What My Daughter Has Taught Me About Communication

I’m bilingual. I write for a living. Then, my daughter taught me that a voice doesn’t need words to be heard.

While she was working on finding her words, I was working on understanding just how powerful communication is outside the bounds of spoken language.

What I found, is that a voice without words is like a melody.

It hums; each note, gesture, look and emotion carrying meaning that can only be understood when I turn off my rational mind and dare to feel my way to meaning. It’s a language of deep connection – where I am only invited when I let go of expectations and connect with every part of myself to be an active part of the melody.

And when we’re speaking without words in this melody of connection, it is the most beautiful language in the world. It is a language without lies, without pretend. It is real. It is raw. It is deep. And it is so so clear.

When we don’t sync, the melody fades or plays out of tune.

I’ve learnt not to force it, because like any song, pushing the volume will only make it louder… but it won’t change the song. It will get stuck on repeat, a frustrating off-tune melody that quietly vibrates and drives distance, and while my instinct is to push, it only drives the real melody out of reach, away, hiding as if it never existed.

I know this, because I’ve done it. I’ve lost the melody, desperately trying to find it but instead creating so much noise that it couldn’t be heard.

So now, instead, I surrender. I let go off everything I think I know, and listen to the silence that isn’t a silence at all, but a melody without words, and I sit still with love and awe until I feel the hum of our song.

It is my favourite place to be.

Because in this melody, nothing else matters. In this melody, we are enough simply because we are here and because we love. We are one. Free and wild and zen and borderless and humming

— humming the unwritten melody with the sweetest voice that doesn’t need words to be heard.