all growed up!
Check out my essay in Women’s Magazine! The reasoning behind all my little bluebirds…
what’s with this whole ‘yogurt’ thing?
“I’ve been thinking about trying this whole ‘yoga’ thing,” confided an 18-year-old guy who stopped by the studio one summer afternoon.
I smiled and clapped my hands together in excitement. “Oh, you should! It’s great, I think you’ll enjoy it.”
He grinned at my enthusiasm. “You do this stuff then?” I nodded. “Well, what has it done for you?”
The question stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the delicate adjustment of his words – rather than asking me what, in general, yoga accomplishes on average, he wanted to know specifically about MY experience.
“Well… wow, I haven’t actually been asked that. Hm…” I began to go through my brief list of medical history in my own head, and began to notice that most of the things I didn’t identify with anymore.
I realized I had not had an anxiety attack since I had begun practicing – and not because of a lack of things that could stress me out. My chronic headaches were much less than chronic. As a matter of fact, at that very moment, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been bed-ridden with a migraine. My over-dramatically low blood pressure had not been an issue when I went to the doctor a few weeks before. My feet were no longer swollen from plantar fasciitis when I woke up in the mornings. Through being more mindful of my body’s needs, I was eating healthier and I suppose I had lost about thirty pounds in the first six months…
I was smiling more.
I was happy in my career.
I was hopeful.
I felt good about myself – from the inside out.
As I rambled through my spur-of-the-moment realizations to this kid, I was more and more impressed with all of the changes in my life that I had not even noticed. It made me realize that the process of yoga is never-ending. There is always more in your life that is shifting than what is seen, even when you ARE seeing changes.
He came back and took a few classes, and then I did not see much of him once summer was over. But I wonder, when he relays his experience of yoga to friends and family; what will he say yoga did for him?
crossing over
Whenever I hear the sirens of an ambulance or firetruck, I always feel the urge to cross myself. Catholic-style.
I’m not Catholic. Trust me.
It goes back to when I lived in Dublin, Ireland. I spent a semester at school there, working a crappy job at Hard Rock Café to make a little extra pub-money. Each day, I took one of those double-decker buses into the heart of downtown always going immediately upstairs in hopes of finding a spot right by the front window. It made the trip seem like I was taking a spaceship, hovering just over the bumper-to-bumper traffic and making it possible to take in all the sights.
From time to time, the bus would have to scoot and wiggle its way as far toward the curb as possible on the narrow city streets to make room for a wailing ambulance to hustle on past. When this would happen, nearly every Irishman and woman on the bus would spontaneously cross themselves.
I took a road trip some time later with a friend of mine across the green quilt of somewhere-in-Ireland. While driving down a rainy road through a small town, a firetruck raced past, narrowly missing my friend’s car. He crossed himself before putting the car back in drive and continuing on.
“Why does everyone do that?” I asked, although the answer seemed obvious.
He looked at me, puzzled. “Do what, so?”
“Cross themselves when an emergency vehicle goes past?” I looked over my shoulder to see if the large truck had made it all the way down the narrow, stone-walled streets.
“Ah. Well, someone’s in trouble, right? Just a bit of a way to share a prayer of safe returns and may God take them, I suppose.”
Ever since then, I hear the sirens and I feel compelled to make the Sign of the Cross. Because it’s not a habit for me, I can never do it without thinking of the pneumonic someone shared with me once – “Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch…” and by then, the firetruck is on its way and I’m still fumbling to show a sign of respect, love and prayer.
I have yet to find any other way to send a prayer that I feel is truly working. But we all have ways of sending our love to exactly where it needs to go – whether it needs to go halfway around the world to a loved one on deployment, to your little ones on their first day all by themselves at school, or out to an entire nation of people in crisis that you’ve never even met. The simple nod of acknowledgement and honest sense of love is the most potent prayer ever uttered.
When I hear the sirens, I feel that it is not just me that is sending a prayer out to whoever needs it most – I feel that it is the practice of everyone I encountered on the buses in Ireland. If that is the case, then it is every single person in each of their lives that they’ve learned it from… and everyone they learned it from… until suddenly, my awkward fumble of symbolic prayer is charged with the collaborative prayer of more than just my humble self.
