April 30th. Day Three of the Kickstarter, and it’s my son Joey’s Birthday today. He’s seventeen.
Why is this significant?
Because I started writing songs when Joey was six months old. I measure my songwriting journey (among many other things) alongside his lifetime because they are so connected in my mind.
Many of you know this story, but I like telling it so I’ll tell it again.
There I was. A young mom with three little kids in Algona, IA. A couple years previous I had started meeting up with another young mom, Sarah, and we’d let our babies and toddlers crawl around and play while we talked about our shared love of music. Together, she and I started working up some folks songs with some folk harmonies and eventually start playing out. We’d play the Farmer’s Market, the library, the different community events in town. I had recently gifted my husband a guitar for Christmas and bought him some guitar lessons, but soon I had commandeered his guitar for my own purposes and started clumsily playing those three chords just so I could sing some truth.
Around that time the movie, “Once,” came out and it was a direct hit straight to my longing heart and that calling bird, that gentle pull, that true north of possibility just wouldn’t let me go until one day, the cover songs started staring back at me daring me to join in.
On the other side of the Iowa state line my sister-in-law, Emily, had been taking guitar lessons and started writing her own stuff. She too was in her season of young parenting and I watched as she started writing, then performing, then joining a group of musicians in her own town for song circles and song shares and I wondered if I could do that too.
Fast forward to that fateful, God-sent afternoon when all three kids were all napping at the same time and rather than push that gentle pull away, I let it embrace me and gave in to the notion that I could try and write something with just a pen and paper and a quiet hour to myself. And so I did. I wrote my first song based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” On account of I love “Pride and Prejudice.” Who doesn’t?
What I didn’t anticipate was how that first song opened a door I didn’t even know was there and ushered me into a frenzied, beautiful, unstoppable tsunami of desire to write. That afternoon unleashed a season of constant writing, constantly chasing after something I could write and love and, as they say, the rest is history. I never stopped and now it’s seventeen years later. It’s Joey’s birthday.
I could tell you about all the internal arguments about whether or not I was worthy, or good, or if this thing mattered. I could tell about the self-doubt, the guilt, the other sticky wickets that showed up when I finally started showing up for my life’s work, but that’s not the point. The point is that today marks 17 years of ups and downs and never giving up. Of believing in this thing sometimes faintly, at times tentatively, until the day when I told someone out loud, for the first time, “I’m a songwriter.” And there it was.
And here I am. Thanks to Sarah, thanks to my napping kids, thanks to Emily, thanks to Jon and my kids coming up to me grabbing my hands off the guitar saying, “Mama stop, Mama no playing.” thanks to Darrell Scott and Robin and Todd and Cody, thanks to Song School, and Emily and Andy in “The Neighborhood,” Thanks to FARM and Styka and Sue and Jane and the “Sad Offs” thanks to Sarah Sample and Sweet Talk Radio, thanks to Lisa and Jessica, and to Chez Bubba, and Folk Alliance and Denver Uke Fest and Eric and Kenny Lee and Marty, and Dalis and New Folk, thanks to my Red Path Gallery groupies, RealWomenReal Songs thanks to Heather and Jana, and Leah and Zoe and Marci and The Art School, and Mark and Leigh and Pino and Anke and Keith and Nikki, my brothers and Mom and Dad, thanks to Steve Seskin and Peter Himmelmann and Bonnie Hayes and all those teachers who let me soak up their wisdom, to Ellis and their song “Right on Time,” (that sends me weeping every, dang, time) to Siobhan and Michael and their song that makes me cry every time, thanks to Zack and Jesse and Nomad and Mare, Thanks to the Monday Night Songwriting Group and Bob, thanks to Prompt Queens, my undying love for Cory Branan, and thanks to Katie my forever roommate and all those moments of magic we’ve all shared together. I didn’t get here alone. I did it with one song and then all your help along the way.
Seventeen years ago I was someone who had gotten tangled up in an internal fight between who I thought I was, who I thought I should be, and who I thought other people wanted me to be and I was stuck without clearly seeing this whole world of wonder. One song was my start toward getting back to essentials. You might be able to relate to that internal struggle and how it doesn’t exactly go away, but it can get quieter, and less condemning, and it can lose its fangs in time. And thank God for that.
Fourth studio records aren’t the stuff of any given Tuesday. They are special and so is this moment. Kickstarter campaigns can be seen in a million different lights, but the light which shines brightest is the one of hope and belief and the work of a lifetime being realized.
What’s your “one song” moment that changed everything? Have you thanked it recently? I’ve been blessed to have a quite a few of them- moments of YES that sent me along a current where I couldn’t see the destination, but was willing to go forward anyway. In the words of a songwriter I know, “We may not be able be able to see too far down this road, but we know that love will guide our way. We follow love, love, love, love. We follow love.” A birthday is good reminder to do just that. High five.