column when I turned 65, a daily blog, and now books self published in my 70s: Looking Back at the Good Old Days, Nature Notes for Kids and my latest FHE for Empty Nesters and Singles. I’ve FOUND my thing. My next book will be entitled How to Find Your Voice through Writing: Journaling, Biography and Poetry.

What is your excitement or passion in your life?