Sometimes it’s hard to trust the world enough to be seen. Though I have over 20 years experience as a professional musician, though I edit and produce an amazing sexy calendar and CD, I’ve been clinging to a kind of safety. If I stay small as an artist, there is no need to worry about paying taxes in Germany and the U.S. at the same time. If I don’t book any big festivals, there is not so much pressure to be a top-game performer with the best bands. If my social media accounts stay small, there’s less of a chance that twerps will verbally attack me from the safety of their screens. If I stay off streaming platforms, I can avoid fame and keep my freedom.
If I stay small, no one will try to push me down.
If I use small words, no one will hate my intelligence.
After all that I’ve seen unfolding in the last months, I believe that more women have to stop playing small. It’s time to shine.
My sobriety tracker tells me that I’ve been sober for 1,391 days at the time of this writing. So, I have to forgive myself for playing small these last few years as I figure out what to do with all these insecurities and huge emotions and fast-moving thoughts. I used to just smoke a bit of pot or drink a whiskey when those thoughts and feelings got in the way. After a few years of weathering the emotional storm without my raincoat, staring right into the wind and screaming back at it, what do you want from me??? I got some answers back:
We are your feelings. We want to be heard and felt. Stop numbing, stop hiding.
We need you to be healed. We need you to take more rest, more time for stretching and walking and being an animal with a body again. Drop your workaholic starving artist game and live. There must be an easier way to do all of this.
Oh, and we want you to earn more money so you’re not always staring into the abyss. Don’t feel guilty about wanting to be seen and heard. Don’t be scared. See all that darkness out there? Why are you hiding your light?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve been given a lucky break as a childrens’ music performer for kindergarten-age kids in German schools this year. In my search for proper material, I found that there was a certain energy missing in the German kids’ songs I found. Something raw, simple, and spiritual. There is a gift I can bring into these classrooms, something I can pass on the way it’s been passed on to me. In the last few weeks, I’ve been doing battle with clunky German grammar to create a translation for This Little Light of Mine. This African American spiritual might be one of the most powerful pieces of mind-magic in American culture. Uttering these messages of hope and spiritual liberation over and over again in two languages has cast a spell on my mind… the good kind of magic!
So, welcome to my new website update. I do this in the spirit of sharing some light; with the intention of building a bigger platform, booking better gigs, and doing good where I can. I’m going live with the update very soon at squeezeboxgoddess.com
I welcome your comments, feedback, critiques and especially your encouragement. Thanks for helping me shine.
This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine…
Everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine…
Even when I’m afraid, I’m gonna let it shine…
I won’t let anyone put it out, I’m gonna let it shine…
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!
– Traditional African American Spiritual