Next time you hear the sirens, try it. Send an anonymous prayer out and offer it up to whoever is in need of it. Notice how it makes you feel. And know that when you’re praying, I’m praying with you – and beyond that, so is the rest of the world.
gloves or mittens?
I picked up a little polka-dotted mitten that was inadvertently left behind by a sweet blonde three-year-old as I walked through the park. She saw me walking toward her and said in her most grown-up-voice, “Oh, hello.”
“Hi sweet one. I think you dropped one of your gloves,” I said, displaying the mitten.
“Ah, yes. That is my glove,” she replied, taking the mitten from my hand and leaving me smiling at how adult she sounded.
The rec center was closed when I arrived at it, so I turned around and began my chilly walk back home, passing once again the little girl and her mother, who was kneeling down, trying to clip the mittens onto the little girl’s jacket. The little girl’s sister was about six and busied herself by pacing back and forth a very precise and imaginary straight line.
The mom looked over her shoulder at the older daughter. “Where are your gloves?”
Without looking up from the imaginary path she was on, the older girl replied, “I don’t have them.” I was impressed that she was so blunt. I would have tried to make up a story if my mom had asked me – even at the age of twenty-five.
There was a moment of pause as the mom first gave her full attention to completing the attachment of the youngest girl’s glove. She leaned back onto her heels and zipped up her own jacket. “Well, when your hands start to get cold, don’t be asking me where your gloves are.”
The older daughter looked up from her unseen balance beam at her mother. “I won’t be asking where my gloves are. I’ll KNOW where my pockets are.”
I didn’t mean to, but I laughed aloud. “She’s awfully resourceful, ain’t she?” I said, smiling at the mom. She must have been proud that her daughter has her own way of seeing things.
– – – – –
I sat down to eat my lunch at Whole Foods after I taught class last week. I flipped open the Boulder Weekly that had been left behind on the table I was at and landed on the horoscopes.
“Just because somebody doesn’t always love you the way you wish they would doesn’t mean they don’t love you the best they can and with all they have.”
It was one of those sorts of sentences that stop you mid-salad-crunching bite.
It’s perspective. It’s HOW you allow yourself to be loved and how you allow yourself TO LOVE. I know I’ve loved before and not had it reciprocated the way I always imagined it would be. And I’ve been loved before and not reciprocated it the way they had hoped me to.
It’s that little girl without the gloves. She knew that being cold was a possibility, but her way of finding warmth was different than the idea her mom had. As long as you know you’ll find the warmth you need, you have to do it the way that best serves you. For her, she didn’t want to lug around the mittens. I completely understand that.
For some, love might mean persistent attention. Consistent affirmation. Continued abolishment of doubts and insecurities. For others, love may mean the opposite of that; it may be considered an agreement unspoken. Doting is seen as unnecessary.
And what happens when those two sides collide in a partnership? Well, honestly, it can be like dating a very whiny puppy. Or, on the other hand, like dating a ghost.
I’ve dated both.
Maybe it’s got something to do with your preference of mittens to pockets. You either keep it to yourself or keep your reach outward. Both ways provide the warmth necessary to continuing onward.
We all have different ideas of what love is, what love does and what love means to us each individually. I suppose what it comes down to is making sure that we can keep ourselves warm – that we have what we need to feel loved, and that those in our lives understand if we prefer mittens to pockets. At the same time, it’s important to remember that there are a number of ways to stay warm.
What is it that Rumi says? “Let the beauty we love be what we do; there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” And as my teacher Shannon puts it, you can either kneel carefully and artfully, or you can trip and fall on your face. But something leads you to love, and when it happens, it happens fully – no matter what the journey you took.
I’m a mittens kind of a girl. I like to have something to keep me warm but still give me the opportunity to reach out and hold someone else’s hand. It’s hard to do that when the other person’s hands are burrowed deep in their pockets – but I’m thankful to have someone to at least walk alongside. As long as we’re both warm, I’m happy.
have it your way
It hit me one winter night as I sat down to eat my dinner of M&Ms and eggnog:
…this was probably not a well-rounded meal.
A lot of other moments in my life had made mention to myself that perhaps I did not have the healthiest of eating habits. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve noticed halfway through teaching a class that maybe I was feeling light-headed because it was 6:30 at night and I hadn’t had anything more than a cup of tea ten hours earlier. Or how many times my best friend has made me pack a lunch before I left the house for an all-day yoga workshop. Or how often I eat only one meal a day and eat it so quickly that I can’t remember how many bites it took, if I ate my own tongue or if I was even breathing at all during the process.
