Your voice is unique to you. It grows as you grow. It changes as you change. If you’re curious about the relationship between your voice and your body, your heart and your mind, welcome. My name is Michèle Voillequé and I can’t wait to hear you. 

I was just renewing my business license for 2026, and it occurred to me that my business is now old enough to drink. I applied for my first license in 2005, and here we are 21 years later. It feels like a lifetime ago and like yesterday at the same time, like a lot of things, I guess.

I could not have imagined that I would have the business I have today, 21 years ago.

Twenty-one years ago, I knew that I wanted to help children learn to sing how to use their bodies well, how to feel strong and important and empowered and to make beautiful music together and to feel that music was something that’s a part of them, that’s part of their birthright, and that it’s something that they can do. It’s not something we, in air quotes, “leave to the professionals,” that it’s something for everybody.

I started out teaching music to just children in groups. After three years or so, I started teaching adults, and the tagline for my business was, “We’d all have more fun in line at the DMV if we were singing,” and I totally believe that to be true.

And you can tell that this is 21 years ago when you still really did have to stand in line at the DMV. And it could be quite, um, for those of you not in America or new to the country, the DMV is the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s where you go to renew your driver’s license or to get new license plates if you’ve bought a car.

There are several DMV offices in large cities, like there are many different offices where you could go to, in the town where I grew up, there was just one office, and it’s always sort of an experience. It’s like all of humanity there trying to get all of their stuff done: the kids who were trying to pass the test to get their learner’s permit, people who are renewing their driver’s license and finding that they’re failing the eye test. All kinds of drama happens in the DMV.

And now there are systems where you can make an appointment ahead of time so you don’t have to stand in line, and a lot of, like, the regular stuff, like renewing your car’s registration you can do online.

So we don’t actually have to go to the DMV anymore, but back in the day, I remember being in the North Oakland DMV, near Claremont, and just looking at all of us reading our books, reading our newspapers, trying to make the best of a situation we wish we didn’t have to go through.

It’s not that it’s a trauma, it’s just a lot of time in the middle of the day and you’d rather be doing anything else. And I thought we’d all be having a lot more fun if we were singing or folk dancing. Just think of all the friends you could make.

Anyway, that was my tagline and I, I still believe it to be true and there’s something else that I wanna say now about that.

Singing is a lot of fun. It builds a lot of connection with other people. It connects us to ourselves. It releases energy, emotion, trapped in the body in a good and healthy way.

And when you can figure out how to sing without squeezing your throat really tight or straining your neck, or getting your shoulders too involved, or when you can sing and feel like you know what you’re doing with your breath support, it feels really, really good and it’s really good for you.

And after 21 years of teaching, and continuing to learn myself as a singer – I have grown immensely as a singer, as a musician, as a music-maker over this time, too – I’ve really come to respect the fact that to learn how to do those things – not grab in your throat, how to release shoulder tension, how to pay attention to your breath and use your breath well – learning to do those things requires us to pay attention to ourselves in a way that we’re not accustomed to.

On the way to better singing, we can find a lot of stuck places in our hearts and our psyches, in our bodies, and singing can help us move through those stuck places. And moving through those stuck places can help our singing.

So we’d all have more fun in line at the DMV if we were singing – it’s not all easy breezy, la, la, la, la, la, la, la that’s going on when we’re working on our singing voices.

There really is deep inner work that can happen, and I’m here for it. I enjoy both parts of it – just the pure mechanics of helping the body work better and also holding space, making room for someone to figure out, to notice in themselves what that stuckness might be related to, and how to let it go.

Voice lessons with me are not a replacement for therapy and they are not psychotherapy as it’s broadly understood, but the whole process of learning to use your body better for singing or speaking is inherently therapeutic.

So, so here my business is 21 years old, old enough to drink and although I don’t drink at all, I guess we’re fully adult now. MVMusik is now a full-fledged adult, and that’s, that’s just really fun. It’s making me smile today.

When I think about what’s ahead for me, I don’t see shutting down anytime soon.

I’m at that age where retirement planners start to ask you when you’re gonna retire. I’m 55 years old. Some people do retire in their fifties, but honestly, I can’t see myself stopping teaching. In some ways, I’m just now hitting my stride and that, too, is super exciting. So I think there’s at least another 21 years to go.

