Prologue

♦ What if everyone can sing and there is no such thing as being tone deaf?
♦ What if people who know they can sing can learn to sing better than they ever imagined?
♦ What if stepping into our Voice changes a little bit of everything about us, setting us free to discover even more hidden treasures within us and everyone else?

With these questions in mind, nine years ago I began my odyssey to claim my most powerful, most authentic Voice.

When I turned fifty, I wrote a parody of  I Feel Pretty (I Feel Fifty), which was the first time I ever wrote a song with the intention of being funny.  It scared the poop out of me, but I sang it anyway.  Then I auditioned for a community theater musical, which required a lot of six-part harmony.  I was completely terrified all the time, though I still managed to  have fun.  I figured if I were terrible, it was the director’s job to stop me.  My job was to walk out  to the brink of destruction and sing my heart out.

From that musical I helped form a four-women singing group, and then I found Claude Stein and his Natural Singer workshop at Breitenbush Hot Springs in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.  My odyssey got even more interesting…(clothing optional in the hot springs.)

The natural beauty and serenity of the hot springs, the river, the trees, and the vegetarian fare serve as a poultice for the soul.  Just being there means to be living and breathing in the song of the Earth.  Throw in a massage, some yoga, and a plunge from a steaming hot pool to an icy cold one, and the alchemy begins.

A Natural Singer Odyssey

Round One

Right before I turned 51 I attended my first Natural Singer Workshop facilitated by Claude Stein, www.naturalsinger.com . The story I told about my voice at the time was that it was perhaps pretty weak. I was fairly confident I could be on pitch most of the time, but I believed I had no business singing solo.

As the workshop began, Claude asked us to write on a note card what we wanted to have happen for us during the retreat. I wrote that I wanted to learn how to sing through my break, that place where the voice shifts from the chest to the head.  Sometimes this transition cracks, and I wanted to make it smooth. I was proud of myself for having recently learned the term “break.” I thought this was a good and noble goal.

What I wanted from the workshop changed as I saw people getting coached. Each person experienced a little miracle. As each person was willing to do what Claude asked them to do, they stepped more fully into their Authentic Voice. This process was always beautiful and inspiring, no matter where anybody started with their voice and their ability to match pitch.

When it came my turn to be coached, I realized I had not let myself know what I really wanted to be able to do with my voice. What I really wanted was to be able to sing like Bonnie Raitt.   I believed this was impossible because I thought I had such a weak voice, such a little girl voice. I was stunned to learn that I hadn’t let myself know what I really wanted. Being in the presence of miracles is intoxicating and liberating. I was liberated right out of the limiting story I didn’t even know I was packing around.

As I stood in front of the other participants, wrapped in trembling expectancy, I asked for what I really wanted but thought impossible. I told Claude I wanted to sing like Bonnie Raitt, and we took off. Claude had me swing my hips and throw my arms out as if I were shedding off years of rust, which I guess I was.

He started playing an invented blues tune and I made up words as I walked into the audience and belted out my soul.  In that moment I could have been on any stage in the world. I owned it.

I can, indeed, sing like Bonnie Raitt, and from that day forward my voice has never sounded the same.

Round Two

A few years later I came back for another dose of the Natural Singer. I was singing on stage, my own songs and other original tunes, but I didn’t feel confident about singing songs I’d heard recorded by others.  I got lost in my expectations or assumptions or something.  Instead of singing those songs as if I’d written them, I was looking for approval.  I had not been able to shake myself out of this trap, so I asked Claude for help.

The song I chose to sing when I was getting coached was “Blue Moon”.  Claude told us to not practice stopping for any reason, to sing right through our tears, and to not practice telling stories and making excuses before we sang, but just get up there and sing. Shut up and sing!

I got up and sang, but very soon I started to cry. I kept singing or rather mouthing words with no sound as I sobbed, but I did indeed not let my tears stop my singing or my life.

When I finished croaking out “Blue Moon,” Claude said, “That was the best example of not letting your tears stop you I’ve ever seen. Is there a story that goes along with this song?”

