The Email You Almost Deleted

You wrote it at midnight. Three paragraphs to the school board about something everyone knew but nobody would say out loud. You read it back four times. Then you hovered over delete.

Who were you to say anything? You weren’t on the board. You didn’t have credentials. You were just a parent who noticed something wrong and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

You hit send anyway.

Nothing dramatic happened. No standing ovation. No immediate policy change. Just a brief reply, thanking you for your input. You wondered if it mattered at all.

Three weeks later, a neighbor mentioned it at the grocery store. She’d heard about your email from someone on the board. She said it named something she’d been feeling but couldn’t articulate. She said she wasn’t the only one.

That’s how it works. Not with applause. Not with metrics. Just a quiet shift in what people allow themselves to say because someone said it first.

Your words didn’t just fill space that night. They shaped it. They gave others permission to see what they’d been looking past. They made the invisible slightly harder to ignore.

You’ve probably forgotten most of what you’ve written. The texts, the posts, the notes scribbled on cards. You send them and move on. But words don’t work that way. They land somewhere. They do something. They either build up or tear down, even when you’re not watching.

Think about the last time someone’s words woke something in you. Maybe it wasn’t a speech or a book. Maybe it was a single sentence from a friend that reframed how you saw a situation. Maybe it was a stranger’s honest post that made you feel less alone in something you’d been carrying quietly.

Those moments don’t require fame or platform. They require someone willing to name what others feel but can’t express. Someone who sees a need, feels a burden, and writes it down instead of swallowing it.

You have that capacity. Not because you’re a writer by profession. Because you’re a person who notices things. And when you put those observations into words—careful, honest words—you hand others a lens they didn’t have before.

The temptation is to stay quiet. To assume someone more qualified will speak. To tell yourself the issue isn’t yours to raise, the story isn’t yours to tell, the words aren’t yours to offer.

But silence has weight too. When you see something wrong and say nothing, you leave the space empty. And empty space gets filled—by noise, by distraction, by whoever’s willing to speak even when they have less to say.

You don’t need permission to use your voice. You don’t need a title or a platform or anyone’s approval. You just need to care enough about something to put it into words—and trust those words to travel where they need to go.

Maybe it’s an email to a board. Maybe it’s a letter to someone who hurt you. Maybe it’s a story you’ve been carrying for years that keeps asking to be written down.

Whatever it is, it’s yours to say. And if you don’t say it, no one else will—at least not the way you would. Not with your particular angle on the truth.

That midnight email didn’t change everything. But it changed something. It woke something that had been dormant. It reminded a few people they weren’t the only ones who saw what they saw.

That’s not nothing. That’s how things begin to shift.

And it started because you didn’t hit delete.

If you’ve ever wondered what your words might wake in someone else, The Power of Authors explores what happens when you stop waiting for permission. You can find The Power of Authors on Amazon: http://bit.ly/3K6o8AM. If you’d like an autographed copy: http://bit.ly/4pgmzjM

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Start Your Publishing Journey with Expert Guidance.
Unlock Exclusive Tips, Trends, and Opportunities to Bringing Your Book to Market.

About Us

Kindly contact us if you've written a book, if you're writing a book, if you're thinking about writing a book, we can help!

Departments

My Account

Social Media

Payment

Publication Consultants Publication Consultants

Copyright 2023 powered by Publication Consultants All Rights Reserved.