And what I’m excited about for this year is to offer an online group that’s of a significant length, that’s like five months long, primarily for adults to work on their singing and/or their speaking voice and for us to create a community of support and fun and joy, and also holding the deep work. I am really excited at the thought of being able to help more people than just working with one at a time.

And the online groups that I’ve run before that have been of shorter length, shorter duration, have shown me that that good work is possible and, we do have fun. We do learn, we do experience transformation in the work.

So that’ll be coming later in the year, and if there’s something about that that you wanna talk about, schedule a free consultation and we can talk about it. There’s, as always, there’s a link for that in the show notes.

What I notice about my students is that there are four things that we are all always working on. One of them is managing our vulnerability, managing the fact that when you’re singing or speaking in public or even alone at home, there’s a potential to embarrass yourself. There’s a potential that it won’t go the way you think it, the way you hope it will. There’s always a potential for a mistake or an awkwardness or that they just won’t get it at all, what you’re trying to do.

And to elaborate on my last podcast episode, which was called “Two New Year’s Resolutions,” one of the resolutions is “to practice in the shoes you’re gonna wear when you do the thing,” one of the ways we can help manage our own vulnerability is to imagine what we’re going to feel like when we are doing the thing.  And what could we be feeling and thinking that will lead to the most desired result?

I think a lot of us, we leave our nervous system out of the equation, or we think we can’t do anything about it. Like, “I’m going to do this thing, I’m gonna do this thing in fancy shoes, whatever it is, and I’m gonna feel nervous. And that is just the truth of it. That’s just what’s gonna happen.”

And while I agree, when we do “big things,” let’s just call it that, when we do Big Things, we do tend to feel nervous, and nervousness is normal. And we can imagine what the Big Thing is going to feel like ahead of time and start practicing what it’s going to feel like in our body, in your mind.

What are you going to be thinking when you’re doing the Big Thing? Or actually a better question, or what would it help to be thinking when you’re doing the Big Thing?

Maybe you’re giving a short talk, a short presentation, like at a Lunch and Learn, or for your office or maybe for your church group, you’re going give a short talk about something that’s important to you, and that means you’re going to have to stand up in front of other people and say something.

It would be really helpful to have a thought in your mind that you belong, that you’re safe. This is a group of people who respects you, that’s why they’re asking you to speak. They want to hear what you have to say. “I belong. I’m safe. I’m respected. I have something to offer that’s valuable. I want to connect with them and they are waiting to connect with me.”

Going into a situation where you’re giving a short talk with those kinds of thoughts, can you feel already in your body how it, you feel better. You might even feel excited about doing the talk, whereas before you were like, oh no, I have to do this thing.

Doing that kind of work ahead of time really helps the nervous system calm down and gives us some control over how we react. Now, it doesn’t mean that practicing those thoughts, thinking those thoughts, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to also be nervous, but you’ll be nervous in a different context.

You’ll be nervous in the context of knowing that you belong and that you’re safe and that you’re respected and they wanna hear what you have to say, as opposed to being nervous in the context of, “I don’t know, I didn’t really finish entirely. I’m not sure how I’m gonna end this thing. And I am sure that they really wanted somebody else to do the talk and that I, they just asked me because there was a gap in the schedule.”

And with those thoughts, the very natural, physical nervousness can, without a lot of effort, move into a full on panic attack.

Practicing in the shoes you’re going to wear when you do the thing, practicing these thoughts ahead of time, just like that. Don’t save them for the morning of, don’t save them for the night before. It does take time. It does take intention, but making that time and having that intention to really integrate all the good that will come from you showing up in the world with your voice, you’ll feel better and you’ll do better when the time comes.

So that’s my little addendum, a little hot tip on how to engage your vulnerability and help yourself feel more like yourself when you’re doing something that’s a bit of a stretch. I really hope it’s helpful.

Raise a glass on MVMusik’s behalf, if you wouldn’t mind, and, more to come. Lots more to come.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new people find the show. Subscribing ensures you’ll learn about new episodes as soon as they come out. If you have a question about singing or speaking or being, please send me an email at letters@mvmusik.com.

That’s letters at M as in Mary, V as in Victor, M U S I K.com.

Transcripts and show notes are available on my website. You can subscribe to my newsletter there, too. Can’t Wait to Hear You is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media. I’m your host, Michèle Voillequé. I can’t wait to hear you.