Finding Your Voice Again: Rebuilding Confidence After Life Changes with Julia Langley

Welcome to Brain Health and Healing. I'm Sandra

Lee. This show is for people living with head injuries and

the families and supporters who love them. If you are ready to

reclaim your life, identity, and dreams for the future, you are

in the right place. Welcome, everybody, to Brain Health and

Receiving Adversity's Gifts. I have another wonderful

guest with me today, who has something that is different that

she does, and the way that she got to it through her journey of

having had an injury to her brain. I look forward to

learning about this from her. Please meet Julia Langley. She's

a friend of mine that I have met through networking, and I have

loved my time with her. She is a veteran Cirque du Soleil

performer of 18 years and a best-selling author in public

speaking. Now she coaches people, speakers and singers,

and how to use their voice, how to find their authentic, unique

voice, and be that, and be bold and confident in themselves.

Bold and confident voices is her business, so please meet my dear

friend Julia Langley.

Hello, and thank you for having me. I'm so happy

to be here with you today, Sandra. Thanks.

So, tell us about your injury and how that got you

to where you are today.

Well, as I'm going to have to take you back

to 2019 for a few minutes, and you know, at that time, I was I

was flying high with my career. I was working with Cirque,

traveling pretty much all around the world, living in South

Florida. You know, just boating, having fun, just living life

large, and it's really amazing how that can all stop in just an

instant. I jumped in my car to get my oil changed, carried my

bike, so I dropped my car off, got on my bike to go get coffee,

and crossed an intersection and got hit by a car. And then not

just a tap, not just a little bit that literally run over, and

it was a big car. It was a big jacked up jeep, and I'm sitting

on my bike when this happens, and she just basically T-bones

me from the side, and I go up on the well as much on the hood as

I could on a jeep and out into the middle of the road. So I had

a traumatic brain injury from it. The Jeep, the grille of the

Jeep, the roll bar hit the left side of my head, right about my

temple, and then I flew through the air. And then the back part

of my head, because I was not wearing a helmet, the back part

of my head hit the pavement, and it, you know, it's changed my

life in an instant, truly. So, it's amazing how you can just go

from the top of the ladder to bottom.

One decision, and not really a bad decision, just a decision

that I made. It was an interesting journey recovering

from that because once you do hit rock bottom, it really

changes your perspective on things. Simple things like

opening a Tupperware container, asking someone to bring me

something because of the brain injury, I couldn't name the

object. I could see it and I could point at it, but I

couldn't say I need a spoon or I need a fork at that time. When I

first had the accident, they did not diagnose in the trauma

center any of my. I had five broken bones, and I walked

myself out of the trauma center that day, and that's a whole

nother story for another day. So, didn't really receive the

best of care that I needed. So, but unfortunately, I had a lot

of family and a lot of local friends that just rallied around

me and really supported me. I was dry. I I got in my car and

drove because you know I shouldn't have been, but I did.

And I would get lost in intersections that I would drive

every day. I was be confused, and that at that point, that's

when they stopped me from driving for a while until I

could recover, and then finally, got diagnosed with all the

broken bones.

My leg was broken in two places, so driving was really not the

smartest thing I'd ever done. But I didn't know not to, you

know. So it really changed everything about my life at that

time. It was very hard. It was very. I I couldn't exercise. I

couldn't walk. I couldn't work. I couldn't function. Really,

couldn't do anything. And I remember saying, "Just one more

week, and I'll be back to work. Just one more week, and that

week would come, and I wouldn't be better. It's really a very

hard thing to process when you're going through it, even

when you have a great support system. And I said that all

along. You know, I have an amazing support system with my

friends and my family. I know that there are people that have

to go through it alone, and I can't even imagine how difficult

that must be for them. I had medical advocates, and I still

had a hard time. I had a big fight on my hands, and I had

medical advocates. So there's so many things that play into it

that people don't even think about, and it impacted my entire

life.

