How I Confronted my Fear of Public Speaking

I confronted my fear of public speaking by f*cking doing it.

If there's something Venezuelan people have is that we're badass people. We're also very kind and generous people. And nurturing, and caring, and many other loving attributes, but mainly badass.

Why badass? Because we don't take no bullsh*t from anyone. We would tell you the truth to your face without anaesthesia, even if it hurts. And we will defend ourselves from any form of injustice if we're facing one. Of course, I'm generally speaking but mainly talking about myself here. Those are one of my main inherited traits from being Venezuelan. And being like that can be a blessing as well as it can be a curse.

It all comes from trauma. After having grown up in a country where you literally have to scream and talk over each other to be heard, and where basic human rights are violated over and over again, I learnt to always be defensive and protective of myself. At the same time, that's what made me a badass woman; I know how to set my boundaries quite clear. This is paradoxical for me as I sometimes have crossed my own boundaries, and have let others cross them too; because of not knowing how to say NO, or because I was fearing someone's reaction as a consequence of my NO.

How does this relate to the fear of public speaking? Well, the fact that I learnt to scream to be heard and to always defend myself in the presence of what I thought was injustice doesn't mean that I knew how to properly let my voice be heard. In fact, I had to relearn how to express my needs and desires in a way that wouldn't come across as an imposition or a demand; that was the only way that would work for me in the past. I had to learn how to express my needs, desires and boundaries from a place of peace and safety rather than survival and lack. 'Yes Yhonet, it is really worth it talking to your housemates about the annoyance you feel when it's only you who takes the bins out every weekend. Yes, you can say it in a calmed manner rather than angry, because adults can find solutions when they sit and express their needs'.

'Yes Yhonet, it is safe to sing in public even if you are out of tune sometimes; at least you're trying! Nobody is gonna come and say booooo to you in the middle of your act. And yes, you can always be better, you can always do it better, but you are good enough as you are right now so keep doing it...'

Yes, I have to talk to myself like that sometimes; otherwise, I just hide behind the less visible corner to die and go rotten on the inside while my body is still breathing and not sharing my gifts with the world. Yes, I'm not Whitney Huston or Amy Winehouse but I have a voice is worth sharing and hearing. I have poems and songs that have real wisdom in it and they can resonate with other people. They can guide others to their own truth just from pure resonance. And yes, my pitch and frequency might not be to the taste of everyone, but so it is any food we eat or any colour we wear. It doesn't f*cking matter who likes it or not. I just simply need to do it.

So here I am, facing this new challenge of singing for a Venezuelan protest in Bristol, in the middle of town, in College Green, in front of Bristol City Council and I'm terrified to my bones because one; I'm gonna sing Venezuelan songs, which is one of the most difficult and complex music ever written in the world. Two; I only had barely two weeks to prepare and didn't have time to properly learn those songs the way I should have learnt them: note by note and really memorising the words so I could be confident in my performance rather than thinking what's the next phrase. Three; facing the "I'm not good enough" syndrome in the middle of the performance; because let's face it, after ten years of studying music, I still don't feel good enough because I haven't learnt enough, because I haven't learnt all there is to learn in music, and because I've been trying to live (survive) of this art while living life in a foreign country. Not easy. Yes, I'm never gonna be good enough and I simply need to accept that and be content with being good enough for myself, not for what other people expect of me. Four; I start comparing myself with other musicians, and think 'how dare I to be here singing these songs without knowing them properly? What a dishonour to the Venezuelan artists that wrote them and performed them before me'... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You get the juice of the anxiety I was feeling, right?

These many fears coming up before and during the performance were the best recipe for disaster. As expected, my nervous system collapsed and in the middle of a song, my voice started cracking and without being able to hold the mask any longer and keep forcing myself to keep going, I broke into tears and had to stop singing. I had to leave the stage and cry. I wasn't just crying out of shame. I was also crying out of grief. Because I was singing a song called 'Venezuela' which talks about the beauty and the nostalgia of leaving Venezuela behind. This song was written and composed by the Spanish musicians Pablo Herrero Ibarz y José Luis Armenteros Sánchez; originally written to be interpreted by the Venezuelan singer Jose Luis Rodriguez. It ended up being interpreted by many others artists like Luis Silva, Simon Diaz, Mirla Castellanos, amongst others. They are the great of the greatest in the Venezuelan music. And I tried to sing that song… Just writing about it makes me feel shame because I wasn’t prepared enough and it will take me a great deal of practice to be up to standard to perform that song.

