Dignity and the Voice

On manipulation, stage fright, and the long road back to my voice

With the moon in Taurus today, our inner world is reflected in the voice. Our true expression. Our authenticity.

I am thinking about dignity. And holding onto your own when confronted by those who don’t understand what dignity means.

In my life, I have had many people who manipulate in a couple of different ways, but one way in particular always bothered me more than others, and that is by means of demeaning. And the personality I am talking about always does this in a way where it is only visible by me, and perhaps maybe one other person, if I am lucky, but that has not always been the case.

They demean in a way that can go undetected by others. Or at least they can be convinced by the manipulator’s magic act. Their illusion.

They do it by using an innocent tone and a calm voice. They choose to bring something up that they know is tender for you. Sensitive. Painful for you to recall. And they choose to forget their manners and pass off their statements as simply curiosity and conversation, but I am too old now to believe this is mere innocence.

I know a lot more about the world and the way people develop.

For a long time I felt like I had to understand these people in order to move on with my life.

I tried everything. I tried reading psychology books about people who abuse. I trained to be a counselor at a domestic violence shelter, thinking that maybe I would be able to wrap my head around how some people become groomed into being horrible people. I became a devotee of the non violent teachings of Gandhi in an attempt to observe these people with compassion, thinking that would finally bring me that aha moment I was so determined to find.

Then I found myself living in an apartment on a not so great side of town, with a bug problem, and waking up every day in a state of intense confusion wondering what had happened to me?

How had my connections to people of this ilk gotten to be so prominent that I went from a promising young singer-songwriter in my early twenties to a shell-shocked, depressed 31-year-old singer afraid of the stage?

There would be moments I can recall of just laying on my small sofa, staring up at the ceiling wondering how I was supposed to go on with my life.

With my only true passion killed off like it had been, I didn’t know how I could survive.

The only thing that really carried me through my adolescence had been my love of music, but more than that, performance.

Musicals, church solos, cafés, plays… it did not matter. I would do it all.

I loved the way I felt when I connected to the audience during a song I wrote. That was the most fulfilling experience of all.

And somehow, in the time frame of at least six years, I had completely lost my nerve.

I don’t think I even cried. It was more of a shock I lived with for the few years that followed.

I was indeed working on an album. And the process of writing songs helped me get through that painful time. But when I finally stepped on the stage for the first time since leaving a very difficult life situation, and I choked… It was a shock I had never experienced in my life before.

I had always had songwriting and sharing my songs to be my saving grace. I had gratitude for this. I knew it wasn’t something everyone had. I felt lucky. As if God had made some kind of deal with me before I arrived in human form. As if he said to me: Life is going to be hard, but don’t feel so bad. YOU get to have MUSIC.

But a singer needs an audience.

Yes, the very act of singing is a healing practice. And I tell my students all the time that singing can be just for you. But some of us… we are not really like that.

Historically, the act of singing has been a communal activity.

In the fields. In worship. Through healing others. And yes entertainment.

Even though singing my new songs in my apartment helped, there was still a gaping hole in my soul that I couldn’t fill.

And I couldn’t fill it because I was so full of fear.

The first time I summoned up the courage to say yes to a solo performance was about ten years later. A new friend was opening a shop and made it sound like she had different kinds of entertainment lined up, so I assumed I would be announced to sing my three prepared songs, and that the audience would pay attention.

When I showed up, the shop was packed with people drinking wine and chatting loudly. My friend did not announce me, but instead told me it was time to start. So I went to the microphone with my guitar and said hello.

The audience kept talking.

In the past, audiences have quieted down once I started playing, so I did that.

The audience got louder.

I realized I had made a mistake.

I got through the set with a handful of people giving me their full attention. Afterwards, I realized my mistake of not taking control of the crowd, but I was so out of practice and so pumped with fear hormones, that I could not think clearly in that moment.

I went home and started crying and could not stop for about an hour.

