Butterflies in Your Stomach

By Naya Dukkipati, 22, California

Butterflies in your stomach. 

A common phrase. An understatement, often because those butterflies can feel like your body rejecting you. 

Fingertips going numb, bobbing your head around to get a sense of yourself, seeking comfort in your shadow. 

A virtual open mic was my first experience with Youth Be Heard. I was 17 years old. It was during the height of the pandemic. At this point, I was used to randomly scribbling in my bedroom in the stillness of night. Writing for escape, to feed my curiosity, to make sense of something. Those thoughts later became poetry, and I had the opportunity to share them with others. And those butterflies just kept fluttering. 

There is always an eeriness when meeting strangers; you stare at their faces a little longer than you should, seeming not to blink because you are hyper-aware of how you look to them, and you start to crawl into your skin for any inkling of warmth. That feeling heightens when you have to speak, to be prepared to share your most vulnerable thoughts. I had worked on mine for hours upon hours, crafting the right phrases just to express the complexity of what I wanted to say.

But I did it! I shared a poem, and more importantly, I got to hear others share theirs. And then I found warmth in the unfamiliarity of others’ smiles and voices, and in the kinship built among shared words.

5 years later, and I still don’t have the vocabulary to express what that moment meant to me. But it lit up my inner creative spirit and my voice. Those butterflies fluttered a little differently. I found myself smiling, thinking about that moment.

From that open mic, I started sharing more. I had worked on a collection of poems for some time and later self-published a short chapbook about women’s issues, “Enough”, to support and uplift other women. I continued to submit and publish, collecting more rejections than yeses, but I kept writing anyway. I later found myself returning to the organization that gave me the confidence to begin with and applied to join the Youth Advisory Board.

And that’s where nervousness became excitement. I realized the same feeling when I got college acceptances, published my first pieces, and led community service projects.

Over the years, I worked in varying capacities with Youth Be Heard. First writing for the organization and reviewing pieces, then optimizing social media, and later moving into more operational roles like managing workflows and working on data projects. Each one asked something different of me, and each one, quietly, kept teaching me the same lesson.

Today, I am a graduate of the University of Southern California, with degrees in Public Policy and Intelligence and Cyber Operations. I will be starting full-time as a legal assistant, focusing on technology disputes. And I founded Project SafeWeb, an initiative that teaches youth how to navigate the internet safely to combat cyber exploitation, with aspirations to attend law school and protect civil liberties.

Youth Be Heard and my time on the board were entry points to leadership and advocacy. They fueled my writing and creativity, giving me an escape when I needed it, but also fueling a leader in me who can trust her voice and vision and share that with others.

And I’ve learned this: those butterflies were never trying to stop me. They arrived to teach me how to face the unknown, and to remind me: this is what excitement feels like before it knows its own name. That’s my sign to take the leap and speak.