In this personal, unscripted video, Joy D. Fanning (who calls herself an "astronaut of life") shares the story of her high‑pitched, "sweet" voice—from being mocked as a child to discovering its therapeutic power as an adult. She recounts early bullying (being called a mouse, being teased by popular girls, the nickname "Mighty Mouse"), the shame it caused, and how her tall stature amplified the incongruity between appearance and voice. Joy describes various jobs—day‑camp counselor, Target cashier, and especially a decade in mental‑health work with autistic children—where her gentle tone unexpectedly calmed others. After her teaching job ended, she began creating guided meditations, realizing her voice was a key component that helped listeners enter a meditative state. She reflects on the broader lesson of rejecting others' projections, embracing one’s unique traits (voice, height, body size), and using them as gifts. Joy concludes by inviting viewers to practice self‑love, offering personalized meditations, a Patreon, and a Gumroad store, and encourages the audience to own and love their own perceived flaws.
Chapters
Hello, welcome! My name is Joy D. Fanning, an astronaut of life. I help spiritual seekers, seekers go inward to explore via meditation. Today I'm taking a little break from the spirit animal topic, and I felt really called to kind of share my own story about my voice and how I got into making guided meditations and using my voice as a gift, as a spiritual gift. So this is going to get a little personal. I don't have a script or any kind of thing I'm going off of. I'm just going to kind of talk to this camera and just speak from my heart. Okay, so here we go. As you can tell, I have a very soft-spoken— often I'm often told sweet little voice. I can't— I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for each time someone said that to me. Growing up, I had a very kind of high-pitched voice, and even now when I'm in my inner child and I'm I'm happy, my voice goes up. I would say no matter what emotion I'm feeling, my voice ends up going higher. Angry, sad, happy, doesn't matter. It goes up here and I talk really high because I'm just so happy or I'm feeling an emotion. And really, I would say the only people that get to hear that higher pitch, at least in my adult life, would be my husband. And like my family and really close friends. So if you're like, I've never heard you talk that high, Joy, that's why. Right now I'm in a calm space. It's a nice day. I've accomplished a lot today. So you're hearing my calm voice, which is great for a video, right? But growing up, I had a higher pitched voice. I want to say the first time someone mentioned my voice to me was third grade. I was standing in line and this little boy at school and this little boy in front of me was like, he turned around and he was like, "You sound like a mouse." And I was just like, "What?" And I just told him, I was like, "Well, mice can't talk." I felt offended that he said I sounded like a mouse, and that literally became a theme for my whole childhood. So fast forward to middle school, I remember getting bullied for my voice. I was very unpopular in middle school. And the popular kids, mainly the popular girls, would come up to me, and there would usually be like 2 or 3 of them, and they'd be like, "Joy, talk in your real voice." And I would have to say, "This is my normal voice." And then they would just laugh, and I would feel so embarrassed. I didn't know why my voice was so high. I think what also contributed to the awkwardness of all this was like, I'm sitting right now and even on video you can't really tell, but I'm very tall. I'm 180 centimeters or around just under 6 feet tall. So, and I reached that height around 8th or 9th grade, so I've been that tall for quite a long time. And as a child I was very tall, so I think there's also this assumption that females who are tall have this deep, manly voice. And then here I was, this tall girl, but I had this tiny little voice, and it threw people off. They found it humorous, but for me, it was very embarrassing. And I think personally, as I reflect, it really contributed to me being shy, to me not really speaking up very often, simply because I didn't want to bring that attention. I didn't want people to tell me my voice sounded like a mouse or whatever. In fact, in middle school, my basketball nickname was Mighty Mouse, which I helped create that. I was like, hey, if I'm gonna be a mouse, I'm at least gonna be Mighty Mouse, right? It got so bad that I ended up depressed in middle school, and my parents did notice this, and they moved me to a private high school that my church at the time— because I grew up in a Southern Baptist family— my church at the time had this school. It was a very large church, so my parents enrolled my brother and I in that, and I didn't really get made fun of. I— not for my voice. Um, I'm sure I was the butt of