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I was on the phone the other day with my brother, and he asked me if I could remember how I would sing when I was little. Why did I sing? What was it that I was doing? He was trying to reconnect me with the wisdom of that singing, alluding to it being more than a song, more than play. It was something wise, helping me move through my life, through my overwhelm, through my fear. Something I could use even now as I walk. I had never bothered to consider the significance. I wanted to explore the why behind it. After sitting down to free write about it, I wrote the piece I’m going to share with you now.
Side note before we begin: I used Grammarly to edit this piece, and they said this writing sounded sad. I understand how looking at trauma, and coping mechanisms can come across as or seem bleak. We don't want to sit there too long, or we want to avoid it all together. But I've come to learn it is a necessary type of sadness to connect with. We touch down in our hearts when we recognize the pieces of ourselves we have abandoned. When we contact what was lost or harmed in us in the experience of being human, we are welcomed home in ourselves. Not feeling parts of our experience leads us to fracture off, but allowing ourselves to sit close to our wounds facilitates reconnection with spirit and a sense of wholeness. All healing and well-being start this way. We must come home to see, feel, acknowledge and understand what caused us to leave in the first place. So don't be afraid to be here with me. No harm will come to you. You may feel the pang of tenderness, but I’ve only known that to be curative and good for the spirit. I explore my depths and shadow because I know it is cast by my light. The same is true for you…
I used to sing constantly when I was a small girl. Eyes too big for her face. Looking, always looking. I would sing into a tiny silver tape recorder. Hide under stairwells and in closets to record stories and nonsensical songs. The thrill of hearing my voice echo back to me sent me looping. There was something in the hearing of myself that made the world far less lonely. I was troubled by people. People were contradictions. Acting one way while concealing another. Smiling on the outside but quick to boil over with some smoldering anger. Others seemed lost and lonely. Some appeared not even to be home.
What was everyone hiding and why? And who from, if not mostly from themselves? So the singing, the singing helped me meet someone, and that someone was me. There, in the stretching world filled with the many voices of everyone around me, was mine. Mine alone. In the dark and dusty corner of a shaft, I heard evidence and proof of my belonging. I was here, and I could hear myself calling back in song. A puzzle piece is put in place when the heart finds itself. There is a sigh in the soft earth. The ground moves slightly as if a mother groans and settles back into her seat, knowing her child has found itself. All will be well for that one young seedling so long as she never forgets to sing.
Reality has a way of startling the spirit, causing a knot to form deep in the belly. An undoable knot. Never to be untied until the time of death, where the bound cluster finally unwinds like a peel with your last breath. I sang to forget about this pain moving through the crabbed thread of my gut. The cronic uneasness of the unprocessed. More than digestion problems, food sensitivity. More than what doctors could guess. More than trite vindications. But a giant pain, one with no bottom or end. It starts the moment your eyes adjust to the glaring and blinding light of your new world, this beautiful and traumatized world we were each born into.
To be wild and running with abandon, as a child well should be, will mean that you will be pruned. Not always, but often, cut at the most reaching parts of you. At the very knuckle, of the fingers so eagerly feeling, touching, loving. I sang not to feel the pain of that hacking away of my wildness. The shaping of me. The singing was the antidote to my confinement. It gave me a thread to hold onto. I made sure to still have a voice and continue making a sound even while contorting in all the ways a growing child is forced to.
First Nations join in community to sing and drum to heal trauma. It is their way of bringing rhythm back into the broken and torpid places. Releasing themselves from the grip of pain, freeing cells and tissue from their mouths into the swill of sky and wind. With its many arms, the voice collects residue from the body and spits it out from inside. Like water, it washes free space.
Enslaved African American's used sound, Sorrow Songs. Tones, loud, long, and deep. Prayers breathed out in melody. A testimony against slavery. A cry for deliverance. A way to build hope in the face of despair. A way to push against the walls of the status quo. Singing led to the holy and untouchable in them. A way to reach that impervious place within each of their throats.
Healing shrines in Ancient Greece housed hymn specialists as well as physicians. Music was believed to have a mathematical relationship with the Cosmos. Shamans use songs when they are conducting a healing ceremony. It serves to remind them of their identity and power. It proclaims its abilities and announces the shaman to the spirits. Not spoken, sung.
I see the wisdom in that small girl now. That wide-eyed one knew what she had to do to survive. She followed her own voice and the vastness of the abys around her felt filled with a friend. Felt filled with something true. So it seems, singing is intuitive. Something wise thread into the body, just like- lung, heart, nerves- there like all the other necessary organs, a voice and sound unique to one's own. A melody that teaches us our place. Our inner apothecary. Our feet below us. Our belonging. Our prayer. Our cry for freedom and reconciliation, justice. Our sacred sound.
We, fingers, bellies, and hearts move to a rhythm that does not curve or curl away from the blunting of our spirit but instead reaches out from itself to claim space in the noise. To cry out in song, so to make our mark, to say: "I am here. I belong. No one can ever take this from me. This is mine, and it is good."
There is no denying we are born into a traumatized world. We are now able to see the scope of our global suffering. We started out innocently looking at it all. Absorbing the ways. Adopting the lay of the land. Feeling our way in the dark, finding our own ways to hold it all. Finding ways to offer something beautiful in place of the hard. My offering was a song. Now it is healing storytelling. What, dear one, is yours?
May we find, thank and honor the deeper intelligence of each of our bodies. May we see and recognize the absolute beauty operating through us. May it lead us to a more generous and conscious existence. May we focus on the inherent goodness of each living thing no matter what it may be presenting. May we see each life as a sprout longing to feel the sun of our care and love. May we join in harmonizing. May we offer our song. May we offer what is good at the feet of all that feels hard.
thank you for listening and reading. much love.
Also, some people asked about my live webcasts and meditation. I will be offering one or two on Insight Timer this month (October). I will let you know when.
For those asking about founding membership vs. annual. The founding membership is really for those who’d like to support me for more than the 70$ a year plan. It’s just a little more love to the cause. But I am going to offer a zoom meditation with my founding members. At some point this year, we will have one evening to connect and meditate together as a bonus. TBD.
Lastly, ‘Folding In’ is an offering for paid, subscribers. This will be the last one that will be available for all. Please subscribe if you’d like to continue to receive a weekly story and reflection from me.
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