Because I’ve never been too concerned with my overall body image, I never considered the fact that there may be something disorderly about my eating. I skip meals because I’m in a hurry, because I forget or because I’m just not hungry, not because I’m worried I won’t be able to fit into a pair of skinny jeans if I eat pie. So I didn’t think it was that big of a deal…
…until the day I stared down at the handful of frozen M&Ms. I literally wasn’t planning on eating any more than just that handful. It was late, I had just gotten home from work, and making food seemed like such a big to-do – I knew that just a smidgen of food to please my palate would quiet my stomach enough to fall asleep. And besides, eggnog is very filling.
Alarms went off in my head. Since when was eating a hinderance and not a pleasure? Or if not necessarily a pleasure, at least a life-necessity?? This isn’t good, I thought. I’m a yoga teacher, for cripessake, teaching about taking time to nourish and heal the body and not even paying a penny for my own thoughts.
Like magic, the next day I had an email blast from a fellow yogini e-introducing a group of us to a nutritionist friend of hers. The serendipity of timing was too much for me to pass up and I immediately made plans to meet with Ryah the Nutritionist.
My homework after our first meeting was to eat breakfast. We discussed different ideas for food, how to keep it well-rounded and I agreed to keep a diet diary for at least three days out of the fourteen until our next meeting. By the time we met next, I had kept a log of my eating habits every single day of those fourteen.
It wasn’t until after leaving Ryah’s office that I realized I had been preparing myself to be defensive. To defend my actions (or lack thereof) by saying I-don’t-know-what, but I was prepared to make excuses. I had left there with the diet diary in hand, thinking I would have to eat because I’d hate for Ryah to be disappointed in what she saw… until I realized as time went on that I was eating because I was the one who wanted to see I was taking care of myself. I had put it into the back of my mind for so long that I was ignoring the fact that I was hurting myself. I knew how to get by on a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. It became the normalcy in my life. It was normal to be hungry and exhausted. And because skipping meals was normal and I was still successful at accomplishing day-to-day tasks, I suppose it was harder for me to see what the problem was.
It’s simply not acceptable to diminish the sense of ones’ Self. To put the important things – like eating, sleeping, self-expression, passion, dreams – on the back burner for fear of it “getting in the way” of your current situation is absolutely not okay. To do that reflects a sense of self-unimportance. Thinking it’s more important to maintain a relationship with someone who disempowers you than to step up and declare what you deserve; working overtime at a job that gives you ulcers; endlessly dedicating your energy to everyone EXCEPT yourSELF – that’s to diminish your own heart. To tell it that it’s not important.
And I never thought of it that way until I began eating regularly and discovered that my body was almost literally writing me thank-you notes after each meal. Before, I would shut off communication with my body. Tell it to quit whining, to suck it up through the next few hours. Now, when I get hungry, I have a dialogue about finding food. I assure my body that I will get it what it needs. I won’t put baby in the corner, so to speak.
Today – what can YOU do to nourish yourself? What is it that your body, your mind – your HEART – is calling out for? How long have you been ignoring that plea? And HOW can you feed it?
show-off
I could start this out by saying “I’ve never been much of a show-off…” but I know that would be a lie the second I wrote it on the screen.
I’m a bit of a hobble-yogi right now. Hurt my left knee. The knee that’s always been a problem – the one that I’ve also apparently been hyperextending all of my life. I had no idea!
But because I pulled one of my quadriceps, which in turn hurt my patellar-something-something across the front of my knee, which was already a little wonky because of the hyperextension… anytime I fall back into the old habit of how I stand (Hip jutted out to left, lock left knee. Hold for 75-90 seconds, switch sides. Repeat) I receive an insta-reminder that THAT’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU. That hurts. Don’t go back to that habit.
How did I hurt my knee? Ah, well, that’s where “show-off” comes into place.
