[How to find your voice. Journey from the whisper to the cry]
[Melania Medeleanu]
(Applause)
Servus.
(Laughter)
Before you know if you have hairs, if you are blonde or brunette,
if your eyes are blue or green or brown or black,
Before you hold your arms,
sometimes even before knowing if you are a girl or a boy,
your parents find out about you an extraordinary thing:
that you know how to yell, brother, no joke.
For this scream you are very much appreciated.
It’s your first exam.
And for most of us, the first ten.
When we are born, our voice is so strong and determined
and does not hinder any obstacle.
With time, however,
this voice for which we have been so praised,
somehow begin to bother.
More and more often hear from various sources, but with the best intentions,
a “Baby Me, Shut up!”
(Laughter)
Or: “I’m talking big people now!”
Or, “You will open your mouth when you have a word to say in this house!”
And my favorite: “Miss, please measure your words.”
(Laughter)
And you’re starting to measure them.
First, the words, then the intensity with which you throw them into the universe,
and ultimately the trust you tell them.
And your voice, slightly easy, gets whispered.
It took me almost 30 years to find my voice.
Thirty years of whispers.
I was so afraid, not to say stupid,
do not laugh at me, not disappoint,
not to be ridiculous, not to bother someone,
that I prefer to silence.
Give me a sheet of paper and write a novel,
give me the email address and send you all my ideas,
but do not ask me to talk.
And I know that for some of you this might seem paradoxical,
maybe there are people among you
who saw me on TV with their eyes and heard my voice.
It was not me.
(Laughter)
I mean, it was me,
I was, but I was in a very well-prepared role.
I rarely happened to go to TV without knowing what I was saying.
And something else happens,
somehow inexplicable,
when the red light from the camera came on
I suddenly became a woman, a speaking being often impossible to stop.
But this is because …
because that camera was a mirror for me.
But it was not the mirror I saw as I was,
but how I wanted to be.
Just that, regardless of the number of hours spent in the broadcast,
sooner or later,
the red light from the room was extinguished, and I was back in silence.
For talking every day, on television or not,
it does not mean you have a voice.
It does not mean that at all.
I did a psychology faculty, come on, I can find the voice!
Some kind of courses, voice, voice! I did not find it.
The voice I found,
sometime, on a spring day in 2010,
when some children made my heart harcea-parca.
They were fastening their nets like that when we left the placement center,
not before I ask when I get back and if I take them home
and I know I was trying to break them off when I left.
I had no idea then that they were already irreversibly stuck.
For them I went back to school.
They had not been stimulated enough, they could not speak very well,
so because I did not find a logoped who would volunteer,
I did a masters in speech therapy
and all I learned in the evening, the next day I went to the children
and we applied to them and heard more complicated sounds and words,
and when I heard their voice,
for me this was really the most beautiful sound in the universe.
But even when I heard their voice,
she was still mythical.
And he did not manage to deal with all the injustices that were happening there.
So for a while I dared to be their voice.
I went to school, kindergarten, I was talking to the educators,
with doctors, with those from Child Protection,
with anyone who could make life a little nicer.
I ask in their name, to cry in their name,
to knock with the fist sometimes,
there were things I did not even know.
I started talking in the second when it was not about me
and my fears.
From time to time I meet with them through the village.
Some of them are now large, are in maternal assistance,
I’m in high school, and when I see them I’m gonna get them in my arms
and let them know and I know they are so owed,
that my voice has come from them.
And the lesson we’ve taken then is the first step to getting a voice
it’s listening and caring.
The voice has not disappeared since then.
But I’ve learned hard to calibrate it.
And the price was huge.
If for the children at the placement center
only a few accents were needed and things began to move,
for Alex I would have needed a portavoce.
Alex Hogea, number 60.
He died in Vienna where he arrived too late.
Because you probably remember that in Romania I had everything.
We had conditions like in Germany.
If I had insisted then more,
to the doctor who decided Alex was not transportable,
although we had information from inside
that not only is it transportable but must leave,
to go to a place where there are conditions
and there is expertise to treat the big burns.
If I cried louder then!
Maybe Alex would have been here with you in the gym today, because he was the kind.
It was like us.
I will never forget Narcissus and Mihaela,
his parents talking at the door of the hospital in the whisper,
not to bother.
And if today I have a voice, and if today I can cry,
it’s because somewhere, closer to us than we think,
someone talks about whispers in the whisper.
Or does not speak at all.
The higher the stake,
the more they try to silence you.
And then your voice needs to be even stronger.
Even more determined!
They will throw in you with mud,
they will try to diminish you,
they will say that you do not understand anything and stay in your square,
with fairies and children and rainbows.
You know then
that’s when your voice starts to count.
sometimes
you lose your voice completely.
No matter how strong you know,
there is no word left.
She’s Francesca.
Cancer stole his feet, but what he did not manage to steal is courage.
In Magicamp, the children’s camp with oncological diseases
through which hundreds of children and volunteers have already gone
and doctors and some of them are so happy they are
in this room this evening.
We have built an adventure park
with suspended bridges and a 100-meter tire
and an eight-meter climbing panel.
And Francesca looked at each child
who climbs that panel.
And I asked her:
“Francesca, will you?”
I put it in the ham,
her climbing fellow pulled her and Francesca started climbing.
One hand after the other, one socket after the other,
until he got up there up the top of everything.
Having seen his face,
she was, she was so happy, so happy,
that happiness that silences you.
And if at such times you lose your voice, do not scare yourself.
OK.
It’s just the moment you’re breathing
so that your next voice will be heard even harder.
Because they taught you the courage.
Perhaps among you in the room is someone who is still looking for his voice.
It’s somewhere out there,
just waiting for a chance to get to the surface
and I am convinced that there are plenty of ways to bring it to light,
but I did not find another.
And if one way or another my trip can help you,
do not forget:
find a way, find something, find a cause to believe.
Ask her in her name, fight in her name.
Wait for someone to hinder you.
It’s a sign that you’re on the right track.
Be prepared to be amused by beauty.
And if your voice, no matter how powerful,
it is not heard at the level of injustice,
look around, you will definitely find people
with which you can unite your voice.
Sit beside them and shout.
Your voice will then be the voice of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people
and can not be ignored.
Shout! Shout like when you came to the world
and nothing and no one could stop you and stop your cry!
Shout!
And then you will know that you have found your voice.
(Applause)
”
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