Saying Yes to Your Voice
Last night I attended an event for United Way Gallatin Gateway. They had national TV star and renowned chef Allison Fasano give a talk about how she got to where she is.
At the start of her talk, Fasano shared a poem about a poet wanting to be known; about wanting people to read her poetry so that they would know who she is. To me, the message resonated because it related back to our innate human need for connection, meaning, and wanting to be truly seen for who we are. Later, Allison admitted that she herself had authored the piece.
When Fasano was young, she was very quiet. But she loved Rachael Ray and watched the Food Network constantly. Her father always told her that someday she would be better than Rachael Ray. She didn't believe him at first (how could she ever get up in front of people and speak on television?). But when she was older, she decided she wanted to get better at public speaking. Unbeknownst to any of her friends and family, she would sneak off and participate in open mic nights for poetry readings. Soon enough, that turned into stand-up comedy.
Allison got into the habit of saying yes, which was her key takeaway from the talk. While working in New York, she decided to apply to Chopped, a national cooking show. She said she explicitly remembers one of the application questions: what would your friends and family say about you?
She wrote what her father used to say to her: "You're a pain in the ass, but you're funny as shit." Next thing she knew, she was getting a call to be on the show.
Allison's key message was to say yes and use our voices in order to grow, challenge ourselves, and stand up for what we believe in.
What truly resonated with me, however, was the importance of finding our voice.
In dialogue, finding your voice means pushing past the numerous messages about how we ought to speak or what we ought to believe, and discovering what we truly think and feel, independent of external societal forces. This discovery and vocalization — whether to ourselves, as in Allison's example of sneaking off to open mics without telling anyone, or to others, as in her final application and appearance on national cooking shows — is what truly opens up new possibilities. This is true both in dialogue and in life.
Finding our voice requires self-trust, because only when we believe that what we think is valid do we find our backbone.
Admittedly, sometimes we don't know exactly what to say. In these moments, we have to trust that initial silence can serve as creative space (Anna Yeakley, personal communication, 2026), and that something worth voicing is taking shape within it. Like a Polaroid picture, sometimes time and space is okay, because something beautiful is unfolding. The balance, of course, is recognizing the difference between giving space for creation and hiding in silence born of avoidance, or deferring to someone else's voice instead of finding our own. Even when our own voice isn't fully developed, we must avoid mimicking the fully formed thoughts of others and continue to speak authentically for ourselves.
As Fasano found, through speaking we create. Quite literally, the thoughts we bring forward into the world can create new realities.
Sometimes it's hard to know what our inner voice is actually saying, so we have to listen carefully for it. To find it in dialogue and in life, we can ask: "What do I long to create in this space, and why?" and "What is at risk if I don't take the leap?"
Other times, we do recognize our inner voice. We know what we want to say, but lack the courage to bring it into existence. It is in these moments that Isaacs reminds us, "Who will play your music if you don't do it yourself?"
As a daily dialogue and life practice, one can reflect on the following questions:
What needs to be expressed? By you? By others?
What thoughts are emerging, even if they're not fully formed yet?
How can I jump into the void?
What might I speak that seems forbidden?
Another way to practice taking the jump into speaking our voice, even when thoughts aren't yet fully developed, is to practice improv in order to get used to thinking in the moment. This is similar, I would imagine, to what Fasano found through practicing stand-up comedy.
A phrase from Allison's father was, “if you don't keep putting yourself out there, no one will know you exist.” The same is true in dialogue: our voice becomes real only when we risk speaking it.
Notes
Isaacs, W. (1999). The Art of Thinking Together. Random House.