So what was your work at that time,

well, I was well between Cirque when I was on

contract with them. I was traveling, but when I was off

contract with Cirque, I would be home, and I had a regular

training program for singers. So I was working with. I had a full

roster at the time of clients that I was working with vocally,

and but I couldn't see them. I couldn't get to them first of

all, and I couldn't sit long enough to even to train them.

And plus, I had broken, I had broken wrist, and I had my hands

were black from the accident, and I couldn't move my fingers,

so I had damage, you know, to both of my hands.

So I was unable to play the piano, which I'm classically

trained, and I play when I train. And I was unable to do

that. I was unable to drive, and so it really came to a grinding

Halt, and and again, I just mentally couldn't. You know,

mentally, you're just taken out of the game, and you just

focused on your health, and it's really all I could do at the

time. Most everyone was really understanding, but you know, it

was really funny. A year after that, I get a text from someone

who was not understanding, who was like, "I don't know why you

stopped working with us. So, like, you don't even people

can't think that would someone would be that actually that

insensitive. But people do it all the time.

So you're dealing with all of these health issues. You're

dealing with your life not looking the same way, and then

all of a sudden, someone sends you this text about how dare you

not teach my voice lessons to someone? You know, why did I?

I'm so uncomfortable with it, and I'm like, I couldn't even

walk across the room, much less you know work during that time.

So there was, there's just so much that you're dealing with

aside from your health. So many other things that that come into

play that create massive amounts of stress and trauma in your

life, and and that was really just the beginning for me

because that's that happened in 2019 right on the heel before

the pandemic.

Wow! So how did how did you recover?

Well, it took a while. Again, I had a good

support system that I had proper good medical care aside from the

trauma center, that was not good. But I did after that had

some medical advocates that really got me in with some great

doctors. I had a surgery a year for the next four years. I had

spinal cord surgery, hip, shoulder, and knee surgery over

the course of the next four years. So, how did I recover

with a lot of challenges and a lot of difficulty and a lot of

grit and and a lot of just I'm not staying here. I'm not

staying in this place.

I refuse to let this win. No, it your life doesn't look the same

though, and you have to be willing to because you know when

you're I was size two working out doing yoga classes and

weights and running and swimming I was doing all this stuff and I

went to being able to do nothing, and surgery after

surgery after surgery. Your body it takes its toll on your on

your body. So the recovery doesn't look. You have to start

to understand that recovering doesn't look like what it looked

like before. So there's a that's a starting. It's a kickoff

point. So I. At it as sort of being reborn, a chance to change

things. I mean, you can look at it like, "Why did this happen to

me? Or you can look at it like, "Okay, now what? Now what are we

going to do with what we've been given? So it's hard because I'm

not a size two anymore, and I can't do like power yoga and

then go swim and ride a bike for five or 20 miles.

Or yeah, I can't do that. But I have found new levels of what is

it? New levels of happiness. I consider myself to probably to

be the best person I've ever been in my life now, and

that's-I think it started then. So that's how I look at getting

hit by the car. That's how I look at the brain injury that it

was a catalyst to take me to a different place in my life and

to make me better, and it did, but it wasn't easy. That kind of

growth is very, very hard and painful sometimes. Very painful,

But, but is good receiving

adversity's gifts.

That's exactly right. But you know, it it's

easy for people to say that to someone that's in the middle of

it. When you're in the middle of it, it seems like it will never

end, and you you ask the questions over and over, like

how can I change this? What can I do? What? So it's a constant

shoot, correct, aim correct, and you cannot give up, and that is

the main thing you cannot give up. Do I still have consequences

from that today? Yeah, I still I still have health issues.

Sometimes I can't physically do the things, and so when I do

that, I just put my feet up for 30 minutes and say, "Okay, my

back's hurting. Put my feet up for 30 minutes and give myself

some grace, and then I get back up and keep going, and I'm

pretty energetic. I have a very, very full life right now, so you

know I have a lot of stamina, and I think tenacity is the best

word for it because that's what I'm not going to let that define

my life. I will let it help me grow, but it does not define who

I am,

and that's what it takes to get through.

