“I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.” – Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope.

I’ve been teaching writing for some years now, and in all these years I’ve hardly ever met a woman or a student who did not  wonder if her story was important or worth telling, or who didn’t believe that it would be of interest to anyone but herself.

In all of that time, I have never heard a man tell me that his story was not important or worth telling, or wouldn’t be of interest to anyone but himself.

Voice is the foundation of identity, and it seems that in our culture many women have had their creative voice taken from them or hobbled, or silenced.

Or taught that no one will care about their stories.

“It’s easier not to say anything,” wrote Laurie Halse Anderson in Speak, “Shut your trap, button your lip,  can it…Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

If you are silent about your pain, wrote Zora Neale Hurston, “they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

I am not a psychiatrist or sociologist, I can’t say for certain why so many people believe no one wants to hear their stories. Millions and millions of people want to hear other people’s stories every day. I am one of them, so, probably, are you or  you wouldn’t be reading this blog..

My very talented and creative wife was nearly mute when we met, I have watched since as she found her voice, and she is as strong as any man’s, and as important.  All she needed was a sense of safety, she did all the rest. Now, her art is all about voice.

No one could silence her now, or make her feel that she should not tell her story. And she no longer doubts that her story is important.

Everyone’s story is important, there are those who know that and believe it, and those who don’t.

Recently, one friend struggled to write a gripping, riveting story of life and death, yet she was nearly paralyzed at the thought of telling it. I know another woman, a student, who was passionate about her life, yet terrified to post her personal feelings on a blog or in public.

Joseph Campbell wrote that in his lifetime of teaching, he met thousands of women who were his students who had been creatively undermined by a father, lover, husband, brother or spouse. They gave up their bliss and creative ambition and often, he found, led what he called “substitute” lives.

Many came back to him later to try and re-capture their bliss. Many did, he wrote.

His belief was that many men were instinctively threatened by women with a strong voice, and often pressured or undermined them out of following their hearts when it came to writing or expressing themselves creatively. Get a day job. It’s dangerous out there.

Many women have told me that some women are also threatened by other women with strong voices.

Today, many women who were silenced are beginning to tell their stories. Many women and men are  hearing them. It is, to me, a story-teller, a stirring thing.

I had a student once who made it clear in her writing – which she shared with no one – that she had been abused by a parent, and shrouded in shame, she had never told anyone. I encouraged her to write her story, and she did, and she found her voice and  her strength. People did care about it. People wanted to hear it.

I believe it is so important to find one’s voice, man or woman. I believe everyone’s story is important, and needs to be told. I believe blogs have given people an extraordinary new tool to tell their stories, find their voices, give people strength.

In a sense, we are our stories. Through all of my trials and difficulties, I believed that my story was important, I always told it, through depression and panic and illness. I believe that telling my story saved me, grounded me. Maria feels the same way.  I belong to group called The Creative Group At Bedlam Farm, it is an online group based on Facebook, although many of us know one another face-to-face now.

We drink up one another’s stories, encourage one another to tell them, celebrate the good that they do. I vowed some time ago to tell my story in an open way, to free myself of secrets, to liberate myself from shame and guilt and sorrow. My stories have done everything I wanted them to do, and I tell them still.

There are men and women on the group, but to me, the most compelling thing I have seen there are the women who have decided to find their voice, share their lives, end their silence.

They emerge from the silence and  find their center, their voice,  their art and their salvation.  They often find their partners as well. Their blogs are a catalogue of strength and voice and endurance, a record of bravery, and honesty and voice.

Stories presage rebirth and resurrection, they are a harbinger of true voice.

I thought of this several times recently. Once, when I saw a clip online this morning of  Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress and director. We don’t have a TV. For much of my life, a porn star was someone who would have been vilified and dismissed and persecuted for what she did and was. She knows the importance of telling her story.

She looked into a TV camera during an interview that would probably have paralyzed most people with fear,  and told her truth in a strong and unwavering voice. She had found her voice, she seemed invulnerable to me. She seemed authentic. She knew her story was important, she was determined to tell it with humor and honesty, even some decency.

I find her affair mundane and sordid in many ways, what she did was an alien thing to me, but I admired her conviction that her story was important and that she had a right to own it and tell it, even though she once sold it for money. Something about her authenticity and ownership of her life touched me.

Many people I talk to about Stormy Daniels look at me in puzzlement, they aren’t following that story, they sniff, as if it is beneath their dignity and mine. But I see in Stormy so many of the women who have been silenced, who never knew that they could say no, or tell their stories. She is telling her story, and a new story for many others.

Who would have thought that a porn star would tell her story to the whole world, in the face of risk and threats, and be heard.

Her story had pride and dignity, as the best stories do.

I believe this: When people don’t tell their stories or speak their voices, they die once piece at a time. And when they tell their stories, they come back to life, one piece at a time.