How I learned to love my voice...again

When I was little I sang all the time. 

I sang about my food, my feelings, the weather, the moon, water, riding my bike, everything. I accompanied my life with my voice. But at some point I stopped singing. What was it that changed my attitude toward my voice and my willingness to express with it? Why did I become convinced that I wasn’t “a singer"?

In elementary school I had a music teacher who rocked my world. I loved the way she sang and how her fingernails clicked on the piano. Every year the school put on a concert, and I remember singing with so much heart and spirit. 1980 was an especially good year. We got to sing songs from the recently released Muppet Movie (Movin’ Right Along, Rainbow Connection & Can You Picture That?). I had a blast singing those songs.

There was a special small vocal ensemble for 6th graders, and I looked forward to auditioning. I knew I would be in it. I felt good and confident in my singing abilities. I even sang a solo in the 6th grade concert. It was short but sweet. I started the Barry Manilow song all by myself, with the clear, sweet voice of a child :

“Just one voice, singing in the darkness, all it takes is one voice, singing so they hear what’s on your mind, and when you look around you’ll find there’s more than...” 

and in came the choir….I’m sure it was beautiful. 

Shortly before that concert, however, my attitude toward my voice changed. It all started when a girl in my class, who was normally very shy and quiet, belted out “Tomorrow” in a talent show and sounded, to my ears, EXACTLY like Broadway’s Annie! I couldn’t do that! When I tried I couldn't do it and the more anxious I felt about it the more miserably I failed. 

My sister Anna also had what everyone referred to as a “beautiful voice.” Nobody said that to me.

I bought in to the myth that some people “have it” and some people don’t, and that I was one of those who don’t. That 6th grade concert was the last time I remember singing. Even in college, as an instrumental music major, I was required to do one semester of choir. I hated it and faked my way through the class. 

Then, three years into my music education degree, I took the class “Music For Children.” The first day we were all singing what I thought was the corniest song ever, “Go, my son, get an education.” After that class I immediately went to see my advisor, dropped the class and changed to a music performance degree.

Several years later, I actually went back to school for a year, took all my education classes and got a job teaching elementary music. For three years I did those kids a disservice. We played all kinds of instruments, danced and chanted, but we rarely sang.  By this time I had become convinced that I couldn’t sing, and I couldn’t stand to listen to the sound of my own voice. 

After moving to Santa Fe in 2002, it was harder to avoid singing, because I had a job at the St. Francis Cathedral School. Part of my responsibilities was to prepare the kids for the weekly mass. I still avoided singing by choosing songs that the kids already knew and finding student leaders to do it. Fortunately, the school had a great parent volunteer who directed the kids’ choir.

One day one of the bands I played in lost one of our singers and I was expected to take up those parts. Begrudgingly, I began singing. I was terrified. The more anxious I was about singing, the worse my voice sounded, and by this time I was very anxious.

It got even worse when one day on the road, the leader of the band, in a drunken tirade, told me, “you can match the pitch, but the tone of your voice just sucks.” It hit me like an arrow straight into my voice and my essence, and proved to me that my worries were true.

Sometime in 2012 I made a list of resolutions. One read, “Play with my voice more.” This desire came about because I started noticing how I laugh. I have a great laugh, and people comment on it all the time. It covers a pretty incredible range. I have super high laughs that go WAY up into my upper vocal range, and low, meaty laughs in my chest voice. I have good, solid belly laughs and soft, sweet giggles that move up and down from low to high and back again. I started wondering, Why does singing a melody and lyrics create so much resistance? Why do I feel so free and easy when I’m laughing but not when I’m singing? Maybe I have been wrong about my voice all these years. Maybe I really CAN sing…

Well, the universe always provides. Two weeks after writing my resolutions, I got a call from a woman who identified as a "real singer". She invited me out for tea. We talked and talked about so many things, but especially about our attitudes toward teaching music and community. She told me that she wanted to start up her community choir again, and asked if I would help her teach it. What?! I don’t sing! How can I teach singing? But somehow she recognized something in me, for which I will be forever grateful. 

Less than a month later, I started co-directing the 7th Wave Community Singers (later known as The Joy Crew Singers). We met that first time in my living room and I will never forget singing,

“I will believe the truth about myself, 

no matter how beautiful it is.”

For the first several months, she did all the vocal pedagogy and I would teach a song or two. This set me on a tremendous path of discovery. I was on fire. I started researching and learning new songs that I could share with these eager singers, and for the first time in my life since I was 12, I started to enjoy singing again.

Eventually, I even started sharing what I was learning about how to sing - based on my first-hand experience with my own voice and body right there in our sessions.

I have felt my voice grow into a comfortable and powerful thing, and I know that every time I sing it will only get better. That I have found my voice again is one of the greatest gifts I have given myself. My voice is an instrument, and I have spent my life learning to play instruments. Singing is a skill that can be built, practiced, and improved. Our instruments need care, and just like any instrument, we need to warm it up, play it correctly, and most of all, USE IT. My instrument includes my whole self, and as I grow in it and allow myself to bloom as a singer, it effects every part of my body, spirit, mind, and life. Sharing this gift with others, and teaching others how to love their voices too is something I never imagined I could be doing.

​I even wrote my singing anthem, which I have now sung literally a thousand times with many different groups of people:​

I lift my voice,

I'm here to sing.

I feel the vibration affect everything.

With a song in my heart

And my heart on my sleeve,

In this moment I am living.

In this moment I SING!

I will never forget what it felt like to be afraid to sing. When I teach, I bring my struggle. And because I have struggled, and because I have spent so many years not singing, and because I have felt my instrument open up and I have been learning to use it and trust it and love it again, I bring a perspective that can’t be understood by someone for whom singing has always come easily.

I sing all the time now. I hear others singing and I can jump in and find a harmony. I no longer sit quietly and listen to others. I am right in there, playing with my voice. And I added a verse to my singing anthem:

And I sing because it makes me happy.

I sing because it sets me free.

I'm singing for the revolution,

And I'm singing just for me.

So even if it sounds a little funny,

Or maybe it's a little off key,

I'm gonna keep on singing,

And I hope that you'll be singing with me!