It does. It it does. Sheer Will and a lot of

prayers. I'm a person of faith, and I pray a lot. I have

conversations with God all the time, and you know, seeking that

alignment, seeking the center where I need to go, what I need

to do because it's not always clear. There's a lot of

fuzziness and all of that. That's not clarity at all, and I

I always seek that. So I try to slow myself down to find that

clarity when I am in that place of fog. And if it will come, it

will come if you can just still yourself enough, and those are

the the lessons I've learned from it. and And I have to tell

you, the the the next few years after that accident, we're just

you can't imagine. I and and I'll do a rundown very quickly.

Accident, pandemic hit, and you know, I sort of looked at that

like, okay, everyone got laid off from Cirque to Slay, so we

got our yellow slip in the mail, if you will, whatever you want

to call it, pink slip, whatever it is. And I came back to my

parents' house and spent to spend some time with my aging

parents. You know, they're getting older, and thank God I

did, because six months after I came home, my dad died. So I got

to spend six months with him, going to breakfast, riding down

the road, listening to Johnny Cash, 530 in the morning, going

to eat with with the old men at the cafe, the local cafe. I

mean, it was very storybook, you know, but that's what we did. I

didn't know he was going to pass away, but he did. And then one

month after my dad passed, my family home got hit by an f3

tornado, and was just basically the the roof came off, the back

wall was knocked down in the backyard. And I had to move my

mom out, and then we had to basically rebuild, and then we

ended up got robbed. I mean, it's it was ongoing; it never

let up for a very long time, and I thought, "Wow, you know what

is this a test? And that's where I learned to always ask that question.

Mhmm

I'mbeing tested in a very extreme way. Will I

pass or will I fail? And then I, I'm not one to fail. So I said,

I'll pass the test, whatever it is you got. Come on, let's go.

You know, and so that's how I that's how I look at things.

There's two questions I always ask, and one is, "What are you

trying to show me, God? What is that I need to see? And number

two, "How can I pass this test? And those two questions get me

through pretty much every challenge that I'm faced with.

They slow me down. They keep me from getting triggered. It makes

me stop and think of my own reaction and how I want to

respond to things, what my next step is. I think that's the

biggest thing. Those questions slow you down long enough that

you can think through it in a more rational way, and that's

that. That's my mo at this point. So the growth has been

astronomical. Yes, there were major challenges, but here we are.

Yeah. So you specialize in supporting singers

and speakers, and having their unique voice. And so, as I hear

you talk about your unique and incredibly like powerful

experience that comes through in your story, in your voice, and

how you use your voice. So, share with the audience how all

of this incredibly intense experience contributed to the

value that you contribute to the people you work with.

Well, I. I think that there's a searching there

where you're really certain. I spoke of clarity, and I think

that there's a searching there where you're searching for that

clarity. And for me, it was about, and this is where I

learned, and I'm going to tie it back in in just a second to

other people. I learned then what authenticity really meant,

and I realized that I really wasn't, although I thought I

was. And most people think they're being authentic, and

they're not really being authentic. You're hiding

yourself. There's some way or another that you're hiding, and

I was hiding. As a result of these challenges that I went

through, there were a lot of things about myself that I

learned to accept, and when I learned to accept those things,

then I started using my voice in in ways that, when things needed

to be said, I could say them in a very rational, clear way, even

when they were difficult conversations.

There were things knowing when to not say anything at all, you

know, and learning that the way I interact with the world is not

broken because you go through life thinking you're broken. A

lot of people, you probably nearly everyone, because I work

with a lot of people on this. This is the number one problem

that they have when they want to use their voice: is that they

feel somewhere along the way they've learned that they're not

good enough, that their voice is broken and they can't do

something. Well, you might not can do it this way, but you

might be able to do it this way. Let's shift our thinking just a

little bit, and let's look at what we do have in our arsenal

of strengths. And not all of the things in our arsenal are going

to be strengths. So let's take those things over here that

aren't. Let's pull them back, and let's take those things that

are and push them forward. Now that is not faking it. That is

actually taking who you are, your strengths, who you are, and

using them to fulfill your potential, that is authenticity.