jokes. I was extremely innocent. I didn't really know much, so that was more kind of the jokes that were played on me by my, my guy friends at the time. It was more like, Joy, say this word. And because of my little boys, they would laugh because I would say it. It was usually a dirty word that I just didn't know, right? And as an adult, I can still remember when I had like a home phone in like my 20s and people would call, like a telemarketer would call and they'd be like, "Hello, sweetie, can we talk to your mother?" And I'd be like, no, you asked for me. You have— this is me. And I just— I still didn't know how to, like, function with this little voice. And over time it got put to a lot of uses. Okay, so when I worked in customer service, oh man, that was interesting. So in person I used to work at a Target. People would— almost every other person, as I was checking them out, would be like, oh my gosh, you have the sweetest little voice. And I'm just like, oh, thank you. So I would get told that. And then later, or actually before that, I worked in mental health, which I've talked about a little bit in interviews and stuff. I spent 10 years in the mental health field, and One of the many random jobs I had in the mental health field was working with autistic children who had maladaptive behaviors where they had to leave their home family and kind of live in this facility that I worked at. And they went to school at this facility, and I was kind of a classroom aide. At the time, and one of the children in my classroom— obviously they all had maladaptive behaviors. That's just a technical term for like bad or disruptive, I think is a better, better term for that. One of the girls was the most disruptive and It was very hard to, for all of, there was like 3 or 4 of us with like 5, 5 students. It was very hard for us to like get her to stay on task and everything. But over time we learned that she responded well to my voice and it seemed to calm her. So I got tasked with working with her quite often and didn't really, if I'm being quite honest, didn't really appreciate that because like I said, she was the most disruptive student. So that means hitting and other things. So yeah, my voice calmed her, but she still had these maladaptive behaviors, right? So was it good or bad? But I never really thought about my voice specifically. Obviously at that time I was like in my late 20s, mid-20s, I think, so like 10 years ago. I just wasn't— I still kind of thought of my voice as like this nuisance. So it was interesting to be put in this situation where it's like, Joy, I think she responds to your voice. So why don't you like try soothing her or being the one to talk her down if she's like, you know, kind of manic or, you know, whatever. And it was very humbling and very interesting for me. And yeah, I, I have so many examples of things with my voice. One of my first jobs in high school was a day camp counselor for that church that I mentioned. And I remember in the interview, the bosses were like, are you sure you can like discipline the kids? Like, you have such a sweet voice. Are you going to be able to, like, you know, project or whatever you need to do? And I'm like, yeah, I feel like I can. And I did. I actually had one of the most well-behaved little groups, and it had— I feel like nothing to do with my voice, but in the way I kind of did what I said. So they— my little group, which was 5 to 8-year-old boys, I had like 12, 5, 10 to 12 little boys that just follow. I— we, we did all these cool things with. I set the rules. If they disobeyed the rules, there was a consequence. But I had a boss at the end to be like, Joy, I really misjudged you because your voice is so soft. I really didn't think you would have that kind of authority that, you know, you need when you discipline or whatever. But you handled it so smoothly. You proved you don't have to yell or be super loud to, to discipline or, you know, show authority with these kids. And I, I— that traveled with me through a variety of jobs, especially in the mental health field. I never had to like yell. I wouldn't even say my personal yell is even that loud. It's comparatively to other people, it's small. And so I just have trouble projecting with my little, my little voice. So that's— these are all— I kind of went all over my timeline, but these are all experiences I've had. With my voice, and I've never really thought about it much. And then when I decided to— when my teaching, English teaching job online ended, I knew I wanted to make meditations simply because I love to meditate, and I've been doing guided meditations myself for years, and it just seemed like this perfect blend. In my mind, it was more the writing and creativity of the visualizations used, plus this love for meditation that blended. But I'm seeing now there's this third thing that's blended in, and that is my voice. And it's been such a, like, a reawakening