I’ve had the incredible pleasure of modeling for a fantastic photographer friend of mine, Shannon Marie Casey. One day, she and a friend were playing with lighting options in the studio. I went from one pose to another, giving them something to light. I was playing around for the most part, and decided to try full Natarajasana while the two photo-pros were discussing lights. Miraculously, both of my arms reached back over my head and I was holding my left foot in the fullest Natarajasana I had experienced in my life. I felt like an ice-skater, a cover of a Yoga Journal magazine – like images of the practices of so many yogis I have admired for a long time.
Because it simply IS a breath-taking pose, we came back to it time and time again in the photo shoot. I was so thrilled to have achieved the shape, I came into it as many times as was asked of me.
At some point, I was no longer being as mindful as I had been. My body was finding the end-point, but skipping along without being mindful of proper alignment. And this must have been when I pulled my quadricep (or later, when I got home and was still showing off).
This isn’t the first time in my life that I continued doing something over and over again because I thought it was impressive to everyone else in my life. I worked 60 hours a week with not a day off for eight months once. At first I did it because I enjoyed it, it kept me busy and made me feel like I was doing something with myself – but I realized long past my burn-out point that I had only sustained that schedule because it impressed those around me, too. It was a way to hide the fact that I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, but at least I was successful in the sense that I was doing SOMETHING. And because I don’t know WHEN exactly in that practice of too much work I actually tore something, like you know, my heart-strings, I was just suddenly hurting. And I had to completely STOP and step away.
That’s what I’m doing for now. The habits that I find myself falling back into are no longer sustainable. They hurt. They actually physically hurt. I can’t hold myself up in this way anymore. And so, I’m learning a more mindful way to do it. I have to take a lot of breaks from standing, I have to sit back and elevate the knee, and spend a lot of time doing some new muscle-pattern-building techniques (taught to me by Chris Muchow, the most incredible yoga fixer-upper EVER)… and that exhausts me in a new way. My leg is sore STILL, but at least this sensation is because of the building of good habits.
Because of all things – I have to be able to stand up for myself.
mildly melodramatic (who, me?!)
I walked into work on Tuesday with the new black ink cartridge in hand. I had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity to finally get hold of the right cartridge for the printer at work and finally be able to print out a number of documents.
I opened the little front door and awaited the printer to obediently make some little mechanical noises. But nothing happened. I looked at the little screen on the front of the printer. No words. No lights.
Oh great, I thought. It is freaking broken. Of course it is. I kept cursing inwardly, wondering why, oh why, did this have to be so difficult? I sat down on the floor in front of the printer and pulled it out from its little cave beneath the desk. Crawling amidst forgotten tangles of cords that lead from this to that, I began to carefully attempt tracing the cords from the back of the printer, taking into consideration that perhaps the machine had come unplugged.
It was like a cornfield maze, not knowing what cord went to what and a number of them just simply disappearing off behind trails of more cords. It was tedious and starting to hurt my knees, kneeling in exploration like that. I pulled the printer off of my lap and kept myself from slamming it back onto its little stand.
I stared at its blank expression. Then I saw the one thing I had not taken into consideration – the POWER button. Power button pressed, a hum of recognition from the printer, and the piece that holds the ink cartridges shot over to the right. I put the new cartridge in, closed the front door and allowed the printer to align itself.
I suppose perhaps I make things a little more complicated than they need to be. Perhaps I have a tendency for the overdramatic.
How many times have you misunderstood the words someone says to you and reacted immediately to your misunderstanding? I can’t even count how many times I’ve read an email too fast on my Blackberry while eating lunch and completely misread what was being said. Lunch would be ruined as I sat and stewed in anger at the message. By the time I get to my laptop to re-read and prepare a response, I would see that I had missed the point entirely and that the whole email was actually a compliment or a thank-you or something sweet.
Many meditative teachings say that we choose how we react. If we take that extra second to step back and feel out the situation, ask ourselves why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling, experience the sensation of the emotion, and THEN react, we’re more likely to act in a mindful way (aka, avoid calling someone an a-hole or throwing something across the room in blind rage).
But that’s really part two.
Before you experience the reaction of your own heart, you have to take in what is going on around you. You don’t want to spend your time over-reacting, let alone over-reacting to something that didn’t even actually happen.
All I’m saying is the whole world isn’t against you. And when you take a moment to realize that, you’ll see that a lot of reactions you have are defensive. I felt like the printer wasn’t working and that it wasn’t working because someone else had broken it and not taken the time to fix it. I immediately assumed that I would end up having to spend the remainder of my workday trying to fix it and it would take away from everything else on my to-do list I had yet to get to-done.