It's not putting on a performance in the sense of like

there's a couple of different ways we can use the word performance.

Perform we can perform. You know, I perform every day. Being

performative. Is different. Being performative is putting on

a show, a fake show. To be a real artist, performances about

truth, and we can go down this rabbit hole and talk about it

all day long. It's a very, very fine line. It's a very hard

thing to recognize in yourself, and you may know it deep down

when you're not being truthful, and then not even be willing to

come to terms with it or know how to change it. So, what I do

when I work with people is we go down that rabbit hole, and we

find out who you really are, what makes you different, what

makes your voice different from the next guy or the next person,

what makes you special. I I have I have one client I work with,

you know, six three, a skinny, all arms, all legs, gangly, and

was hunched over his entire life because he felt so awkward. And

we took that and started using that on stage.

Those arms and legs, and we used them in way we chose material on

stage that that he could do that accentuated that as opposed to

making it look awkward. He started winning every audition

he went to. Now this, I'm speaking in terms of theater. I

work with a lot of different people from leadership roles on

up. This is specifically theater, but this is just one

example. He started winning auditions after that because he

found that sweet spot that used those qualities that make him

who he is, and so instead of being embarrassed about that, he

turned that into gold, and that's that's my whole premise

of my business and what I and and what what makes me different

from your standard vocal, I mean, there are a lot of good

vocal coaches out there, but this makes me different because

it's focused on the the the individual,

yeah,

who they are.

So I like giving our audience for brain health and

healing something practical that they can apply to their life.

So, what do you have for the audience who might not ever

actually speak with you about how they can be themselves?

Well, the first thing you have to do is you got

to calm yourself down, because I think that a lot of times we get

in these emotional loops, and that we can't get ourselves out

of them. All right. So, like I said, the two questions. I think

that that those are really two good things. These are the

things I do for me that calm me down. I ask those two questions

as stated earlier. God, what are you trying to show me? Number

two, what is it that is this a test, and how can I pass it? So

when you start saying how can I pass this test, then you start

it. It comes out of the emotional and goes into the

rational, and you start thinking of how you can be proactive.

I think this helps with the brain injury because you say,

"Okay, okay, I can't do this, but I can do this. So let me

shift my thinking over here and let's see how we can use this.

But you have to slow yourself down. So a breathing exercise,

um, and and I did not mention earlier, but I was diagnosed

about three months after my accident with PTSD, and we

didn't. This is a whole nother thing. And there are because so

I never had a panic attack. I didn't even know. I didn't know

normal people could get it. I just thought this was something

that our veterans suffered from, and I never had a panic attack

until after that. So, calming myself down was key. And I think

for anyone that's suffering the brain injury, that calming

factor helps that centering. It helps you come out of the

emotional, go into the irrational, which is what we

want. I hope that answers your question.

Oh, that's wonderful, wonderful practical

information for anybody and everybody. Like this is just how

to live your daily life.

It is. It really is. We don't even practice that

in daily life. I don't think a lot. Or I mean, but many people

don't. You know, they and they get wrapped up in the moment,

and that's the trigger. You know this buzzword trigger that

everyone talks about. They get triggered, and then they don't.

They don't come out of it, and and then they just you can't

stay in that. Now everyone has things that set them off from

time to time, but how are you going to handle that when it

happens? Are you just going to let it go wild, or are you

going. Are you going to take control of of your life and your

mind? Yeah. So, for people who want to connect with you, yes,

how do they do that? And do you have something you can offer

them? I would love to offer them a quick, not quick 20 minutes, a

20 minute call for a voice assessment, and I would love to

talk to you and hear what you're facing. And you can get that.