for me to experience how people react to my voice and the way they comment about my voice. And it's more than just, oh, you have a sweet little voice. It's, wow, your voice really calms me. It really helps me, you know, get into this meditative state. Um, I myself am very sensitive to voices when I'm meditating. If it's too rough or if they're too you know, I don't want to say abrasive, but like, I don't know, some voices you, you can handle and some you cannot. And I've been told by several people that my voice is one that helps them in this meditative state. So it's been quite eye-opening for me. I'm at like 6 months now of creating meditations, and like I said, I love the writing part. Creating the visualizations. I love meditation. And then apparently now I'm learning my voice is connected along with this as a way to kind of like create this unique expression that comes from my creativity, right? Or mainly from Source, because that's who gives me the visual. I then use my gift of writing to write it out And then I use my voice, which I'm learning is special, and I say it. And wow, talk about humbling. It is so humbling. Really, the whole point of this video is for me to just kind of stand in my truth that my voice is special and it has power behind it. I don't know enough science to know what frequency my voice resonates at or anything else. But what I can tell you is, is it seems to really be of help to a lot of people when it comes to meditation. And I'm learning this myself, and I just wanted to share this journey I've taken from literally hating my voice as a child, not wanting to speak up because I don't want to get made fun of again. Or have my voice pointed out again, I can't change it. And oh my gosh, I haven't even begun to cover all the things I've been told about my voice. And just to make a quick, quick distinction here, a lot of those things I've mentioned and those I haven't that I'm thinking of are people projecting their idea on to of their voice, of my— it's people projecting their opinion of my voice onto me. And I took that as truth. And I want you to think, it might not be your voice, but is there something in your life that people project onto you that you've taken as truth that when you really sit with it, it's not your truth? Because for me, that was one of those things, is my voice. I would have a lot of people project onto my voice or onto me about my voice, and I accepted it as truth, right? Like, oh, you're a mouse, or, oh, you know, oh, I don't want to get into like the— I don't even want to say it— things men would say to me about my voice. We'll just put it that way. You can Literally let your mind go wild with that because I've probably heard it. All these things that have been put on to me about my voice when really— and I'm going to try not to cry here— really, my voice, when I stand in my truth, my voice is beautiful. Okay? It is something I love now and I love getting to use it. I love getting to share it. And I love that I can use it as this way in my meditations to just kind of use my gift. It's a gift to me. I have no idea— sorry, my back hurts. I have no idea why my voice is the way it is. I've been told maybe it means like my vocal cords are too close together or something. I think there are therapies I could do that would widen that vocal cord and thus create a deeper voice, but I haven't ever had that desire to do that. For me, my voice is something I probably— I know, probably I did choose before I came here on Earth. I knew I would have this voice and I knew what it would be used for. One other little thing I just kind of want to throw out there is If you have something that you feel isn't big or strong, like maybe you're short in stature and people are always calling you shorty or something. I've always been called beanpole or, you know, things that relate to tall people, but— or asked, you know, do you play basketball? Oh my God. That was probably the one I got asked the most. Oh, you must play basketball. Which I did. But still, I don't know why it just feels weird to hear. But I'm getting off track a little bit. I want to get back on track. But if you have something about you that people project, right, we already know, go inside, find out what your truth is. In the end, claim it. Claim it as your own. I'm tall, so what? You don't like it, move on, right? You don't like my voice, bye-bye. It's not changing. I'm not gonna change it for you. This is my voice. I love it. I'm keeping it the way it is. If you're short, own it. Like, hey, I'm fun size. I hope that's not offensive. To me, that's adorable. Um, and I almost wish I was short just to to say that, but I guess I'm like, since I'm tall, I'm like family size. