In this picture, I look pretty poised, happy, and confident.
Like someone who’s already decided to express her voice.
What you can’t see on the digital surface is that when this picture was taken (quite a few years ago 🙂 I was still learning how to breathe. Consciously, I mean. But literally. In response to danger, real or imagined, I was a habitual breath holder and this had some serious consequence on my whole well-being.
Just a few months before the singing performance shown here, nightly terrors and panic attacks were still a regular occurrence in my body. Ironically, they started intensifying right when life was beginning to feel more stable and safe again.
They were triggered by my environment, true, but they were really the byproduct of old accumulated stress and outdated beliefs.
One such belief was that no one cared what I had to say and that, in fact, it wasn’t safe to speak my mind. "Shoosh it or else" was the silent command running the show.
In this picture, I didn’t care much to understand how complex PTSD played out in my nervous system. I just wanted the headaches to stop, the nightmares to turn into peaceful dreaming, and the acidic anxiety to cease.
I had left a job that no longer felt right and found another that was better but still shaky in all the ways new beginnings can be. My yoga mat had become my lifeline. My teenage son was doing well but testing boundaries and going through his own heartaches I could not prevent. Helplessness felt awful. Our blended family was a swirl of love and daily friction. The pre-COVID world outside was foreshadowing a shift. A lot in my life, my brain notwithstanding, felt like it was burning.
So I decided to sing.
I joined Dan and the Resound NW Choir because something in me knew that sound, especially my own, was part of the healing. The first song Dan asked me to sing in a private lesson was “Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie.” I couldn’t get through it without a torrent of tears. Every time a certain note vibrated in my chest, a wave of suppressed terror rose with it.
I didn’t care about it in the moment while I was trapped in my own “fieldwork,” but what was happening with these tears is backed by evidence-based science. From a neuroscience and psychophysiological perspective, vocal sound moves through the body, activating the vagus nerve and releasing stored emotional energy. My body was remembering and releasing.
That night, pictured here, was my first public performance. I needed to do it with a choir; a solo or even a duet would have been too much of a leap. We were imperfect, some off-key, some right on. Most of us were both, depending on the moment. But it didn’t matter that we did not sound professionally in tune. What mattered was that we showed up in community to let our voices come through the fear.
For me singing then became a practice of emotional mastery.
I kept going despite the bumpiness.
Every note taught me that safety can be found in integrated sound.
Fast forward to today: it feels positively exciting, and often even natural, to step onto a stage, interview or be interviewed for a podcast, or speak from my heart even when the recording light is on. Back then, it took everything I had. Today, I have the circuits to express my voice. I keep practicing.
I wasn’t crazy in this photo. I was courageous.
The freedom came later.
But this was the moment it began.
Now that you’ve read through this story, if you go back and look at the photo, can you see and feel the deeper layers?
I bet you have a photo, or some other multi-layered memento, just like that too.
Go find that poised photo. Look into your own eyes and see the layers that others would not easily see. Remember what that version of you carried, endured, and dreamed. Honor how deep the layers were.
Then claim yourself fully, beautifully and unapologetically as the being who made it through and continues to rise.