The Language of Stone

Examining a Life Through Voice by Elizabeth Dyer

Sometimes it begins with the smallest betrayal of the body. A narrowing of the throat. A tightening of the muscles.

There’s something lodged there.

Not a single rock, but many. A collection polished by time and memory.Amber and obsidian, one streaked with turquoise like the veins of the desert.

Historical striations showing eras of anxiety, but also beauty.

It is in these moments I return to childhood, to the shameful bruise of being born female in mid-century America. I shed tears for sad circus clowns for missing children, for sad endings.

I became angry when witnessing injustice - kids being mean, teachers, picking on unruly children.This ache in my chest was dismissed with a phrase meant to contain me:

You are too sensitive. 

My childhood pulsed with words. A confusing world, so I turned to writing and reading. I lived in the spines of library books and on the hushed tones of adults as I eavesdropped.

A well of qualities sustained me. 

Sensing, seeing, loving, feeling are the guides that I drew on.

At eight-years-old,  I began writing, filling journals with things I couldn’t say out loud.

Written words became my oxygen. 

In high school, the smooth rocks that  blocked my throat, moved aside. My voice grew stronger as I grew taller. I  used my voice to question, to argue, to sing, and to protest. 

I found strength in marching, in movement, in the rhythm of my breath.

I was beginning to understand that my voice could be shaped and sharpened. That it could stretch outward from the body carrying conviction.

With each decade, my voice changed. 

I discovered that love, too, has a voice, low and full of murmurings in the dark that grows louder with longing.

Motherhood brought a new register.

I sang lullabies not written down.I whispered made-up tales to a baby who didn’t speak but understood everything. My voice became cotton and warm milk.

Later ambition borrowed my voice.

I taught.

I led.

A room full of students writing together became joyful celebrations. A long life and too many losses, too my deaths has a cost.

My voice thinned, and no microphone can fix it. 

Loss has a weight of its own. Sometimes, it presses down too hard. But I am not who I was. I no longer fear silence. I have tools - a pen, a memory, and the patience of a miner.

I know to look closely. There is still gold to be found.

I see the amber glint of kind words.

The shine of sorrow softens with time.

I begin again slowly, picking up my pen, digging through layers… 

learning the language of stone.

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Elizabeth Dyer loves teaching, writing, and journaling. Her writing often explores memory, loss, and the mysterious threads that connect generations. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, where she finds inspiration in nature’s beauty. Elizabeth writes in LITerati Academy’s Sunday morning group - Word Church.

WRITE WITH US:

• Make a timeline of the evolution of your voice, from your first words to your voice today. (three minutes)

• Take each timeline and describe each stage of your voice through metaphor (my first voice was a question, my in love voice thick molasses)

  WRITE FOR 13 MINUTES

• Write about a time in your life when you voice changed. Show us the voice that emerged.

• What was your coming of age voice like, and how does that voice sometimes come out in you now?

• Write about a time of helping to shape the voice of another.

• Like Beth did, write the story of your life through the timeline of your changing voice.