We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dianna Leeder a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Dianna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
My defining moment came when I realized how much of me had gone into helping people, primarily women, use their voices. When my career began, I spent several years working with women who were experiencing domestic violence, providing safety, security and a place to share and begin to heal from their often horrific experiences. After that, I worked in community development, helping communities access the services and structures they needed to live happy and healthful lives.
After moving across the country and starting my career again, I realized that I had been operating from a hushed voice myself, making decisions based on others’ needs over my own and living in misalignment with myself. I never imagined being in business for myself, but my healing journey took me into coaching where I was able to support other women with their silencing, using a model I created from my decades of work in the field. From there, I was also able to author a 4 book series Find Your Voice, Save Your Life, and create a Find Your Voice Healer Certification program for holistic practitioners to use in their own work.
My left forearm sports a tattoo that says “look inside.” That was the commitment I was making to myself. I can’t do anything without that reminder staring right back at me. Committing myself to the practice of looking inside for my own answers through self-reflection, meditation and conscious decision-making, allowed me to take responsibility for being the human I wanted to be. No more falling to shame, or the fear of not being accepted by others, I learned to show up, stand up, and speak up with courage, confidence, and loving clarity.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Being a life-long social service advocate, coaching was an easy stretch for me. Although I hadn’t imagined being in business for myself, I knew that I needed the freedom to be me in whatever work I did, making working for someone else out of the question. My coaching training turned out to be incredibly healing and helped me gain the courage to go out on my own.
Part of the driver of my business independence was the need to establish my practice in such a way that women knew it was ok to be seen and heard for whoever they were, that no matter what they had experienced they were still whole. To do that I had to be that, both personally and in my business. That meant being authentic in my programs, my teaching, my writing, and even my choice of language, looking inside of me at what I needed, instead of looking outside for direction or self-acceptance. Human conditioning and social rules teach us to show up as dictated, not as we self-determine and I believe that our mental, emotional and physical health has suffered as a result.
Luckily, I don’t mind being different. Different in so many cases is showing up as our inner self determines. Different is prioritizing our own health and well-being so we can share love and care around us. Different is knowing that we can say yes to what serves us and no to what doesn’t resonate. I recall at the beginning of my practice having someone suggest that people might take me more seriously if I didn’t curse, but that was never my goal. My goal was and still is, to honour my own individuality and model that healing concept to those around me, including my clients.
The typical experience of voice-less or voice-quieted women is to take our cues from others, hiding our true selves in the process. In our everyday behaviour, we shut ourselves down as we pay close attention to others and work very hard to make sure we are keeping other people happy. On some level, we all want to help others be happy but when it becomes a lifestyle for us, we’re not keeping ourselves happy.
The most common response I hear from my community about that is that we don’t have enough time to do it all, The truth is that, for a variety of reasons, we feel the need to deny ourselves our human and spiritual right to feel good. We hide our needs simply to fulfill the negative belief that our worthiness, our acceptance, even our love for ourselves, must come from others. When that is our experience, our voices are hushed or completely silent.
When we live silenced without full expression of our needs, wants and desires, we are not in alignment with our inner selves. We’re not paying attention and fulfilling our own needs, and our bodies and souls know that. We are ignoring the truth about what we really want and how we want to experience it. I’m talking about being unable to say YES to ourselves and NO to doing what doesn’t meet our needs. That can easily lead to disease in the body, chronic pain, discomfort, a negative mindset, and worse. My own mother’s inability to put her health and well-being first took her to an early grave. This is not about selfishly getting your needs met while ignoring the world, it’s about strengthening yourself from the inside out so you can do everything you actually want to do in this lifetime, including spreading so much love that the world feels you deeply.
We need our voices to do that. Using our voices to express our needs, wants and desires opens us up to getting those needs met. The odds of being fulfilled in that case are much higher than if we continue to live in misalignment by ignoring ourselves. We use our voices to express what we want, then we allow ourselves to experience what we’ve expressed, including all that brings us delight, contentment, happiness, and joy. Even bliss is on the table for us to choose from.
Is using our voices scary? It can be, or we would have all done it by now. Most of us aren’t raised to be voiceful or to honour what we know we need and as we grow into adults, there are many things that can get in our way. Our ancestors may have experienced similar silencing in their lifetime that has been carried forward with us. Our family upbringing may have offered us less than positive beliefs about our self-worth. The experience of trauma can keep us from choosing ourselves. In my practice, we do deep inner work in groups to discover what’s in our way to our full expression and full self-honour. We pay attention to ourselves and follow the path that will create our happiness.
I feel proud to extend the understanding to others that you get what you want when you find your voice. Through a combination of my own voice-quieted experiences and what I have learned from my clients over decades of voice work, I created a model called Find Your Voice, Save Your Life. This model is tried and true, and takes us through the practical steps to honour who we authentically are and healthily express ourselves. Writing our stories helps us release negative histories. Taking responsibility for our experiences going forward allows us to know ourselves so we can speak to who we are and what we need. Making conscious choices means we are in constant self-reflection to match our choices with our resonant needs.
My programs all have the goal of empowering women (and men through a male practitioner) to live for themselves. Individuals are invited to join groups of those walking in their shoes right along with them. The abundance of human support in groups has proven to be tremendously transformational for members. In my 3-6 month programs, we take time to learn how to honour ourselves when our patterns have been to ignore us for others, especially when we think it’s safer to stay quiet and ignore the self. We learn our own triggers and how we can bring ourselves back to centre by self-supportive practices.
I run both free and paid groups for women about voice. Please reach out to me if you’d like more information about them.
Finding and using your voice is not about telling someone off when you’re angry with them. It’s so much deeper and fulfilling than that. It’s learning to honour yourself and feel good about it. No more shame, blame, woulda-coulda, shouldas. Just the inner power of peace and self-alignment, and knowing that you’ve got this.
Not that I would replace my own experience with my own voice, it’s been such an integral part of my personal and professional growth, but I kinda wish programs like these were available when I needed them!
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
Yes, hands down. Supporting people to find their voices is my purpose as well as my business, and allows me to connect with a deeper meaning of work. For me, it’s not a 9-5 repetitive routine. This is heart work for me. The inner healing that can be accessed by using our voices allows us to improve our relationships with others as well as ourselves, something that most humans are looking for. The journey to finding and using our voices is foundational to living happy, fulfilling lives and I witness that every day. It’s an honour and a privilege to be able to support people on that journey.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
I find having connections and collaborating with other practitioners most helpful for me. We all come to this work from a different place and often need to heal our own wounds along the way. Training doesn’t always cover everything one will experience in this business and triggers will show up for all of us. Having a group of other practitioners who know and support one another allows us to do this work ongoing. We learn from our clients and we learn from each other, making us all even better at what we do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cravemorelife.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diannaleeder/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CraveMoreLife/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianna-leeder-238b21220/
- Other: Find all 4 books in my Find Your Voice, Save Your Life series on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BG6BMV8 Join my free private Facebook group for women and voice: https://www.facebook.com/groups/632060960812825