Remember my laryngitis?

It resulted in a number of epiphanies! I wrote about what I learned about communication by not speaking, just published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Here's an excerpt:

Losing my voice for several days was a fascinating exercise. I gleaned empathy for people who cannot speak, express themselves immediately, or yell for help. My biggest epiphany was around questions: I was distressed that I could not ask my husband about his day, what he was reading, or what he was telling me. I thought a lot about how questions express interest and how they also influence conversation. I realized that questions are about helping the person questioned be heard and better understood; they can also be about selfishly amplifying the voice of the questioner.

And here's the full link.