It sounds silly, but think back to the times when you’ve overreacted. Could you have brought a new level of compassion to the situation – not only on your own behalf, but toward the rest of the world?
All the details are ready to be set into motion. It’s just a matter of turning on your sense of acknowledgement to the things that are going on around you and your participation in the present.
tickling the ivories
One of the rooms in my house that I spend the least time in is the Blue! Room. Aptly named, because it is painted the most BLUE! color you’ve ever seen. Not, Congratulations-it’s-a-boy! Powder Blue. Not, Drinking-pina-coladas-with-little-umbrellas-looking-out-at-the-Carribean Blue. Instead, think: Spiderman Blue. On four walls. Pow.
The other day, I slipped into the Blue! Room with a cup of tea and my favorite book to enjoy some quiet time in my Great-Gramma D’s chair. It was a rare moment of hush – no television, no people, no email – and I delighted in the faint dinging of my wind chimes on the porch out front. I didn’t even seem to mind the loud-mouthed pooches next door.
I was absorbed in the quiet noise of the world around me for quite some time – everything continuing on its way as I sat in rare stillness.
…until Heart & Soul began tinkering on the piano just on the other side of the most solidly Blue! wall in the Blue! Room. I live in a duplex, built circa 1902 – so the Blue! walls aren’t so much “walls” as they are “cheesecloth.” The little girl who lives next door had begun her daily after-school concert, and I was officially distracted.
The problem is not that she’s playing piano. The problem’s not that some of her songs aren’t exactly… songs. The problem is that I just so happen to still speak Eight-year-old-pianist fluently, so every song she is playing is translated as an entire one-sided conversation inside my head.
She sits down and immediately delves into Heart & Soul. This is her way of getting acclimated to the piano after a long day of whatever it is you do in 3rd grade these days. It’s her go-to song. And anyone who has ever learned Heart & Soul probably learned it in a way similar to how I learned it – buddied up with someone who lovingly, PATIENTLY, played the bass part while you tinker away with the keys far on the right. Oh, and the day – the DAY! – the day you learn how to play the back-up is the day you officially become a pianist. It makes me wonder who it is she’s thinking of as she’s playing.
Next on the playbill is a song that she knows oh-so-well. Oh-so-well enough and oh-so-FAST enough that she doesn’t even bother playing it in tempo. Check out her mad skills! She’s flying through the parts – the melody moving so quickly that it’s more of a 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 movement that she’s memorized than an actual melody, and the bass rhythm is a hasty and almost over-looked B-B-B-Bam. But check out how fast she’s playing it! Pssh. Anyone would be impressed.
She begins playing a newer song. I can hear her thinking it through and know she’s hearing exactly how it’s supposed to sound; even though to anyone else’s ears it would sound like painful noise. The piano abruptly stops and she begins singing the part she’s been working so hard on. She sings it once, plays it back. Sings it again, plays it again. Back and forth over the same four bars, and at this point I’ve set down my book and in my mind, I’m playing the part with her. You got this, girl! You got it! Don’t forget the F#! Don’t forget the…. Okay, that’s alright. Try again, sweets. Bum, bum, 1 e & a, ba-duh, duh, BUM! YEAH!!!! One more time!!!
And every song turns into a bridge which leads to an endless encore of Heart & Soul.
Suddenly, the music changes. It doesn’t seem like a song learned in a Little Fingers Beginner’s Piano book. It’s in a deep, minor key. It’s sullen and slow, and it’s hard to believe those same little fingers are playing something so profound.
Last Christmas, my friend called me on speakerphone from his sister’s house and placed the phone on top of the piano to play a song for me he’d been making up. It was in a slow, heavy minor key and I was surprised because I didn’t even know he played the piano. In the moment my junior pianist began playing her song, I could almost see an image of my friend, sitting at the piano. I could imagine the look on his face that would appear blank to most anyone – but I know the intricate thoughts that would be spinning in his head. I could imagine his fingers playing so delicately across the keys, looking almost ludicrously light for their size.
I was so overwhelmed with such simple love and adoration of him that it brought tears to my eyes.
The music next door shifted seamlessly back to Heart & Soul.
