It turns out I have crippling anxiety when it comes to singing in front of people. Like, criiippling. This is something I didn’t even have awareness of about myself until very recently.
Perhaps it is something that has only existed recently. You know how all the things are coming up and out for global healing right now? Honestly, I don’t even know.
But I’m talking about full body paralysis, sweats, violent shaking, voice constriction, total body incoherence… that just comes out of seemingly nowhere.
A reaction I’ve never experienced before.
I open my mouth thinking that I’m going to sing, and instead I find myself looking at my body as the Observer wondering - what exactly is happening here?
In shock and confusion.
Witnessing a wound that is beyond fear.
A wound many layers, generations, soul lives deep.
One that I know needs to end with me.
Earlier in the year I joined a Sacred World Music Choir through a series of synchronicities.
Watch the Choir: Ialawa - Prayers for the Earth
I knew that part of the next step of my journey was reconnecting with some of the simplest and yet most necessary arts of the divine feminine existence - singing, dancing, crafting, art.
Synchronicities, old and new friendships led me to where I needed to be.
The Choir was unequivocally home for my soul.
My Church.
The Choir is led by a powerful Medicine Woman of Song, Music and Ceremony, who comes from the mountains of Argentina. It’s impossible to reduce her to a sentence or a small paragraph… but her work here on this Earth right now is clearly many lifetimes in the making. She is a spaceholoer for humanity’s evolution.
Song.
Our voice and throats are connected to our wombs. They are the same.
In some Indigenous African countries “your song” arrives, even before your body and soul do in the womb.
There’s a lot I have to say about this. Patriarchy. Suppression. Sovereignty. And all that.
But you already know.
* * *
I didn’t really sing until I had children. Until I read books about how singing to your child in your womb is really important for them to recognise you and your voice after birth, singing nursery rhymes is good for for their speech development, and so on.
It was the mind that led me back to singing.
My memories are vague about why I didn’t sing.
I was trying to unpack it briefly with my Mum on the phone the other day, and she reminded me when I was a kid that I jumped up on stage in the City and sang solo with Kate Cebrano.
This is the first time I was reminded of a memory of me singing as a kid.
Actually, there was a flittering moment of a karaoke machine and Delta Goodrem in my tween years.
Otherwise, my memory is that I didn’t.
My memory is that I couldn’t.
My memory is the talk of self-deprecation that is common in White Australian families and humour. The roots of the Tall Poppy.
My memory is silence instead of music.
My memory is freezing during a piano exam, and not being able to hum a simple “C” note, because I was so paralysed with fear that I would get it wrong.
Ahh now we’re hitting the notes.
My memory is of having so much fun with my Improv Drama team in High School, and always “winning” the competitions in class. Except when it came time to perform to an audience, it became serious. Real. And we “lost”. Badly.
Serious. I’m going to come back to that word.
I lived a rich and free early childhood, I am sure of that.
No matter what my memories are.
I was raised as an only child to (an artist and slightly eccentric, just highly introverted) single mum, and I was loved deeply by the presences of grandparents and my great-grandparents. I am sure the conditions for me to be fully expressed were probably there (at least, for the most part).
I recently undertook a Gene Keys healing transmission with a friend.
“I alchemise the need to use my voice for approval”
This was one of the Siddi affirmations that came out of it.
Ugh.
It’s landing now, isn’t it?
At some point in my life, the external validation of my worth got tied into my freedom of expression.
The external validation of my worth got tied up into my freedom to be fully seen and heard.
I’ve talked about this before, relating to why I stopped drawing and creating art in past posts.
Life became serious. As a child with infinitely extraordinary mental abilities, I became fixated on being right and the best. The masculine art of doing and achieving. Not by anyone else’s standards, but my own. I’ve many lifetimes of transcending my human potential, simply because I can.
But making sure it was approved and ticked the boxes of external validation of worthiness… that’s the healing of this lifetime.
Art for art’s sake.
Freedom to get it wrong.
Freedom to play.
Freedom to not be the best.
My soul literally expands in relief as I type these words. That’s how we know its truth, right?
The freedom to be seen.
As my Conductor shared this week - we aren’t scared to show our faces as we walk around the streets, but we hide away our voice, our soul. Why?
Our voice is our greatest indication of truth. What does or doesn’t come out, is the greatest expression of our inner truth. We can’t hide behind our voice.
We can hide behind a picture. Written words. A screen. A smile. But we cannot hide behind our voice. It will always tell the truth of where we’re at.
That’s why picking up the phone and calling someone instead of texting is 1000x the intimacy.
* * *
I nearly didn’t go to Choir this week.
