Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! ![]() 2020 is a new chapter, a new decade. We are heading into the roaring '20s. 100 years ago, this decade was booming with change. The most provocative music the world had ever heard, shorter dresses and a women's rights movement that looked like it would go a lot further than it actually did. Art soared to new heights with artists like Cézanne and Picasso breaking all the known rules. Literature was groundbreaking with Fitzgerald, Stein, and Hemingway. Women's Suffrage finally got women the chance to vote (in the US). The world looked bright. It seems we are so advanced in so many things, but the fact that women have only been allowed to vote for 100 years, reminds me that there's still so much we have to learn. To me, the '20s feel like another milestone. I follow the decades, off by only one year, so the '20s also bring my 40's. In 2019 and the beginning of 2020 I have sunk more resources into my career than I ever have before. And with any investment, there's no guarantee. And it's scary. As I am writing this, two days ago I was in my very first car accident. And that was scary. Two seconds and two more inches and my husband, dog and I would not be here today. It seems like I've been thrown into an even deeper reflection than I usually am around New Year's Eve. Existentially and emotionally. I was upset with some of my choices and felt almost heavenly guided when it came to others. I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. They always seemed too fleeting to me. I like goals, long term, and short term. And I hardly ever use the first of the year to make new starts anyway. That time is too cluttered with Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations and my birthday immediately after. New starts need time and space to breathe. A period of "not much going on" after which you can jump into the new plans whole-heartedly. Sometimes, you just don't have those breathers. Last year I went from finishing up the Live It OutLoud program, straight into lots of shows and showcases and a trip to Nashville to record. That led straight into Christmas and here we are at New Year's with not a break or breather in sight. So new starts are just going to have to happen whenever they happen. And this year there happens to be a lot of new starts in the first of the year. I hope you don't think I'm complaining. I feel blessed and invigorated by all these new changes in my career. I just take my breathers when I can. And I can't wait to share my new adventures as we head into the New Roaring '20s.
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Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! When you have a goal or a pursuit in life, some choices seem easy and apparent. Some, on the other hand, seem difficult, unnecessary and unclear.
When I moved to the US wanting to become a country artist, it seemed pretty apparent that I would need to record some music. I would need to choose a name and obviously play a few (or a hundred) live shows. But where to record? And what? What should I call myself? Where should (or even can) I play? Should I stay in the Northwest or move on to Nashville, like everyone else? It even seems once you've made a choice in the direction of your dreams, it's done and you shouldn't have to think about it anymore. You move on to the next crossroads. But the truth of the matter is, the same obstacles come up again and again. I'm hanging out with some friends in Nashville, meeting people and having a good time. There is no doubt that my music belongs here in Nashville, which is also why I come here to record and make an effort to spend time here. Most of the time I feel like I fit in and I'm doing some legitimate business here. But sometimes I feel like an alien because I didn't choose to move here in the first place. There seems to be an unsaid thing that if you haven't moved here, you're not really serious about your career. Yet, when I tell people I am a full-time musician, they are either thoroughly impressed or don't believe me and assume I drive Lyft on the side at the very least. Most musicians I've met who are living in Nashville don't actually make ends meet with "just" music stuff. They have "day jobs" or do a plethora of different odd jobs. They barter with other musicians to make their own music or pour all their money back into their music careers. So was my choice to not become a full-time Nashvillian a good one or a bad one? I don't know. But I do know that if I was living in Nashville right now, I would not be able to spend all of my time on my own music career the way I am while living in the Pacific NW. But then the question arises: would my career have gotten further than it is right now at this moment had I moved to Nashville in the first place? Those are the unknowns, that we will never know. All I know is I never felt called to actually move to Nashville full time. I have felt called to spend more time in Nashville, and maybe one day I will have a second home here. But I always felt that in this day and age it doesn't matter where you live. You can pursue your music from anywhere. If I'm traveling 9 months out of the year playing shows, what does it matter where I actually live? I also have the blessing of coming home and having my sanctuary with my family far away from the tumultuous music city. Where I can come home and unplug and not be pulled in every direction. Where I have a network of friends who support and encourage me. And that is probably my biggest reason for staying in the Pacific NW. And I have never regretted that decision. Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! ![]() I consider myself an "all-or-nothing girl". The way I describe this is if I can't do it right, perfect or all the way, I don't do it at all. I'm sure you can imagine that this unbridled perfectionism got me nowhere for many years. It's partly the reason why I was over 30 when I finally started pursuing my dream of being a Country Artist. I must say that the only one who ever held me to such high standards, was myself. And the only one who made the rule of what was "good enough", was me. My own personal perfect prison. The way my environment helped me out with this world view, is probably something most school children can relate to. The mantra was: "mistakes are bad". It was all about not making mistakes. At all. To hell with what you can learn from them. This view was everywhere, in school, in church, in my family. Which, as an "all-or-nothing girl" wreaks tremendous havoc, as I strive to be absolutely perfect. And what does that even mean? Perfection is subjective, but I viewed it as an absolute, a goal to achieve, and falling miserably short every single time. Now, don't get me wrong, there is something really valuable to get out of being an "all-or-nothing girl". I got really good at whatever I pursued because I worked so freaking hard on everything. Striving for perfection I wouldn't rest until I had reached an "acceptable" skill level. Again, what was acceptable, was entirely dictated by me. The flipside to this striving syndrome is that I would give up the most worthy endeavors before I even gave them a try. My music career was one of them. I would asses from the starting line that the road was too hard, my skills too low and my chances of succeeding (whatever that means) too slim and deem it undoable. This left me very unhappy. Once I decided against all odds to pursue my dreams, my view on this needed to change. I needed to learn to enjoy the journey because the end-result of "success" was rather blurry. I needed to be ok with where I was at with my skills and play anyway. Because the only way of pursuing what truly makes me happy was to put myself out there and make a million mistakes. "But mistakes are bad!" the "all-or-nothing girl" would exclaim. And so this world view too had to go. The word "mistakes" is even the wrong word for it. When you want to learn to be on a stage, the only way to learn is to be on a stage, it's the ultimate catch 22. And so you have to be willing to put yourself out there, with all your mishaps and missed chords and do it anyway. Suddenly it wasn't about being ready, it was about just being. And being ok with however things turned out. If I could do one thing to help other "all-or-nothing girls" I would remove the word "mistake" from our vocabulary. Or at least have everyone make friends with it. With mistakes not being demonized, we are free to make them and learn from them and possibly throw ourselves into incredible things that we would otherwise deem unachievable. How do you know what's unachievable unless you try? Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy ![]() This month of Thanksgiving I have been preoccupied with gratitude. I even put "Gratitude is my Attitude" on my sign in the little bar we have in the living room. Cliche, I know. But I truly am feeling it right now. Thankfulness and appreciation... those are words that come to mind when I think of gratitude. Loving what you have and not longing for anything to be different. As a child, I was taught to be grateful for God's forgiveness. To be grateful that Jesus gave his life for us. As well-meaning as these religious teachings were, I once thought of gratitude as a guilt-driven emotion. Gratitude was a debt you owed for something you never asked anyone to do for you. You had to feel grateful, or you were a spoiled little brat. It was years before I understood gratitude and gratefulness fully. Probably because I simply had never felt it. Or at least the version of gratitude I was taught, wasn't what I consider true gratitude today. I was taught "it is better to give than to receive" another oxymoron since as a child, it always seems better to receive. Once again, the guilt of not actually feeling that way gave the gratitude I felt when I did receive a tainted feel to it. As a young adult, I sometimes found myself in situations where people thought I was ungrateful for something they had done for me. Often, I didn't understand why. I was grateful (in the actual sense of the word) and I expressed my gratitude by saying thank you, but at that time in my life, I would attract people who didn't think that was enough. I wasn't enough. I was apparently supposed to exclaim it further, and possibly also read their minds, that would have been best. So once again, guilt was associated with thankfulness. Two very clashing emotions, that normally don't have anything to do with each other. But the association made it very hard for me to understand and value the true meaning of gratitude. When I first heard of Oprah's Gratitude Journal back in the 90's, I was skeptical. I'm pretty sure it was because my then version of gratitude was something forced upon me and not something I knew how to feel. It was years before I felt called to keep one myself. It wasn't until the amazing Genevieve Davis introduced the gratitude journal in her book "Becoming Magic" that I started getting a feel for the true meaning of gratitude. It helped that she mentioned you could substitute the gratitude journal for a "how wonderful" or "I'm so happy" -journal. When I put those words in front of things I was genuinely grateful for, a flush of true gratitude would rush over me. I finally understood gratitude. Not by having it explained. Not by words, but by feeling it deep into my soul. She also made a big deal of not writing down things you think you should feel grateful for, but aren't. This was exactly my block around gratitude since it had been so heavily associated with feeling guilty. My understanding of gratitude is now light and airy but deep and warm at the same time. It is not a state of mind, it is an emotion. And for me, it's a very physical one. I keep my gratitude journal to this day. When I write a sentence in it, I sit and feel the gratitude for that thing. I find that focusing upon things you are happy about or grateful for in your life is the most potent and powerful boost you can give your life. What are you grateful for? Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! I once read the book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. If you get a chance to read it, you should. It’s a good book. In the book, she describes her journey on the Pacific Crest Trail and the personal changes she underwent during that journey. In it, she describes this as “doing something glorious and hard”. If you’ve ever busted some boundaries and dared to do something you didn’t think you could, you know exactly what that feels like. Like the time I went alone to India for 5 weeks and lived in an ashram and took my yoga teachers training. That’s what I was remembered, as I read those words.