The point is that the nostalgia reflected in the song is the same nostalgia I still feel after 19 years of having migrated out of my homeland. The wound of migration goes very deep and it doesn't just heal magically, even if 19 years have passed. In fact, it has taken me almost 20 years to feel the wound. I had masked and numbed it for so long that I never even realised there was such a thing as Migration trauma. I didn't know I was traumatised until I started writing about it on a poetry collection I aim to publish soon that I've titled "Healing my Motherland-Venezuela" because everything that came up when I wrote it was about how wounded I was from surviving all the trauma I survived when I lived there, plus all the trauma I've survived from not being there. It is brutal and deep. And also perfectly normal that I burst into tears in the middle of a song that talks about the same longings and sadness I feel for not being able to live in my own country.

Furthermore, and this is something that a friend of mine made me realise after the concert when I talked to him about all of this; me crying in the middle of the performance was my own form of protest, and I was giving permission to everybody else to be in touch with their emotions publicly. It's a form of protest because I'm showing the world how painful it is to be away from my homeland and not being able to come back because of the danger it represents to live there. And also how painful it is to see my country being controlled by evil forces that are oppressing, repressing and constantly violating Venezuelan's human rights. It's outrageous and equally heart-breaking.

We are a very small community of Venezuelans in Bristol. Or at least, a small group that we are aware of, or that decided to show up. I get it, there's political ideologies and also the willingness to confront the past when you meet Venezuelan people. Everything bubbles up to the surface once more when you encounter people from your land. If you are a migrant, for whatever reason that you decided to leave, there will always be traits form your homeland that you will like and dislike. And you can avoid the undesired ones by not being in direct contact with people from your native place. The news is, that part of the healing process is to be in peace with the disliked ones and accept them as they are. That's the only way to accept ourselves as we truly are because, all the people we reject (as well as the ones we appreciate) are a mirror of the parts of ourselves that we reject, dislike, and had to push down to adapt to a new culture; where unfortunately, certain native traits are not welcomed, like being a badass.

So, circling back to my fear of public speaking; after all the crying, and my broken little girl being exposed to all my compatriots, I took a deep breath and by almost the end of the concert I requested the mic once more to sing one of my songs. 'This is my chance to show who I truly am'- I said to myself. I am the broken traumatised little girl but I'm also the badass Venezuelan woman that has survived migrating by herself to three different countries and that have learnt one thing or two. And something I have learnt over the years is to guide and hold space for others with my acquired wisdom.

So I went up with all my courage (because I had the risk of being broken in front of everyone again) and I grabbed that mic. Before I started my song, I invited everyone to close their eyes and to visualise the people in Venezuela that we've left behind. I guided them to send them love, light, strength and resilience, so they know they are not alone, so they don't lose hope. From here we're also fighting our fight. We are all healing the wound of migration individually and collectively, and this has a direct ripple effect on the people in our land. We are doing ancestral work here, and we have that luxury because we don't have to face daily challenges, like not having electricity or tab water to get along with our days. We don't have to look back if someone's chasing us because we live in a safe place. We are in a privileged position, therefore our only work is to heal. And I say 'only' very lightly, like if that wasn't something big enough to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Yes, it's a privilege and also a big responsibility. We are the ones that had the opportunity to come to more developed countries to live a better life, fulfil our dreams, and also to do the work to heal the migration wound; which I've come to realise it's a human wound, and it's not restricted to any country you had migrated to or from. We all have it, even if you've never left your place of origin, your ancestors might have, or the ancestors of your ancestors might have, and most likely you carry their wounds within you without even realising it. If the original humans came from Africa, that's where it all started.

So yes, I f*cking did it. I grabbed that mic and faced my fear of public speaking by simply doing it. This is not the first time I face this fear. I've been doing this for years now; exposing myself in front of an audience, shaking and feeling like I was about to sh*it myself. The only difference is I hadn't done in front of a Venezuelan crowd before, in the middle of Bristol's town, in a protest for Venezuela's freedom. Believe it or not, it had more significance than any other performance that I've ever done before. This experience was detrimental on my healing journey and it was meant to happen as it did.

And so I spoke and I sang two songs afterwards. And people listened attentively and they came to speak to me, curious about the language I sang on; which is my soul's language, and I don't even know where it comes from. Maybe from another planet, maybe from the lineage of my indigenous ancestors in Venezuela, maybe a mixture of both. The important thing is that it's real and authentic and it comes from me. And I don't sing perfectly, perhaps I never will. I'm simply real and passionate about what I do, which paradoxically is the same thing that scares me the most; singing and speaking in public. They say that if it's scares you, that's where you're supposed to head towards, right? Well, I'm f*ucking doing it and I will always expose myself to do it, even if it's so scary that I will break in tears in front of those who listen. That's the badass Venezuelan part of me.