There was indeed a story that went with this song.

When I was about nine years old, I tried out for a talent show at my elementary school. I chose this song “Blue Moon” from a stack of 45’s my dad had brought home from the jukebox he owned. I asked him if he would accompany me on his guitar for the talent show, but he said no, he was too busy.

I put the record on and sang along with it over and over again. I walked around the living room, singing and memorizing the words — all by myself. I practiced and practiced until I knew all the words.

I remember very clearly standing on that stage all by myself singing “Blue Moon” a cappella. I sang it perfectly. Every note in every word was on pitch as far as I could tell.

I did not get chosen for the talent show. This is something that would never happen now-a-days, but it happened to me.  I understood that a solo a cappella performance didn’t fit in with the skits and piano recitals of the other students, so I was not as devastated as I could have been.  I knew I was born to be on stage.

One of the reasons I didn’t get chosen might have been that my dad, well-known in our small town as a violent alcoholic, owned a bar called the “Blue Moon”. Maybe it was just too poignant having me singing this song. The idea that they were protecting me feels better than other interpretations I could invent about this event, so I chose this story.

I told the participants of the workshop this story and Claude had me sing the song again with all the anger I could muster.  I had plenty of anger and I belted it out: “Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone, you SOB. You missed out on knowing me, you idiot…” I had a great time. Then Claude had me sing the song with compassion and forgiveness, which I did.  Over the years I have done much anger and forgiveness work about my dad, but there is nothing quite like singing it out in front of people who are full of compassion and appreciation.  Nothing quite like it.

When I sang the song a final time, Claude stopped accompanying me on the piano when I got to the part of the song “And then suddenly appeared before me the only one my arms would ever hold. I heard somebody whisper please adore me and when I looked, the moon had turned to gold.”

During this part of the song Claude took me in his arms and danced with me, a perfect moment of healing, a perfectly inspired moment. I’ve never seen him do this with anyone else in the three workshops I’ve attended. Claude’s ability to be present with me at that moment was a gift I appreciate profoundly and is beyond my ability to articulate adequately.

For my second coaching session, I sang “Let it Be.” There was more willingness and crying on my part, more letting go, as I squeaked out the first few measures of the song. I sang the rest of the song quietly, gently, without any of the strength I had shown as “Bonnie Raitt.”

Claude told me to ask people how my singing of the song affected them, which I did at lunch. Some of them said they would never hear the song the same way again because I had affected them so deeply. “You’re kidding!” I said.

“Didn’t you think it was powerful?  What did you think?” they asked me.

“I thought it was weak and boring,” I told them.  I had been so sure it was weak and boring and that they had been kind to listen, kind and tolerant.  That I could have affected them from such a quiet place in me was a revelation.

This taught me I could not trust my judgments about my voice. What I had thought was weak and boring other people said was powerful and true. I realized I had a lot to learn and unlearn about my voice and what I was capable of.

Round Three

A few weeks before my 59th birthday, I attended my third Natural Singer Workshop. This time my goal was to learn to trust that deep silent part inside me, letting go of everything I think I know, and then allow an expression from a deep quiet place in me.  I wanted to release any more assumptions I had about what my voice was capable of expressing.

I volunteered to get coached the first morning, ready to go into the quiet, vulnerable places inside me. Walking up to the front of the room, I got ready to sing one of my favorite songs: “I am an Orphan”.  As I had learned only a week earlier, from the internet no less, that my dad had died in May, I was, in fact an orphan in reality.

I cried through the singing of “I am an Orphan”, no surprise there. Then Claude asked me to sing my fears out as I finished the sentence: “I’m afraid to let you know….”

“I’m afraid to let you know I don’t know,” I sang and then cried some more.  I was singing from the place in me that is open enough to not know. I was ready to let go of everything and become nothing but whoever I am called to be.

That evening we had a Master’s Class, and because Claude has emphasized that we are there to practice, not to rehearse or perform, but practice, I let myself try stuff without knowing how it would turn out.

