My name is Melinda Will, and Speak Your Truth Now grew out of a life spent learning what it means to lose your voice, rebuild it, and eventually realize your life can become much more than what happened to you.

My childhood wasn’t simple. I experienced instability early, spent time in foster care, and eventually aged out of the system. Courtrooms, police officers, teachers, social workers, unfamiliar homes, and adults made decisions about a life I was still too young to understand. After foster care, I also experienced homelessness. For a long time, survival required more attention than dreaming did.

When I look back now, though, I don’t only see what went wrong. I remember the people who showed up along the way. A teacher who noticed. A police officer who treated me like a person. Someone who opened a door, believed me, gave me information, or offered kindness when I needed it. Most of them probably never knew what happened to me afterward, and they certainly couldn’t have known how much some of those seemingly small moments would matter years later.

Adulthood brought its own challenges. I spent years in a marriage where control, including financial control, became part of my life. Leaving meant rebuilding again, this time while also being a mother and trying to create stability for my family.

That experience taught me something that would eventually become central to Speak Your Truth Now: getting out and being safe aren’t necessarily the same as being free. Survival can teach you how to endure almost anything. It doesn’t automatically teach you who you are when you no longer have to endure it.

So I built a life.

I built a career in accounting and finance and eventually became a Controller, CFO, consultant, business owner, and adviser. I learned how organizations, money, and systems work. I also learned how easily people can lose power when they don’t understand the systems surrounding them. That’s one reason financial independence, education, and practical life skills are part of the work behind SYTN.

But another part of me had been waiting quietly in the background: the creative part. As a child and teenager, I sang and wrote all the time. Music and writing were a big part of my life.

When I began healing, I started returning to things I had put away. I started writing again. I began making music. I returned to art, storytelling, and creativity-not because I needed to become anything, but because I finally gave myself permission to explore.

And that changed the way I thought about healing.

I realized creativity wasn’t really about becoming an artist. It was about agency. Choosing a color. Writing something nobody else has to read. Singing because it felt amazing! Deciding you love something, hate something, want to try something, or have changed your mind. These can seem like ordinary choices, but when you’ve spent years having choices made for you, they aren’t ordinary. I tried writing my story and have a whole book done; I just have not published it yet. It’s a hard story to tell.

That realization changed what I wanted Speak Your Truth Now to become.

Why I Created Speak Your Truth Now

I didn’t create SYTN because I believe people should spend the rest of their lives telling the worst things that ever happened to them.

I created it because I believe people deserve the opportunity to discover what comes next.

Your story belongs to you. You can tell it, write it, paint it, sing it, reshape it, keep it private, laugh about parts of it, make something beautiful from it-or decide you’re finished talking about it altogether.

You don’t have to perform your pain here.

Speak Your Truth Now is about creating access to what can help people rediscover themselves: creative experiences, teachers, community, practical knowledge, financial education, business skills, resources, and opportunities to try something new.

Maybe that’s taking a music lesson for the first time. Maybe it’s picking up a paintbrush, writing a poem, learning photography, making jewelry, understanding your finances, starting a small business, finding a mentor, or trying something you’ve secretly wanted to try for twenty years.

Sometimes the important part isn’t what you create.

It’s realizing you were allowed to try.

Why the Lantern

You’ll see a lantern throughout Speak Your Truth Now because it represents something I’ve come to understand about finding your way forward.

A lantern doesn’t illuminate the entire road. It gives you enough light to see the next few steps.

I don’t believe another person can tell you who you’re supposed to become. I don’t think healing has one destination, and I don’t believe anyone should have to remain permanently identified by what happened to them.

Sometimes what we need isn’t another person directing us. We need information, resources, opportunity, community, and enough light to make the next decision on our own.

That’s what I want Speak Your Truth Now to offer.

Not a map for your life. A lantern.

Because eventually I learned something I wish I had understood much earlier:

You don’t need permission to become someone you haven’t met yet.

Melinda Will
Founder, Speak Your Truth Now