3 tips to find your voice | Kei Worry | TEDxLosAltosWomen

The Power of Breath and Voice: A Journey of Finding and Using Your Voice

Key Concepts:

Vocal Identity: The inherent value of one’s accent and unique vocal characteristics.
Communication Partner Focus: Prioritizing understanding the listener in effective communication.
Voice as an Instrument: Recognizing the voice as a physical tool requiring care and warm-up.
Vowels & Consonants: The fundamental building blocks of speech.
Vocal Masking: The potentially harmful practice of altering one’s natural voice.
Autonomy & Voice: The link between being understood and maintaining independence.

Early Experiences & The Birth of a Small Voice

Kay Worry, a speech-language pathologist, begins by sharing her personal journey, rooted in childhood experiences of feeling like an outsider. Born in 1974, she recounts being bullied at her Japanese nursery school (huang) at age three or four, where classmates chanted “gajing” (foreigner) at her. This traumatic experience, culminating in a week-long coma after a kick to the head, instilled a deep-seated need to blend in.

Moving to Tokyo and attending the American School in Japan offered a different environment, filled with other biracial children. However, a similar rejection occurred when a classmate, Kristen, declared, “You, you’re not one of us.” This moment, she states, was the “moment my small voice was born,” triggering a lifelong pursuit of assimilation.

The Pursuit of Invisibility & Acting

Driven by this need to belong, Worry meticulously crafted an image of fitting in. She details specific examples: acquiring Esprit and Benetton clothing (unavailable in Japan), excelling at tennis with the goal of becoming Chris Evert, and surprisingly making the cheerleading squad despite having no prior experience. Cheerleading, she explains, provided a protective shield, allowing her to become “invisible” and avoid further rejection.

This pattern of adapting to fit in led her to pursue acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, specifically the Experimental Theater Wing. Her intention wasn’t to be seen, but to “perfect the art of disappearance.” She contrasts the experience of New York City – loud yet isolating – with her upbringing in Japan, highlighting the paradoxical nature of visibility and invisibility. She spent ten years as an actress.

From Acting to Speech-Language Pathology: A Shift in Purpose

After a decade in show business, Worry sought a more “altruistic” path, leading her to pursue a Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology. She began her career at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, working with patients with severe brain injuries – gunshot wounds, traumatic brain injuries, anoxia, hangings, burns, strokes, and brain cancers. She expanded her work to encompass various hospital departments, including emergency rooms (where assessing speech is crucial for diagnosis) and outpatient clinics, also working at El Camino Hospital and Stanford Hospital.

Opening her own practice in Los Altos followed a divorce, utilizing an office space previously used for marriage counseling. She emphasizes the irony of a woman once silenced now teaching others to speak.

The Breadth of Her Practice & The Importance of Being Understood

Worry’s current practice serves a diverse clientele, ranging from premature infants (working on swallowing at 31 weeks gestation) to elderly patients (often experiencing difficulty being heard due to stroke or dementia). She notes that the inability to be understood directly impacts autonomy, as others must intervene in decision-making. She also works with individuals seeking accent modification, particularly business executives.

Three Key Takeaways for Effective Communication

Worry outlines three core principles for effective speaking:

Focus on the Communication Partner: Speech is never a monologue; it’s always a dialogue with another brain. Understanding the listener’s language and background is paramount.
Embrace Your Vocal Identity: She strongly advises against attempting to “lose” one’s accent, emphasizing that it is a unique and valuable part of one’s identity. She cites the example of individuals, particularly women, lowering their vocal pitch to appear more authoritative (referencing Elizabeth Holmes as an example), warning that this practice can lead to vocal damage.
Treat Your Voice as an Instrument: The voice requires care and preparation, just like a musical instrument. She draws a parallel to actors warming up their voices for 90 minutes before a two-hour performance, advocating for vocal warm-ups before public speaking.

The Mechanics of Speech: Vowels & Consonants

Worry briefly explains the physiological process of speech: exhalation, airflow through the lungs, trachea, and larynx (containing vocal folds), phonation, and articulation through the mouth. She clarifies that all human speech consists of two fundamental sounds: vowels (unobstructed airflow – “ah”) and consonants (obstructed airflow – “p,” “g,” “m,” “l”). She illustrates how the same sounds are represented differently across languages, using the example of “glasses” – “glasses” in English, “meta” in Japanese, and “net” in French.

Conclusion: Your Voice Matters

Worry concludes by reiterating that her journey has been about finding and using her voice after a childhood of silencing. She emphasizes that the world doesn’t need a “perfect” voice, but your voice – a culmination of your life experiences. She encourages the audience to embrace their unique vocal identity and share their voices with the world, recognizing that the ability to speak is a powerful and fundamental aspect of being human. She acknowledges the remarkable women in the audience and affirms that their voices are not small or ordinary.