I grew up watching a script I didn't want to act in.
Every night, the scene was the same. My father and grandfather would come home and reclaim their spots on the couch. They watched TV. They gave orders. They waited to be served.
In the kitchen, my mother was a blur of motion. She cooked, she cleaned, she did the laundry. She handled every chore, every burden, and every command. When I looked at her, I didn't just see a "hard-working mom." I saw a capable, intelligent woman who had been stripped of her power the moment she stepped through our door.
"I realized: This is my future. This is the picture of who I am supposed to be."
I used to ask her why. I saw her frustration, her exhaustion, and her silent struggle to be the "perfect, non-flawed" woman society expected her to be. But she couldn't break down. To her, being an "outlier," a woman who left, a woman who refused, was more painful than staying in a toxic loop. She was coded to believe that a moral blemish was worse than a lifetime of disrespect.
To me, as a little girl, watching her was like watching a horror movie. Every time she was yelled at, every time she was ignored, I realized: This is my future. This is the picture of who I am supposed to be.
I decided then that I would not be trapped in that loop.
I started reading obsessively, looking for an exit. I started traveling, looking for a world where the rules were different. I wasn't just looking for "culture," I was looking for proof that women could exist without a master.
That search eventually took me to the Mosuo people, a matrilineal society where women are the center, the head, and the heart of everything. Seeing their vitality, their "untamed" power, was the final piece of the puzzle. It showed me that the "code" my mother lived by was a lie.
I created Voice Designs because I know how many women are still living in that horror movie. I know how many of us are still following a script written by people who want us small and quiet.
We are here to cut the toxic relationships. We are here to be the outliers. We are here to re-code our own lives.