We have some personal turmoil with family illnesses and so forth that leave me feeling like I’m in an emotional washing machine most days at the moment. I’m neither here nor there, feeling between worlds.
Wednesday was one of those days. The emotion was rising. I felt the incoherence in my body. Helplessness.
I surrendered, and knew that going to Choir and singing would help move it through.
Plus, our Choir Conductor expects commitment, and I respect that. It’s important to show up, even when it’s hard. Both for ourselves and for the integrity of the Whole.
It’s a sacred space, so I know that I’m held there, no matter what.
But I had decided that if there was any “solo stuff”, I was out. I did not have the capacity to go there. That I would probably just leave or firmly decline participating.
So naturally, Choir starts and our Conductor shares that’s exactly what we’ll be doing that day. Everyone has to sing a song by themselves, of their own choosing.
Okay. Breathe.
The beautiful sister next to me, a powerful, playful woman with many decades of music and free expression in her heart, volunteers to go first. She sings. Beautifully.
Do we go left or right around the circle?
We go right. I take another breath, knowing that means I will be last. I have time to figure out what I’m going to do.
Everyone has a different experience as they sing their song. It’s some people’s first time singing a solo. Others breakdown to breakthrough their own fears. Some people relish in the joy of being able to sing for their sisters. Everyone walks their path.
I get swept up in the presence of enjoying the others.
And then suddenly, we are at the end and it’s my turn.
I had a song come to me.
A song I often sing to my children when I am feeling anxious about the future and I need to move that energy through my body. I knew which song I was going to sing right from the beginning. In fact, I couldn’t think of another song. My mind had gone completely blank. There was only one song I could have sung. This one.
Que Sera, Sera.
I had decided that I didn’t want to experience this kind of fear anymore. I didn’t fully understand it, I knew it was a complex and not a simple fear, but regardless, I knew was time to be released.
I shared to my choir sisters (who mostly knew my journey) that I was going to try, and I was just going to keep trying until I found some coherence. So I asked them to bear with me, until my voice and my body could connect. I would just use the sacredness of the space, feeling held and witnessed, as I worked through the pain body, until something came out.
One step at a time.
This step, was simply to do it.
I had decided I could work on the rest of the fears and stories later (i.e. not singing beautifully enough, etc). I know I have a lot to unpack and breakthrough with this. But this night, I only cared about simply doing it.
In the moment I made that declaration, it was so.
I started singing.
The words came out.
My body didn’t shake.
I was singing solo. It was happening.
“When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what will I be? Will I be rich? Will I be pretty? Here’s what she said to me: Que sera, sera! Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera!”
The women joined in with me in the chorus.
The energy was rising, I played (a little) with my voice. I sang louder and bigger, I moved my arms and waltzed. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. And I kept singing, all the way to end of the song… feeling more and more power coming into me. The grand finale.
I did it.
It was beautiful.
I don’t know if it sounded beautiful to anyone else.
But to me, the moment felt beautiful.
I knew that my mind would desperately want external validation afterwards… but I knew that kind of seeking would simply perpetuate the wounding that got me here in the first place. So I tried to shut out the responses and reactions of anyone else and turn inward, for my own knowing.
At the end I fell to the ground. I needed to feel the ground. Re-ground.
And then when I rose again, I felt peace.
I drew a line on the carpet.
A metaphorical line in the sand, that I stepped over, and that I would never ever go back to the other side of again.
From that moment forward, I would allow my voice to be heard.
I would allow my soul to be seen.
So I’ve learnt, my voice is unique to only me. It is my truth. It cannot be compared.
I will not fear failing and hitting wrong notes and being wobbly or being beautiful and powerful or simply playing for play’s sake either.
I am happy not being “the best” singer in the room. Because I no longer measure life that way.
I am just happy to sing. Sing with my sisters. Be witnessed. To play. To create. To explore. To grow. To enjoy the beauty and richness of life. That’s all.
I released the pain body that kept me from that joy.
And so it is.
* * *
After I had returned to my Self, I realised the beautiful sister directly across the circle from me was crying. She shared that the song I chose to sing, was the song her grandmother used to sing to her, who had passed earlier that week.
The energy of that night, that moment, and the power that brought all the women to join in with me when I sang, transcended the material realm.
The sister next to me, also sang a song channelled from her grandmother.
It was beyond us.
The Choir, my Church, is always beyond us.
We sing beautiful songs, sure. But in that circle, every week, we are doing the work. The healing work, guided and held by our ancestors. For all women. For all people. For our children. For the future.
I don’t think I landed back on the Earth for at least the next two days afterwards.
After I sang a solo.
This makes my heart smile! How liberating! ❤️❤️❤️