When we love someone, we experience many songs. Sometimes we get into relationships where we’re so confident that we rush through the easy parts, showing off with how quickly we can move, without taking time to savor our favorite parts. Other times, we find ourselves in relationships that are difficult and almost impossible to read – but we keep trying, time and time again, because we’re convinced we know what it could be like.Then, there are the relationships that we always come back to, because they move from and are so very near and dear to our very Heart & Soul.
The most pure of our love comes from our Heart and our Soul. Therein lies no judgment, no expectations, no fear, no obstacles. And it’s that love that we inherently learn from everyone who has ever shown any method of love to us – your best friend who listens to your five-minute long voicemails, because they know you just needed someone to listen; the cousin who mails you random homemade I Love You! cards for no reason at all; your mom, who holds you while you cuss and cry when you’re upset; the barista that remembers your early morning drink; the friend who calls just as you were thinking about them; the driver in traffic ahead of you who gave you the “thanks-for-letting-me-merge” wave. It’s these painfully simple acts of love that give us a wave of remembrance – the remembrance that love is LOVE is love is LOVE.
Take away all the fights, all the jealousy, all the distrust, even all the inside jokes and all the good times. Set aside all the angry words, the hurt feelings, the disappointment, and especially the giggly romantic butterflies.Imagine never feeling obligated, rejected, accepted, free, or reluctant.Forget all the adjectives – both the positive AS WELL AS the negative.There are no words to describe Love. The emotions we experience are merely OUR embodiment of Love – not Love itself. It’s all the way Love moves. But Love – as LOVE itself – is that moment where there is NOTHING but Love.
Chew on that.
For that flicker of an almost half-moment that I imagined my friend at the piano –
Before I thought, “Oh, this is sweet…”
Or, “Oh, I haven’t heard from him in forever – when’s he going to call me back?!” …
Or before I even thought, “Oh, how I love him…”
…that was Love.
It always comes back to Heart & Soul.
I’m living in a White Christmas
As a child, Christmas Eve’s Eve was spent at Great-Gramma Dorothea’s house, Christmas Eve at my mom’s side, and Christmas day at my dad’s side. Each space had its own tradition. There was always cheesy potato cassarole at Gramma D’s, handmade pillowcases at Gramma J’s and silly shenanigans with my younger cousins at Gramma Potter’s. There was a very specific agenda we followed each year, and looking back, I cherish those memories.
After my family moved to Colorado in the middle of my eighth grade year, the holidays were a little different. Kansas City was a long way away, and so my mom, dad, sister and I began our own little Christmas traditions. I’ve never spent a Christmas Eve without my family.
This year, my sister is spending Christmas Eve with her boyfriend and his family. She’s going to pick me up from our house on the way out to Mom and Dad’s in a little bit. My roommate Lara is having dinner with her family at their house. For the past quite-a-few-hours now, I’ve been sitting in the reclining chair wrapped in my bathrobe, watching White Christmas play continuously on television. I ate a lavish holiday meal of frozen pizza dunked in a ranch/Cholula blend and cried at all the commercials. At one point, I finally gave up trying to figure out how Vera Ellen’s waist could possibly be so tiny and drew a hot bath. I sat in the tub with the bathroom door open, White Christmas playing in the front room, “Santa Baby” radio playing on Pandora, and singing at the top of my lungs. Now I’m sitting in my bath towel drinking a rum and coke, right back in my reclining chair in front of Bing and Rosemary.
Making new traditions isn’t always a bad thing… And who knows what next year will bring.
The Voice of Reason
I have always been a performer. Maybe it’s because I’m a Leo. Maybe it’s because I’m the oldest child. Maybe it’s because I was always granted a stage to stand on. Ever since my first performance at the age of five (singing Blowin’ in the Wind at church, accompanied on piano by my dad), I’ve been driven to pursue a life of center-stage.
All through high school, it seemed obvious to me that I would be studying music in college. I only applied to one school because I knew without a doubt that I would be studying to become a high school music teacher. The auditions went well – hell, I even auditioned for the Musical Theatre program just for fun. The day I got a letter from the music department of the university, I couldn’t open it fast enough. I sat in my Blazer in the driveway, shaking as I unfolded the letter from the envelope.
