Exercising My Voice

Every year I run to the polls with two friends, sweaty and hopeful, ready to use our voices. It started as a ritual of movement, but it has become a ritual of meaning. Today I’m writing about what it means to speak up after years of staying small.

In 2016, I started an Election Day tradition with two of my running friends. We live just a mile from our polling site, so for the past nine years, at least two of us have laced up our shoes and shown up, sweaty and stinky, I.D. and reading glasses in hand, ready to exercise our right to vote. I haven’t missed a single year.

It began as a simple ritual. A way to blend something we did for ourselves with something that mattered on a bigger level. But over time, it has become more than that. Every year when we run to the polls, I feel something stirring in me that has nothing to do with speed or mileage. It feels like power. Not the kind that demands attention or volume, but the quieter kind that comes from showing up and using my voice.

I don’t usually talk about politics publicly. My work as a therapist makes me careful about alienating clients who may see the world differently. I have always believed in creating safety for others to bring their full selves, regardless of their beliefs. But lately, keeping my values quiet has begun to feel dangerous. And while I will never bring politics into the therapy room, I can bring them here. Because what I want to share is not really about politics. It’s about using my voice.

When I first ran to vote in 2016, I was in a healthy body and a healthy mind. I wasn’t in the depths of anorexia. I remember the feeling that day, the awareness that I was using my strong female body to use my strong female voice. I was voting for the woman I hoped would break the highest glass ceiling. Her loss felt crushing, though I didn’t yet know how deeply a political loss could burn.

Still, that day stayed with me. The act of showing up stayed with me. Every year since, I have run with one or both of these women, women I admire more than they know, who also take pride in using their voices. There is something sacred about that annual ritual. It is about friendship, movement, and agency all at once. It is a reminder that even the smallest acts of participation can hold meaning far beyond their surface.

What began as an external act of running and voting slowly became an internal practice too. Each stride, each year, each vote, was another small reclaiming of the voice I had spent years silencing. For many years I shrank my voice. I let other people’s comfort dictate my volume. I learned early on that approval was safety, and silence was easier than risk. I hid behind performance, behind the mask of competence, behind hunger and control. I made myself small to be palatable, and in doing so, I disconnected from my own truth.

Recovery has been, in many ways, the slow and steady process of reclaiming my voice. At first it came in whispers: admitting hunger, naming feelings, speaking honestly to the people I love. Then it grew louder, showing up in therapy, in all of my relationships, and eventually, in writing. Each time I tell the truth out loud, I feel a little more whole.

That is part of why this ritual matters so much to me. Running to the polls has become more than a symbol of civic duty. It is a way of embodying my freedom. Every stride reminds me that I have a body that can move, lungs that can breathe, and a voice that can be heard. Each year I arrive sweaty and winded, but also grounded and present.

This morning, as my feet hit the pavement, I felt the familiar rhythm of strength and gratitude. To move. To choose. To speak. To care. Voting may not solve everything, but it is a way of saying, “I am here, and I believe in something bigger than myself.”

I know where I stand. I am a bleeding heart, and I am proud of it. Not because of a party label, but because I believe we are responsible for each other. I believe in taking care of people, especially those without the privilege I have been given. That belief is not political for me. It is personal. It is rooted in everything I have lived and learned.

There was a time when I would have softened that statement, tried to make it sound less opinionated, less “much.” But I am done shrinking to fit. The older I get, the more I understand that power does not come from taking up less space. It comes from standing in the space that is rightfully ours.

When it comes down to it, all we have is our voice and each other. Every time I run to that polling place, surrounded by women who also refuse to be silent, I am reminded of how far I have come. I once ran to disappear, and that part of me still runs beside me sometimes. But on Election Day, I run to be present, to belong, and to be heard.