Raising My Hand
Funny how a moment from childhood can follow you for decades, especially when the hardest person to talk over is the one in your own head.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to find your voice, especially in spaces where silence feels safer than speaking up. And a memory from when I was 12 keeps resurfacing.
In Spanish class, we had a reading assignment and a set of discussion questions. The teacher kept asking one particular question, and the room fell into that heavy, awkward silence.
Maybe no one read the book.
Maybe they didn’t know the answer.
But I did.
I remember sitting there, heart thumping, the answer fully formed in my mind, and still, I stayed quiet. Maybe it was shyness, fear of being wrong, or that familiar whisper: “Someone else will answer.”
Before I even tried, I had already counted myself out.
What makes this memory stick is what happened next.
The teacher spent the entire class waiting for an answer she never got.
And the next day, she opened the class with the same question again. Bold move.
Again, silence. Deafening, uncomfortable silence.
But this time, something shifted in me.
I raised my hand.
I said the answer out loud.
And for a kid who mostly lived inside his thoughts, that moment felt like jumping out of a plane, except without the parachute, training, or any actual danger. Just pure, kid sized adrenaline. No wonder I still remember it.
Now, as I watch my son navigate some of his own quieter, more introverted moments, I see echoes of that younger version of myself. And it reminds me how often I’ve had to find my voice in rooms where silence would have felt easier.
Speaking up has never been my default setting.
And maybe that is part of why I am writing now.
Not because I suddenly have everything figured out, but because I have spent years observing, reflecting, connecting dots, and carrying thoughts that were often easier to keep to myself.
My natural instinct has always been to listen first. To notice patterns. To sit with ideas before speaking them out loud.
But insight that never leaves our inner world cannot reach the people who may need it.
So in many ways, this writing is still another version of raising my hand.
Choosing to share the stories, reflections, questions, and lessons that continue to shape me, not perfectly, just honestly.
Maybe finding our voice rarely happens all at once.
Maybe it begins in smaller moments.
A raised hand.
A difficult conversation.
A sentence written honestly.
Sometimes courage arrives quietly first.
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Occasional reflections on coaching, leadership, growth, and the stories that shape us.