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. That makes me feel fat, so I don't really want to use that. A jumbo? No, we're not going there. Oh my gosh. Bear with me, guys. I'm just saying, like, own who you are and be proud of it. Okay? Like, it doesn't matter. This body, this voice, everything. Yeah, it's a gift. You chose it. Accept that, right? And own it. Like, just own it. That's the main point. I'm been beating around the bush trying to get to is just to own it. And that's, that's what I'm doing now with my voice. I'm owning it. This is my voice. I found this beautiful way of expressing it that connects with my spirituality and my creativity, which makes me so freaking excited and happy for myself. And it's just a part of who I am. Embrace it. Me being tall is a part of who I am. With a squeaky voice, and that's who— that's me, right? That's, that's me. And it really can boost your confidence when you get to this level of acceptance of yourself, which for me took, oh, let's just say 30 years. It took a long time to get, you know, kind of balanced or in a place where I accepted my voice as what it was. And now when somebody— I don't really have people make fun of my voice, but if they did, I would just be like, "Yep, that's what I sound like. Okay, haha for you." That's a little sarcastic, but you know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, that's the level you're at where you have to poke fun at this. Well, right now you're reminding me of middle school girls. So just be aware of that kind of a thing. But you guys, it's totally possible to reach a point where you love yourself even with weight. Like, I'm a little chubby, but I'm at a point where I just love my body the way it is. Here's another example. My husband is shorter than me, and A lot of times he's like, "Oh, Joy, do you wish I was taller?" Or, "Do you wish I had more muscles?" Or things like this. And it just almost breaks my heart every time he asks that because I'm like, "Sweetie, I love you just as you are. I don't want you taller. I don't want you more muscular. I just want you to be you and to be happy with who you are because it doesn't matter to me." what you look like, literally what you look like. You can gain a bunch of weight, I'm still gonna love you. You can shrink down, muscle up, grow, whatever, it doesn't matter, I'm still gonna love you. And, um, he's still working on that, right? Like, if he's thinking that way, obviously he still has some inner love to do. But I want you to reflect now on yourself, and is there anything about yourself that, you know, you don't feel full love towards. For me personally, if it wasn't my voice, it would be my weight. And I've had to work on loving myself at the weight that I am and not saying, well, I'm gonna show myself love when I finish this diet and I'm at X amount of weight. No, that's, that's, we don't want that, right? We want to love ourselves as we are now. And here's, here's the cool part, especially like with weight, since I'll use that example. When I learned— when I started loving myself for the weight I'm at now, it reflected in my life. I, I began to make healthier choices with my food. I began to do yoga more, exercise more, and as a— just me loving myself in a way helped me lose weight. I've lost 50 pounds in the past, like, oh, like 5 years, right? Just from learning to love myself. So that's my challenge for you. Thank you for listening to this rambling story of my journey with my voice. I'm not really exactly sure why I felt called to make this video, but my guess is it was— I'm doing it because one, my guides asked me to, because someone needs to hear this message about loving yourself and self-love, which if you struggle with this, I do make personalized meditations where we can really— I can tap into your energy You can tell me what you need self-love on, or I just let my intuition use it, but I can make a meditation for you specifically on the topic of self-love. I also have a few out there if you want to go look for them. I'll link them below if, if I can remember. And if this video has helped you in any way, please like and subscribe. I would love to have you you, um, a part of my YouTube journey. I also have a Patreon. Stuff starts at $3 a month. I post daily guided guidance from my guides that I receive every morning that helps me, and it can help you. I also have a weekly meditation group you can join at the $3 level, and it goes up from there. The $50 level, the highest one, has that personalized meditation as well. So you can go to the Gumroad store, buy it on its own, or if you really feel called to join that high-level Patreon where you get this personalized meditation every month, I would love to make those for you because like I've said multiple times, it creates— I use my creativity, my spirituality, and my voice to you to make these meditations. And they turn out to be something really powerful and unique. And I would love to share this gift with you to help you on your journey in your life today. But that's all it for me today, guys. Thank you so much for being a part of my journey. I love you all. Namaste.
