With the holidays behind us, our family has been busy implementing our New Year’s resolutions to make our life as simple as possible in 2018. This requires a lot of letting go – sometimes a sad and painful process and sometimes something to look forward to, but always challenging. Vulnerable. Also exciting.
She was my dream horse, practically perfect in every way – the prettiest, the smartest, the best. Afraid of nothing and the personification of calm presence, with the sweetest eyes you’ve ever seen. But because life rarely goes as we expect it to go, and because changing circumstances sometimes call for difficult choices, ...
Never could I have imagined how it would touch me to experience first-hand what it means to raise a child with disabilities, both practically and emotionally, as well as socially. To witness the resilience, joy, stamina and love of these children and their parents and their siblings, throughout all their hardships and sometimes downright suffering, was life changing for me.
It was kind of a ‘thing’ for me, committing myself to my music, for better and for worse. That is why I got slightly frustrated when I started noticing that my voice tired quicker and more often, and my throat started hurting after singing and even after conversations and book time with my son. WTF?
If there is one thing I fear when it comes to sharing my work, it is being perceived as ‘boring’. I wrote earlier that I had never really been confident about my guitar skills, and so there always exists this fear of not being enough. Not varied enough, not technically good enough, not interesting enough.
Because they say that being an artist is about 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration (ratios vary depending on whom you ask) (sorry about all these parentheses by the way), it might be a good idea for me to sweat a little, if you know what I mean.
I had heard that name my whole life. I knew him, even though I had never met him. I knew his mother and I loved his sister, who was my aunt Tineke. Joy and I sat together in stunned silence for a few moments, goosebumps on our arms. It seemed almost impossible, but here we were.
Sometimes the veil is thin and we might be able to catch a glimpse of what lies beyond, but more often it appears like a wall and we have no idea what awaits us on the other side. This song reminds me of how important it is to find the courage to take the plunge, and feel.
Because no one needs to hear “it can’t have been that bad” or “don’t you think it’s time to move on?” or “I’m sure you’re imagining things” or, worst of all, any variation of “you had it coming” (including “I told you so”). Because when it comes to heartbreak or despair, we have all been there.
If I stay silent, chances are substantial that almost no one will ever hear anything I do, and however strange it may sound, these songs are meant to be heard. That is why they wanted to exist in the first place. Moreover, they chose me to sing them – in a sense, I owe it to them to do just that.