All you have to do is go to my website, which is julia

langley.com, and set up a call. Get on my calendar, and I think

it. You can do it in third. Actually, it's a 30-minute

increment. I think it's set up for 30 minutes, and you just get

on my there. We I can answer your questions. Any questions

that you might have about fear, about even if it's about

resilience, because part of part of learning how to use your

voice is being resilient. It's it's not giving up. All right,

it's keeping going. Or specific voice questions that you may

have, I would I would be happy to to have a chat with any of

your audience members. I hope you will call me.

That's wonderful. So the information on how to

contact Julia for that assessment is in the show notes.

So definitely go there and check that out. So I have a different

question. Sure. I know you have like a mission here in the

world. When you are at the height of the implementation of

that vision, and it's all happening the way you dream,

what do you see happening? What do you see yourself doing?

Well, I my dream is that I want to have a full

array of products that people can tap into and get what they

need when they need, and I'm in the process of building that

right now. So this will be digital products that people can

buy to do on their own, including vault and library full

of exercises that can address some of these things that you're

talking about. Even if you don't consider yourself a singer,

these exercises that I'm working on right now they trigger 12

different centers of the brain. So it's not just working on your

voice, we're working on on so many different things. Not only

that, you're working on your confidence. You're working on

authority. There's just so many things. So that's one thing, and

that's in the works right now. I've been building that as we

speak. But in addition to that, I have courses. I have, and if

you're a musician, I have music practical guides to music

theory. I don't know how many musicians you have on here, but

I have all an array of products. In addition to that, I am

writing. So, and we see this in this fullness. So, hopefully,

we're looking at this in the next year to a year and a half

that we're going to have a full university, basically, of

products that you can use to focus on performance, auditions,

voices, speaking, you know, confidence, fear, all of these

things.

Amazing! So definitely connect with Julia

and take advantage of that voice assessment that she's offering

you. That's wonderful. So, what is the last thing you want our

audience to take away? What's the coherent point you want them

to remember?

I want you to know that every single person

that's listening here today has something special about them.

You may sit there and say, "My my second grade teacher told me

that I should shut up. My parents said shut up. My my

other teacher said get out of choir, quit now. I can't believe

that people say this to others, but they do, and I know that

somewhere along the way you did a show and tell, and someone

said that you're not good enough to be speaking. You need to be

quiet. This is where I want to come in and say to you that

there is something special about you, and that you need to

discover vocally in your voice. And your voice is not just this.

It's not just your your vocal cords. Your voice is your whole

body. Right? It's nonverbal communication. It's your smile.

It's your face. It's your voice. It's how you hold yourself. Your

posture. There's something special about you. And if you

need help finding it, I'm your girl. All right, I can help you.

But I'm not even. Trying to do that, I just want you to know

that it's there, and if you haven't discovered it, go on a

journey to seek it out, because everyone needs to use their

voice.

Drop the mic on that one. Thank you so much for being

here with Brain for having healing, Julia. It has been

delightful.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you for being here for Brain Health and

Healing. We will see you again next time. What a wonderful

conversation we had with Julia! Oh my goodness, finding your

unique voice, and I love how she shared all the intensity of her

experience and how that really contributed to the work that she

now does with people. And if you have any interest at all in

finding your voice and getting your message out there in the

world, then definitely take advantage of that call with

Julia. She's so wonderful. And then again, thinking about how

are you going to apply her message, her practical strategy

of you know, slow down, and how am I getting through this test?

Apply that to your daily life and the difference that makes

for you. Go over to the Brain Health and Healing Facebook

group and share the value that you got out of this interview

today, and how it's going to make a difference in your life.

Thank you so much. I am Sandra Lee with Brain Health and

Healing. If you want to share your story of brain injury or of

overcoming adversity, I would love to hear it. I invite you to

a complimentary 10-minute share your story call. This is not a

sales call. It's an opportunity to share your experience. Go to

shinewithsandra.com/brainstory, and to hear what your body's

been trying to tell you, get my Imagine What's Possible audio

gift. Go to shinewithsandra.com. Your body heals itself every

day.