I lost my voice for three years, and this is what I learned

“Why did you do this to me?” I whispered these words on a humid fall day in North Florida. I was sixteen, sitting in church with my family. It had been a month since I returned from a summer-long tour with a Christian show choir called the Continentals. I had sung my heart out, and a month after walking back into my home, all I could muster during worship was a whisper. I sat there and wept.

Eventually, I was diagnosed with a vocal injury. Nodes, rest, and promises that my voice would return soon became part of the swirling thoughts that spun through my head as I braced myself for weeks of not talking and certainly not singing.

I had always been a singer. As a three-year-old, I could match pitch seamlessly, and without much effort, I quickly became the little girl with all the solos in church. I wowed my Baptist congregation during Special Music, sang in select choirs and worship bands, and it didn’t surprise anyone when I decided to travel across the U.S. as a featured vocalist at sixteen.

It was a blast. I had an amazing time, and it changed my life.

The next three years were a heartbreaking, painful, emotional, but absolutely profound experience. I took a month of vocal rest, followed by a cycle of resting, singing, pain, and repeating. At sixteen, nearly seventeen, I fully intended to pursue a college degree in music, majoring in piano and voice. Despite my best efforts to heal and rest, I could only avoid vocal lessons and college auditions for so long. Miraculously, I was admitted to Florida State University for a degree in Music Education in both piano and voice.

It was not without hardship. During my freshman year, I was forced to withdraw from my vocal emphasis as the pain became excruciating. Even talking was a struggle, and my extroverted, effervescent heart felt decimated. I resigned myself to the belief that I would never be able to speak or sing without searing pain.

In the second semester of my freshman year, I was referred to a vocal therapist. My sweet voice professor quickly prescribed a semester’s worth of sessions, and I walked into that place timidly and more than a little demoralized.

However, my first visit went surprisingly well. I connected with my vocal therapist immediately. She identified a few critical issues: I was vocally injured and, if I didn’t make some changes, risked losing my voice forever. More surprisingly, she determined that the root of my issues was more related to my heart than I could have anticipated. After a twenty-minute evaluation, she told me that I had been speaking and laughing incorrectly, likely since adolescence.

I had been trying to be someone I was not, and it had finally caught up with me.

I was born to Puerto Rican parents in 1986. My mother is 5’0” and my father is 5’2”. It wasn’t in the cards for me to be tall, and at 4’10” my freshman year of college, I had accepted that I would always be petite. But as I sat in my voice therapist’s office over the coming months, I learned that in compensating for my small stature, I had changed how God intended my voice to be. I was speaking lower, singing harsher, and laughing incorrectly—all because I wanted to be taken seriously. Yup. I wanted to sound more like Walter Mondale than Minnie Mouse (that’s how I thought I sounded).

It took a year before I became comfortable with my new voice while I wasn’t singing and was barely talking. I felt so alone and disoriented. God was dismantling my perceived identity and replacing it with truth. It felt like everything had been stripped away. I couldn’t laugh and be loud as I loved to, which made me feel insecure and disconnected from making friends. I couldn’t sing, which left me feeling disconnected from my soul and even from God.

I would sit in church and cry at first, and then eventually, I began to notice things. I noticed the sound of voices around me singing on Sunday morning. I noticed the person sitting on the sidelines at a school event, and I realized that I could connect with God without a voice because I could do it through my piano. He took the identity that was rooted in performance and gave me my true self: His.

It was three years before God healed me. I had honestly accepted that I would never sing again and even told God about it. “God,” I said, “if I never sing, knowing You is enough.” I leaned into my piano playing and got involved in a worship team at a local church. Meanwhile, I continued voice therapy and learned to love my new, sweet-sounding voice. On a Thursday night rehearsal for an all-campus worship event, I sang correctly, and the pain was gone—and it’s never come back. I cried silently.

I share this to say, as a vocalist and a coach, I see this often. People alter who God designed them to be because they are insecure. I sure did. We want to be seen as strong, so we sing from our throats instead of our chests. We want to be taken seriously, so we lower our speaking voices to pitches that cause vocal damage for years, and we do the same when we laugh. Conversely, some speak higher than they should.

This is a heart issue. I get it.

We also easily define ourselves by our performance. We are singers, songwriters, musicians. We draw, dance, cook, write—and if we’re not careful, these titles can become the most important things about us. They were for me. I was Nichole, the singer. When that part of me was washed away, it hurt like nothing I had felt before, and I didn’t know who I was for a while. I had placed all my hope in something as fragile as my voice, and I don’t want the same for you.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the end. God chose to heal me and gave me, in the process, an even greater gift: acceptance of my design and an unwavering understanding that who I am can never be taken away. I am His, and that is all I need.

If you are struggling with voice health or wrestling with who God designed you to be as a creative, I am always here to chat!

His,

Nichole

Nichole Peringer is married to Patrick Peringer and is a mother of four. She is a worship leader, writer, vocalist, and singer-songwriter who volunteers on the Membership & Culture Team at the 402 Arts Collective.

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