Claude accompanied me as I sang “I Can’t Make You Love Me” sung so heartbreakingly well by Bonnie Raitt.

I let ‘er rip. I sang out from my heart and my toes.  I belted it out so loudly, I thought I might injure something.  I also let myself sing softly.  I let all my emotion come out through each note. I owned the song and the moment, all the notes that cracked as well as the notes I could feel vibrating in my whole body.

I knew I had made an impact. The song was about me, but it was about everyone who wasn’t loved back by someone who lived deep in their bones.  Afterwards one woman said I even made the heavens cry because it started raining while I was singing.

We all got to sing one final song, so I sang my revised version of  “I am a Woman”. “I have climbed the banks of the Nile in the pouring rain through mud, manure, sticks and stones and bare feet without a cane…” this is a song I am not shy about singing, a song I have no doubt I can belt out to the heavens, a song I have no insecurities about.

I wasn’t sure why my intuition called to sing this song as my final song because I was at the Natural Singer Workshop to take risks not hang out in my comfort zone. After I sat down I realized the risk I took standing completely in my strength, in my bigness, in my grandeur with no apologies. I was risking making other people feel insecure or risking having people judge me that I was playing it safe or risking that people might think blah, blah, blah.

My singing this song was my taking a stand for my right to be however I am in the world at any given moment.  Very cool.

My Glory Book

Claude has told me three things that I have recorded in my Glory Book, where I write down things that people have said to me that are so precious I don’t want ever to forget them. In the second workshop I sang a song I wrote called “My Mommy is in Angel”. Claude liked my song so much, he said he wished he had written it.  This was huge praise to me, as I have had no formal training in songwriting and he has worked for Julliard.

In this third workshop Claude told me I walk my talk more than anyone he’s ever known. He also told me I sang parts of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” better than Bonnie Raitt. He said I was a master.

Claude’s Gift

Claude comes with an amazing skill set about the biology of voice and singing, but that’s not what makes him a great workshop facilitator. He comes with 30 years experience of giving workshops, but that’s also not what makes him a great facilitator.

I believe what separates him from the crowd is his deep understanding and commitment to focusing on what is working instead of what is wrong with people. He takes delight in progress, not demanding perfection or taking it personally when people take two steps forward and then take one step back.

What does this have to do with you?

He is not a saint. He says he likes to win and for him winning is when people free their voices. I can live with that. He struggles with his own inner voices of perfectionism, but I like this about him. He knows his ego is right there ready to jump in and take over, so he is on guard for that, and I appreciate that about him. I’ve been with people who are so sure they’re right they are not watching for their ego’s infestation from what they’re doing, and they are truly dangerous people.

Everyone can sing and everyone can write. You need to find people like Claude and quite frankly, like me, to help you feel safe enough to try new things and see what happens. When you are surrounded by people who are rooting for you, gasping at every bit of courage you show, appreciating every little sound or action that moves you forward — well, this is almost heaven and it doesn’t just happen in West Virginia.

Blessings,

Vicki

T is for Telling the Truth

Note:  This is part of my WHAT MATTERS TODAY Reboot Camp Program.  Email me if you would like to join in.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a little white lie. Whenever we lie, no matter how small we think the lie is, we chip away at something divine and essential in our being. Whenever we lie, no matter what story we’re telling ourselves that makes the lie okay, we are losing track of the truth within ourselves.

This is why the Habit of Telling the Truth is clarifying and detoxifying at the same time. When we speak our truth, when someone says “Do you want to?” and we answer with our truth, we create a vibration of courage, honesty, and hope.

Whenever we lie, whenever we say we are “Fine” when we are not fine, whenever we say something is okay when it’s not okay, we are chipping away at our own self-esteem as well as inviting those around us to live in their Lies.

It is a big deal to lie to ourselves or anyone else.

Do we have to speak all of the truth insider of us every moment? If course not. It’s the new hairstyle we are asked to comment upon, for example, seems to us pretty dreadful, it is unkind and unwise to say as much. But we can still speak our truth without harming the person.