I don’t remember exactly what it said word for word, I just remember hearing the beat of my heart breaking through my fingertips. Words like “Thank you, but” and “Unfortunately” all sounded like staccato, minor chords shooting bullets into my seemingly fool-proof dreams. I got out of my car and sat on the sidewalk in front of my house, gasping for both my breath and for something to believe in.
Formal music training was never something I was able to have growing up, and in the end it was what I was lacking. I knew how to sing, but classical, technical voice training was something I had never been introduced to. First semester of my freshman year, I had a one-on-one audition to be in the choir. Determination still rang in my ears, and I thought showing commitment to the desire to continue would eventually get me in within a semester or two.
I explained to the professor my love of music and my passionate longing to be in the music program. I did a little sight-reading and a little call-and-response with him, and he ran his palm over his face.
“I’m going to go ahead and put you into the Women’s Choir. I know you’re interested in the music program…” He scribbled a note onto the audition form in front of him. ”So… well, IF you end up making it into that…”
My jaw dropped. I know it must have. All my life I had been surrounded by the support of my community, and his “IF” was completely off key. I grew disenchanted. I just didn’t care anymore. I took choir for that first year – and failed second semester. But not because I sucked; because I had too many absences.
I finished college and never did much else with music other than the occasional karaoke encounter. However, this fall I was blessed with the opportunity to take voice lessons on trade at my friend Gary’s The Lesson Studio in Boulder. I had never been able to afford it before and was thrilled at the opportunity.
The first class I took was spent making a LOT of noises. I alternated between sounding like a whimpering dog and a fire siren, and my teacher Alaina was convinced I was a mezzo-soprano. I laughed.
The noises didn’t sound like music and I felt myself fighting the urge to defend myself. I felt like I should stop her and say, “You know, I am actually good at this whole ’singing’ thing…” But I decided there was no point in defending myself until I understood what was going on. No self-judgement, right?
I drove home afterwards making the little noises to myself in my car. This surely can’t be music, I kept thinking. And I feared that my fantastic teacher didn’t think I could sing. That maybe I really was a musical lost cause, just like my choir professor had made me feel.
In high school, I was an Irish Dancer. And a pretty danged good one, too. I could move my feet quickly and pick up on new footwork in a snap. Then I joined the poms dance team. And suddenly I was supposed to move my arms WITH my legs, shake my hips a little bit, and SMILE?! All was lost on me.
Luckily, each time I met with Alaina for the next installation of voice lessons, things got more and more clear. The noisy exercises really were benefitting my already developed sense of tone and beat by giving me a different perspective of resonating chambers, breath control, and challenging my perception of what range I could sing in.
Alaina told me at one point that she loved the tone I had in those painstakingly high notes I was jokingly hitting during our warm-up. ”You have such a bright tone there, it’s just a matter of more training.” I stared at the piano, where she was hitting a high F and trying to convince me how easily it comes through me, wondering how true her words were.
Having someone reflect back the strengths they see in you is a powerful and confusing experience. Have you ever had someone tell you they look up to you and you try to diminish your own self-worth by listing off all the reasons why they shouldn’t view you as a role model? Or had someone tell you how beautiful a piece of artwork is that you created and you point out all the reasons why you think it sucks? We consistently alternate between feeling a need to defend ourselves when we think someone is placing judgement and shying away from due praise because we don’t think we’re worthy. We’re easily convinced that we’re not good enough, but not so easily convinced we’re appreciated.
I had my first recital in eight years this last weekend. My mom, dad, and sister all came to hear me sing, just like they did so often in high school. Ultimately, I enjoyed the experience because I wanted to see what life would have been like with voice training. But I’ve opened up a can of worms with this – because now I can’t walk away from this and blame someone else’s lack of interest. My teacher openly wants me to succeed. All the people in my life who never knew I loved singing now know that I can and they simply won’t take my excuses.
Do you believe in yourself? Would you, if you were given the opportunity, given the support and the love to follow on a path that you never thought you could walk down? Can you really let your talent go unnoticed?
This holiday season, I am endlessly grateful for the undying love and support I have had in my life. If I had listened to the words of encouragement rather than the voices of doubt (especially my own), who knows what the difference would be. And that’s not that I regret a THING – I wouldn’t want to be anywhere other than exactly where I am right NOW. But now there is a new lesson that has been learned. And I don’t want to fail choir this time.