In that moment I felt like I had to come to terms with the fact that my ability to sing in front of others was totally gone. Dead. Killed off. Rest in peace. And I grieved something I had felt for a very long time.

The next day I felt as if I had lost someone I loved. A breakup or a death. I was weary, tired, and all I could do was lie in bed and watch TV.

Eventually I got myself back up and went right back to my sound healing routine of chanting and toning with my harmonium.

Several months later, I decided it was time to pour myself into teaching voice. If I couldn’t perform anymore, I could at least become a great teacher and maybe help others who have been stuck.

I tried to see my handicap as a benefit to helping others. Before my 31st year, I had never experienced what so many others experience when they try to sing or speak in public. Now I knew. I had a decade of that experience now, and maybe I could look to my future students as motivation for getting myself together.

So I poured myself into my own sound healing practice. I looked for examples and found a wonderful role model in Stewart Pearce, the famous voice coach of Princess Diana. I found his presence calming, and when I took his online course, I decided I would take my inspiration from him. Encouraging my students to work on relaxing their bodies first, in order for their voices to really shine through.

His compassionate presence brought tears to my eyes, as I had never had a voice teacher with so much genuine love for humanity.

Most of the voice teachers I had as a teenager seemed so caught up in their own stuff, they lacked that warmth that is needed for a student to feel some kind of security and confidence.

Mr. Pearce modeled for me what a voice coach should be like.

Relaxed. Confident. Stylish. At ease. Compassionate. And ready with a surplus of tools to help students find their true voice.

Eventually I posted to my local Facebook group that I was taking on new piano and voice students. To my surprise, almost everyone who wrote was a voice student. I took it as a sign that I was on the right path.

So I started sharing with my new voice students all the “unusual” things I had been practicing. The massage and stretch routines. The toning. The visualizations. And to my surprise, they did not run away in fear. In fact, they stayed on longer than what is normal for my history, and they expressed so much gratitude. I had never experienced that with voice students in the past, whom I had been teaching with the same methods my own teachers had passed on to me.

After teaching these new students for a year, I decided it was time to finally take my skills to the public and start a YouTube channel. I always knew I would, but I never knew when the time would be right.

The students I taught that year gave me the confidence to know I was on to something.

And so now I have almost 24K subs on YouTube. Over 60 community members. And almost 90 people have signed up for my Voice Liberation Course before it has even launched!

The fact that so many people have put their trust in me to help them liberate their voices gives me a feeling that all that pain I went through was worth it.

I can still see myself on that staircase crying as I realized any thought of a singing career was officially abolished.

I can still feel myself lying on that couch in a state of depressed shock at what had happened to my psyche to bring me to a place of complete dread and fear regarding the stage.

And then I open up my YouTube community page and see all these comments thanking me for my work… the emails and the messages on my Healthy Voice Community, and the things I hear from my private clients. I hear how I have been able to help them, and that would have not ever happened had I not gone through such a long dark night of the soul.

It was a very hard experience to get through, and I found ways to always make it through. But I will admit it was hard.

And so, to have somewhere to go with these experiences and to help ensure that others do not have to do it alone… it fills me with a type of peace I have not known since the days when I could sing on stage. It has restored me in many ways. And I am so grateful.

This thought process began with a rumination on dignity and how the undignified among us can set out to ruin our lives, sometimes with success.

During that dark period, I felt indeed crushed by the undignified in my life. That they had won. I had accepted defeat and mourned the loss of my sovereignty. But now I know a way out of that crushing defeat. And it is through the same mechanism they hijacked.

They stole your voice, yes. But through your voice, you get to take it back.

And that is the most important lesson I have learned through all of this.

That is what I am teaching through The Healthy Voice.

Journal Prompt: Has anyone in your life ever made you feel small in a way that others couldn't see? How did that experience affect your voice — your willingness to speak, to sing, to take up space? What would it mean to take it back?

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