Messages From the Heart, Singing
Finding Voice in the Winter
I’ve had the distinct honor of helping many singers who’ve been on this planet longer than other singers find their expression of voice.
It is immensely moving to guide a singer toward the ability to express life in song. It’s sometimes bittersweet, but no less beautiful a process when we experience a blossoming of voice in the late fall or winter of our lives.
Voice, a teacher once told me, does not leave us alone until it is expressed through us. This is true of every person who is born to sing.
There are infinite things we can learn from finding voice at any stage of life. Learning to sing teaches us singers how to be us. Our realizations along this path can be profound.
There are a few epiphanies that occur to these more mature singers I’d like to share with you…not to inspire regret or sadness…but to spread knowledge and empowerment to inspire ALL people who want to sing.
When we are harshly criticized we are likely finding our voice.
Voice does not appear at first in a pretty package. It’s messy. It’s often a powerful expression of ‘ugly’ truth. Sometimes it’s desperate in its need for approval, or blind/deaf in its need to express itself. Very few people know how to recognize its emergence, like a rare flower that takes time to show its beauty.
2. The people who first shut down our voice will most likely not be the ones to guide us to it.
Singers who find voice later in life often wonder why they looked for approval from the same people, over and over, not imagining a different possibility. There is another way, and it’s often away from the people who cannot hear us.
3. There are tools and guidelines for finding voice. It’s a path we can walk, with steps. It’s filled with positive possibilities.
Voice, in its true expression, is positive possibility. To sing our balanced, powerful voice is to live a life full of beauty and truth.
What can we do with this information, no longer how long we’ve been on this Earth? We can walk with compassion as we observe this “messy” life. We humans are divine instruments, built to vibrate with the beauty of love. We can live, and let live. We can be sung…and it’s not up to us, sometimes, how, when, and why we find voice…but we can live a life trying, which, in itself, is singing.
With Love and Music, From the Heart
Rebecca
