Losing My Language, Finding My Voice

By Lory Widmer Hess

Several times a day, I find myself at a loss for words. Meaning gets caught unformed behind my teeth, or I puzzle through an avalanche of sounds whose hidden significance refuses to emerge. 

I’m in this fix because in midlife I moved to a place where I’d never learned the language, trailing after my German-speaking Swiss husband and hoping for the best. As an American in Switzerland, I’m a one-language person in a land where everyone else seems comfortable with least three or four. For as long as I could remember, English had been my superpower. Now I’ve lost that strength and had to start over, inarticulate as a newborn. 

In an earlier stage of life, working in editing and communications, I was proud of my knack for correct spelling, my wide vocabulary, my ability to fine-tune manuscripts to better express what their authors wanted to say. I’d been on a quest for perfection in words; these days, when I open my mouth to speak, I can be happy if I come up with any words at all. 

Of course, I know that in many ways the dissolution of my linguistic skill is the best thing that could have happened at this point in my life. It’s good for my middle-aged brain to have to struggle with an unknown tongue, forming new pathways, activating slumbering cells. And although writing in German is beyond me as yet, except at the most basic level, my writing in English has received a new burst of energy. My outer struggle to say something, anything, seems to have dismantled some of the inner obstacles that had kept me creatively silent.

Worry about doing everything right had slowly silenced my authentic voice. Throughout childhood and adolescence, I wrote stories and poems, but my creative efforts came to a halt by the time I turned 40. Even scribbling in a journal set off my inner critic. My writing felt flat, superficial, my life unworthy of observation or sharing. I could help others with their writing, it seemed, but not produce any of my own.

Losing my words broke me out of that prison, freeing thoughts and feelings I’d considered unacceptable and locked away. I was challenged to plunge deeper into the real sources of language, to dare to swim naked in the needs and desires that lie behind our urge to communicate, before we utter a sound or put pen to paper. Forced to access parts of myself I’d long ignored, the parts that bypass intellect to communicate through body, heart, and soul, I shed the defensive shield of words and sank into the swamp of unknowingness. 

Here, as I practiced listening for intention and emotion rather than superficial thought-content, I began to connect to deeper sources of inspiration. Gradually I got out of my head with its swirling anxieties, grounding myself in the alert presence of my body. I was working in a kitchen now, not an office, and as I struggled to follow my supervisor’s instructions and concoct something edible, the effort to discern meaning in gestures and facial expressions was sharpening my attention to sensory detail. Tuning into the rhythm of speech and the subtleties of intonation was making me more sensitive to what speaks through sound itself. All of these efforts, and more, bore fruit when I turned back to writing in my mother tongue. 

When I was able to honestly stay present to myself through the frightening experience of losing my words, opening up to silence rather than resisting it, words started to return to me. And these words were charged with a different kind of energy than the language I’d used to maintain my protective shield of correctness. They were bolder, more surprising, more concrete. They were not about controlling the world I already knew but discovering a new one.

My hampering critical voice grew fainter as I got more relaxed about making mistakes, more willing to experiment, play, and laugh at my own ineptitude. I’d never been willing to say “I don’t understand,” afraid of appearing stupid. These days I say it all the time, knowing I’m not stupid. I am learning. And far from driving everyone away, as I feared for so long, that admission seems to attract others who want to learn something. Cultivating this conversation is now my greatest joy.

If you’re struggling with a creative block, remember this: there is a language beyond words, and that’s how we actually communicate. For a moment, try to hold back the intellect that wants to fix and define everything, and let your body’s wisdom guide you into new territory. What wants to speak, not through words, but through you?

Lory Widmer Hess grew up in the Seattle area but now lives with her family in Switzerland, where she enjoys hiking in the mountains and tries not to eat too much cheese. She currently works as a caregiver for adults with developmental disabilities, who have taught her a great deal about non-verbal communication. She is the author of When Fragments Make a Whole: A Personal Journey Through Healing Stories in the Bible (Floris Books, 2024), and her essays have been published in Parabola, Interweave Knits, Handwoven, Motherwell, Pensive, Vita Poetica, and elsewhere. Visit her website at enterenchanted.com.