Sometimes this is quite a challenge, as in the example of a haircut that looks dreadful to us. When I know I’m going to be faced with a challenge to tell the truth, a truth that is not harmful, I say a Little prayer and look for the one part I can comment on positively that is true.

It might sound something like this: “I think the shorter length makes you look more youthful.” I will say this if it is true, and the resonance of the truth will vibrate, and the person to whom I am speaking will know I am telling the truth.

If the spiky, multicolored horns sticking out all over her head still look pretty dreadful to me, I will trust that she will find her way. Either that or I may change my mind at some point and decide to go spiky multicolored horns all over my head too.

Commitment to Truth Telling

What is vitally important is my commitment to speaking only my truth. Because in order to speak the truth, I have to go inside my body to find it. You will have to do that for yourself as well. How do you feel about going to that movie? What would you like to have for dinner? Do you care if someone borrows your sweater?

There is no such thing as a little white lie. Any lie we tell dissolves a holy part in us. It makes us weaker and invites us to lie even more.

The Truth Telling Recovery Program

Start with telling the truth about little things, all day long every day.

Then move onto telling yourself the truth about more difficult matters. In your journal you might ask: “What am I afraid to know right now?”

Finish this sentence several times “If I weren’t afraid, I would let myself know…”

Telling the truth is a lifelong habit. I’ve been practicing telling the truth for over 25 years, it’s easy most of the time now, but sometimes it is still a challenge. Sometimes I don’t want to know what is true because what is true for me will cause me to have to make a change, let go of the job, dissolve a friendship, disappoint myself or others, or change the focus of my business.

Gandhi is a model for me in telling the truth when it is extremely hard to do. Once he organized a march and then canceled it at the last minute, even though thousands of people had gathered, many of whom had given up their jobs to be part of the march.

When Gandhi was challenged by his followers saying he needed to stick with his commitment, he said, “I do not know the big T Truth. I only know my small t truth, and my small t truth changes. I am committed to honoring my small t truths, even when I don’t understand, even when it is inconvenient for myself or others.”

You don’t get to be able to do this kind of truth telling unless you’ve had a lot of practice. Whatever we practice we get good at, and we’re always practicing something. When we practice telling the truth every day in little ways, we can’t help but get better at it. If we practice lying every day in little ways, we can’t help but get better at lying and being disconnected from the Truth that is us.

So tell the truth all the time. It helps you remember what you said and who you really are and who you are meant to be.

It should be simple, remembering what matters today.  We should be able at any moment to tune into what is important and not get distracted by what is temporary, irritating, or irrelevant. We should be able to read a book and apply its wisdom to our daily lives.  We should be able to go to a workshop, have a transformational experience, and weave our new learnings into our daily lives simply and easily. It should be easy to remember what is important to us, but we all know it is not.

What happens to our good intentions?

After reading this new book or attending this terrific retreat or after listening to a fabulous tele-seminar, we make a resolution to change our lives for the better. We have learned activities, attitudes, behaviors, habits that we KNOW will bring us more freedom, joy, connection, and even success.

We all know we need to take action to change our lives, but even when we know better and have taken some steps to move our lives forward,  we fall back into our old habits, and within a few days or a few weeks we are right back to living our lives in our old limiting patterns.  Perhaps we have made a small shift toward a life that is more joyful, more meaningful, and more connected to what really matters to us, but for the most part, we are back to same ol’, same ol’.

How do we remember, how can I remember, what matters today?

This is a question I’ve been living with for the last twenty-seven years and I have come up with an answer and that answer is my WHAT MATTERS program.

Yahoo!

And how did I come up with this simple system, you may well ask?  How did I consolidate all I have learned in the last twenty-seven years, making it simple and doable for anyone at any point in their journey?

I am the most creative when I have a specific audience and purpose in mind, and this specific audience came to me as a new client.  She had a daunting list of challenges:  ADD, PTSD, panic attacks, depression, meth addiction, sexual abuse — she had every excuse to be curled up in a fetal position sucking her thumb.

