Born Loud, Raised Proud

Grampy Joe, Aunt Susie and Grammy Irene in the back row, and my Mother, Janice, IS the front row.

I am loud. I speak loudly. I come from people who filled rooms without trying. My Reiser grandmother was born a Woodward, and the Woodwards did not whisper their way through life. She and her five siblings were loud. They argued loudly, laughed loudly, lived loudly. She married Joe Reiser, and that was a loudish family too. Not chaotic. Not obnoxious. Just present. Just alive. Her Reiser children were loud in the same way. That is my mother and my aunt. They never apologized for taking up space, and they never taught me to shrink myself either.

So my loudness is one quarter Woodward, reinforced by the half Reiser my mother gave me. It is not a flaw. It is a family trait. It is a signature. It is the sound of people who were never afraid to be fully themselves. I grew up surrounded by voices that carried, opinions that had weight, and laughter that could shake the walls. That kind of environment gets into your bones. It shapes the way you move through the world.

And I am proud of it. I am proud of the heritage given to me by both sides of my family. From my father’s side I carry the deep thinking, the writing, the art, the frightening intelligence that hits like a spotlight when it turns on. From my mother’s side I carry the musicality, the reading, the clan loyalty that borders on mythic, the kind of intelligence that shows up in instinct as much as in words. I am the sum of all of it. Loud, thoughtful, creative, sharp, rooted.

Loud and proud is not a slogan for me. It is a lineage. It is a birthright. It is the echo of every Woodward and every Reiser who came before me. It is the way my family announces itself to the world. And it is in my bones.