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Apr 9, 2026
🫶🏼 Vanessa called me out and she wasn't wrong
🫶🏼 Vanessa called me out and she wasn't wrong
00:00
03:40
Transcript
0:00
Last week, I wrapped up my intensive with the wonderful Vanessa Santos, who asked our cohort what we were committing to and what we were excited about. I said I was committing to my voice.
0:11
And truthfully, I was also excited about that because what I didn't say out loud in that moment, pero I'm sharing contigo, is that I've spent most of my life doing the exact opposite, quieting my voice, perfecting it, editing it down to something that felt acceptable enough to share.
0:27
I grew up speaking Spanish first, and I learned early that wasn't something this country was going to celebrate.
0:32
So I quickly learned English, hid my accent, figured out how to fit in, and after a while, I got so good at it that I stopped noticing I was doing it.
0:41
Fast-forward to therapy, where my therapist hit me with the most uncomfortable question of my life. "Who is Viri? Without the roles, the titles, the responsibilities, who is she?"
0:52
That question is what started a lot of this, the blogging, the writing, the newsletter, small doses of sharing my voice with the world just to see what would happen.
1:01
But even this newsletter, which literally exists because of that question, became another space where I perfected myself yet again.
1:09
I journal, I free write, and then I refine, refine, refine until it doesn't sound messy anymore, until it sounds good enough, which is deeply funny and also sad because this entire brand is built on the idea that in progress is the point.
1:25
So when Vanessa called me out on perfecting my writing, I knew I had to do something about it.
1:30
Así que I downloaded Whisperflow, a speech-to-text app that lets me just share all of my thoughts out loud while capturing every word.
1:38
Instead of staring at a blank page and editing myself as I type, I let my thoughts out and find the story in my actual words. The first few recordings, [laughs] I deleted them.
1:49
I sounded robotic, stiff, like I was reading from a script I'd already memorized and was still somehow getting wrong. Even alone, talking into my own phone, I was performing.
1:59
I had to ask myself questions to shake it loose. What would I tell a friend? How would I actually say this if I didn't care about the critique? And slowly, eventually, something cracked open.
2:10
I stopped overthinking and just started talking. It felt like exhaling after holding my breath for years. That is what I've been missing.
2:19
Not a better version of my voice, but permission to let it out without immediately reaching for the delete button.
2:26
And the more I give myself permission to explore that, the more I realize how much of me hasn't made it onto the page yet.
2:33
Bookstagram has been quietly cracking me open in that direction, letting me just be someone who loves books without it needing to mean anything bigger, and I want more of that. So drum roll, I'm starting a podcast.
2:47
Actually, you're listening to it now. [laughs] For now, it'll be audio versions of this newsletter, me reading my own words. No formal script, no production, just this.
2:58
As I get more comfortable, I'm genuinely excited to see where it goes. That's what I'm committing to, voice. The full, messy, multilingual, dog mom, wakes at midnight, reads too many books version of it.
3:10
Don't get me wrong, I'm nervous AF, and I continue to wonder if I'm too much or not enough or somehow both at the same time.
3:18
But I think at age thirty-two, my voice has been quiet, edited, and small, and been small for far too long. It's time to let it out, to let it breathe, and to genuinely consider what's the best that could happen.
3:32
Recuerda, your voice was never the problem. It was just waiting for you to stop apologizing for it.
Perfectamente in Progress
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