But she came to me to find more joy.  She already had a team to support her, a psychiatrist and a therapist, but she wanted someone to catapult her out of her past and into a present and future free of anxiety, depression, poor boundaries, and hateful self talk.

As I held her in my heart and mind, asking the Universe how I might best support her Quest for Joy, a plan came to mind.  I have been in recovery for twenty-seven years.  Recovery is not sexy, there are no instant cures or any cures, but Recovery works.  Every day you get up, put your feet on the ground, tell the truth, take responsibility, and absorb and exude gratitude.  You do your work, reminding yourself that it is all about progress, not perfection.

You do the work.  No magic cures.  No magical thinking.  You do the work and it works.  It is messy.  Some days you slip back into old, unloving habits, but every day in Recovery you get a clean slate.  You own your own farts, clean up your messes, celebrate life, and take that the next step you are called to take.

The work of Recovery is hard to sell.  It is easy to sell magical thinking –”Just imagine your weight is off and it is!  just imagine a million dollars in your bank account and it will be there!  It’s all up to you!  Whatever happens to you is your fault.  You caused it and you can cure it just by changing the way you think!  Pay me a bunch of money and I will show you how easy it is!”  This is a multi-billion dollar industry I’m talking about here.

There is enough truth in this to make this pitch very seductive.  We do create much of our own reality by what we choose to focus on.  Our imaginations are very powerful.  Being able to imagine a positive future for yourself is a better predictor of college success than SAT scores.  What we think does matter.

But what we do matters even more.  Putting our intentions into action and sustaining that action in spite of defeats, set backs, doubts — this takes daily discipline and support.  In short, a Recovery Program.   So when my new client came to me, I applied what I knew about how I have crafted my childhood experiences  from living in raging disfunction with a violent alcoholic father and a codependent, high school dropout mother — into a life with deep, honest relationships, first and foremost with a husband I adore and two adult children of whom I am inordinately proud.

I thrive on traveling all over the world with my message, my songs, and my puppets, inviting people of all ages and cultures to step out of their fear and into the lives they have been called to live.  A comment I frequently hear is:  “I can’t believe you got this group up on their feet singing and dancing!” Or “That boy has never written or volunteered to read his work, and you got him to write and be eager to share in one lesson!”

I took what I have learned through my own recovery and asked the questions:  “How can I put this into a simple, easy to remember form?  How can I take the practices I have used over the years that are proven to work and make it easy for people to weave Recovery habits into their daily lives?  How can I help all of us remember what matters today?”

I asked the Question and I was given the Answer and that is the WHAT MATTERS TODAY Reboot Camp.

Yahoo!

I collected practices I use, arranged them in a meaningful acronym, and created a simple system to weave quick, effective, and fun habits to help people remember WHAT MATTERS.  This is, if I must say so myself, brilliant!

Want more?   Next week I will show you what I created.  I’ll be at The Natural Singer workshop, so I’m getting my newsletter ready ahead of time.  This weekly newsletter matters to me.

Oh, we mortals! We are so funny! Even when we have Enough, even when we are living in Abundance, we always seem to be seeking a Bigger Better Deal.  I’m living what I’m calling a “La Dee Dah” Life” right now, and every day I get clearer about how I add to my suffering by wishing for more than I have.  Aren’t I so humanly cute?

One of my favorite stories from the Bible is when Moses gets called to lead his people out of Egypt through the desert to the Promised Land.  I think we are called every day to lean into who we are meant to be, and I think it is easy to believe we’ve misunderstood. It is very human to doubt a call we are hearing. Or if we hear a call, we think it should be accompanied by a Business Plan with Sixteen Easy Infallible Steps.

But living a Wild, Precious Life does work this way.

I often think it should work this way, and perhaps Moses did too.

Moses didn’t get his call from a angel or even in a dream.  He was called by a burning bush. When he heard the burning bush talking to him, he said, (and I like to believe that his voice had a Robert DeNiro accent), “Are you talkin’ to me?”

He couldn’t believe he was being called to do something grand and amazing in the world. I can identify with that. You probably can too. Who are we to be amazing, fabulous, courageous, brilliant, and capable of transforming the world? Marianne Williamson says–Who are we not to be? We are children of the Universe. Our playing small doesn’t serve the world.

So, not many of us are ready to take action when we hear the Call.

Moses answers the Call, and leads his people through the desert for 40 years. Now 40 years or 40 days and 40 nights is Bible talk for a really, really, really long time. A time much longer than we thought it was going to take, a time which tests our perseverance, our patience, and our faith in the truth of the Call.

That’s a long time. If we were given the Call with a little notation that said, “Not to worry!” this will take you 6.3 weeks, or 2.4 hours, or three years and 10 days–if we just had a timeframe, we could adjust.

But we are never given the time frame. We are only invited to answer a Call. Bummer!

So if we answer the Call as Moses and his people did, we may be out in the desert for a long time, but the good news is every day we wake up surrounded with manna from heaven. Every day we are getting just what we need to get through the day. How about that? How cool is that? We’ve answered the Call; we’ve got a leader, and we are given every day just exactly what we need.  We are living a “La Dee Dah” Life of faith and gratitude.

But it’s not enough.

In the Bible we are told the followers of Moses, even though they have a leader who has obviously answered a Call, and even though they are given manna from heaven every morning, still, they can’t help themselves. They find a Golden Calf, and they worship it.

The Golden Calf Is new!  It has novelty. It glitters. We get a rush when we worship the golden Calf together. We have a new movement of which we’re a part. New, new, new, new, new!

Meanwhile, we are demonstrating a gross ingratitude for the manna we’ve been given. We have abandoned our journey. We are being distracted, even while we think we are moving on! This Golden Calf worshipping is fun, fun, fun! And, we don’t have to do the hard work of trekking through the desert anymore. We get to feel like we’re making progress when we were really lost in a Distraction That Looks Good. How perfect is that?

What does this have to do with you and me?

Where has a Golden Calf slipped into our lives?  What practices have we abandoned, practices that have served us well but don’t seem sexy enough anymore?  Where are we thinking “This is too simple to be good and too good to be true?”

The simple things work. Drinking water, getting outside every day for a walk, writing about how we feel, talking to the Universe in the form of prayer or a dialogue with our Angel Committee, eating fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meat, fiber–and hugely reducing our intake of sugar, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup – all these things work and they are free or less expensive than Golden Calf alternatives.

(Check out this YouTube video on sugar and you will be radicalized!http://www.ironmagazineforums.com/diet-nutrition/104570-youtube-sugar-bitter-truth.html )

The simple stuff works, but it’s not sexy enough for us. When I worked in a drug and alcohol treatment center, I learned that recovery can feel boring at first. How can a healthy body and relationships and a healthy lifestyle compare with the drama of addiction, getting fired, screaming fights, and getting high on drugs that used to work for you but don’t anymore?

Recovery cannot compete with the adrenaline rush of addiction, at least not at first. If we are going to replace addictive habits of over busying our lives, eating to cover our uncomfortable emotions, seeking yet a new, complicated Answer to All Our Problems–oh, we can distract ourselves forever.

Surrendering to the Power of Simplicity

But when we learn to trust the simple things–smelling flowers, wiggling, hugging a tree, telling the people in our lives precisely what it is about them that we appreciate, singing in the kitchen as we put dishes in the dishwasher and wipe the counters, starting conversations with strangers, writing about the things in our life we are grateful for every day, and let ourselves frolic some every day–when we learn to live in this kind of Simplicity and trust it, our lives are transformed every day. La de dah!

This activity will shift your energy.  It works every time just the way you need it to work for you.  If you are feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, depressed, full of anxiety, or dealing with any challenge (this would be almost everyone)  then give this audio a listen and then write yourself a comforting letter from the future.

Click here to start