Did you know that I did that? That journey was earth-shattering for me. I traveled for days to get Mumbai, even crossed the country on a train, which in India is quite an adventure on its own. Threw myself into the world of suicidal scooter-taxis and “helpers” who will grab your things without permission and then demand money for helping you. The world where saying the word “no” is considered rude, so if you ask a question and you’re met with “okay-okay”, you can be pretty sure they really meant no. Or maybe. Sometimes it means yes. I never really figured that out. I spent hours of a 13-hour strict regiment bending my body in ways I didn’t even know it could, working for two weeks just to be able to find the balance on my head and endless hours of meditation, most of them spent resisting an itch. Excursions to local temples, climbing 500 steps and getting to see the innermost holy of a temple, something most westerners don’t get to see. Doing karma yoga, which is basically doing chores, thought of as "working out your karma". Learning the ways of yoga, the 8 limbs of yoga, how the mind works, how this world is an illusion and how to seek the path to enlightenment. But most profoundly was the change in me. How I woke to my true self, my desires my passion and started listening to my heart and what it had to tell me. I came there to get a teacher's certificate. I walked away with so much more. That was glorious and hard. So, years later, as I was reading Cheryl Strayed’s words, I was thinking: it’s been a long time since I’ve done something glorious and hard. Fast forward to today. This morning I woke to an aching body. Aching from a 6 am rise the day before with a 5-hour drive, a soundcheck, a showcase and hours of networking afterward. On top of that, only having very little to eat and fighting an inner ear infection on antibiotics. My whole body is aching this morning as I slowly get ready for the next 5-hour drive. I was even thinking it takes a certain type of person to be willing to do this. But on top of it all, I’m smiling. I'm happy. Because I am living my dream. Because the opportunities that lie before me seem so bright and the showcase yesterday went so well. I’m excited to have an agent who is genuine and looking out for me. I’ve been preparing for this for 9 years. I’ve been honing my craft, taking the steps (sometimes one step forward and two steps back) making the necessary changes, adjusted, created and created some more. It’s been a long journey and I’m starting to see some fruit, but it’s still my journey. And then it hit me: I am doing it! I am doing something glorious and hard. Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! ![]() I was standing at Tour de Pier (Bike for Cancer), a very cool event btw, and after singing the National Anthem I stuck around for a bit to see how the event went. One of the instructors had "The Climb" as one of their songs. Not a song I would have normally expected at a spinning event, nevertheless, I was standing there, in the rain, singing along with Miley Cyrus. Now, I never watched Hannah Montana, nor have I ever really listened to Miley Cyrus. The only other time I have ever heard that song was at an event in Denmark the summer before I left to move to the US. I was immediately brought back there... I was at a Gospel event at Tivoli Gardens. I had sung on the big stage and was standing there looking at some of the other artists getting ready for their set. I was about to embark on the biggest journey of my life. I was going to move to the US and become a country artist. I remember back then it seemed silly, even to me, to say it out loud. It was only a little bud of a dream, but I was passionate and determined. I was saying goodbye to friends, to my homeland. I should have been sad but I wasn't. I was excited. I was so ready to go prove myself, to embark on my new journey. During the intermission, "The Climb" came on. I don't know what it is about that song. It's like the lyrics pierce right through me. They did then and they do now. "I can almost see it, that dream I'm dreaming but there's a voice inside my head sayin', you'll never reach it". It brought shivers through me. There I was, about to chase the biggest dream of all, and I could hear that little voice too, saying "you'll never reach it". The doubt within the determination. I remember looking up the song, to see who performed it. Kinda surprised to see it was Hannah Montana. As I listened to that song, I felt like I was ready to take on the world, regardless of the outcome, I was ready to live the life I choose. And that it didn't really matter how far I got, as long as I tried. This time, standing in the rain at Lake Union in Seattle, the song hit me again. But this time the song resonated with me differently. It's been almost a decade since that summer in Tivoli. A decade of that journey. A decade of that climb. Mountain after mountain. Reaching parts of the dream and still chasing others. It made me think of all I've been through since then. I realized in a whole new way how much it really is about the climb. I truly didn't care how long it was going to take. It didn't matter what was on the other side. Or if there even is a destination. It is all about making the journey. It really is all about the climb. "There's always going to be another mountain, I'm always going to want to make it move." Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! ![]() One of my biggest passions in life is personal growth. I devour self-help books and spiritual books just to learn more about the human experience. I think I might be addicted to insights. You know, those blips of realizations after which you never look at things the same way again? Call them epiphanies, aha-moments or inspirations - it's all the same to me. I quietly ponder and let my mind settle and sometimes, not every time, but sometimes some genius arises from within me. I know I am the source of these insights, but I know I don't come up with them. They come from something greater. I've learned that insights come more reliably when I'm in a certain state of mind. The less busy my mind is, the better. Sometimes I can't let my mind settle to save my life. My mind feels muddled and cloudy. Other times my mind is remarkably calm even when I'm physically busy doing other stuff. These are the least convenient times to get an insight. But funnily enough, often when my song inspirations occur. It's hard to describe what an insight is. But I'll try: I think about something a certain way. Then from seemingly out of nowhere, I get a flash, a thought, an insight of being able to see that same thing a different way. My teacher in India told it this way: "It's dark and you look at something that appears to be a snake. You get frightened and want to run for your life. But when you turn the light on, you see it is only a rope. Even when the light goes off again, you can't see the same thing as a snake ever again. Because now you know, it's a rope." I think this is the phenomenon that makes children see monsters in their rooms. Like the beginning scene of Monsters Inc. where the child sees the monster approaching, but then it's only his jacket hanging over the chair. Once we realize something profound like that, everything else looks different. It almost feels like you get a new view of life like you stepped up the ladder of life and are able to see things from a different, a clearer, perspective. Reading books about spiritual and self-help topics seems to get my mind churning in a very specific way that lets out insights. Maybe it's the act of quiet listening (I listen to audiobooks while I drive) while simultaneously having to be relaxed but alert that creates that perfect state of mind for these insights to occur. I'm not sure why, but it works for me. And I think this is why I love it so. Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy!
Someone once told me that balance is actually not simultaneously focusing on every aspect of your life and giving it equal attention, but the art of shifting your focus to where it is needed when it is needed. Like a giant balancing act, the constant moving of focus is how we lead a balanced life.
Just like they say multitasking really isn't focusing on multiple tasks at the same time, but the ability to shift your focus quickly between tasks. They say (those people who do all the research and say important things) that the human brain can only focus on one thing at a time anyway. So how are we ever going to create balance in our lives? Is it even achievable? Or is it something we will forever work on like I believe we do with life lessons and growth? My life has felt like a giant multitask lately and I have been carving away at and identifying things I don't really need. This kind of slimming down of life is the only way I know to work with unbalances. And then remembering to take some time to soak up the sun once in a while. Welcome to my Blog. It is going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy!
This last year has been incredibly emotional for me. I have had some of the most trying relationship situations I have ever encountered in my life. Things have been put in perspective. It’s almost as if this whole last year has been putting things in place and preparing me for what’s to come. As with most things, while you are in the thick of it, it’s hard to see exactly what lessons you are supposed to learn from the things you are going through. But once the dust has settled and some time has passed, most things become clear. Or at least clearer. I’ve noticed that by experiencing things I don’t want, I become much more keenly aware of what I do want. Does this sound familiar to you? And then sometimes, what you think you want is not even really what you want, turns out it was something that it represented. Or you liked some elements of it and the rest was actually the opposite of what you wanted or not what you thought it was going to be. Or worse, you just liked the idea of it. Once the hard work kicks in, you’re like: “um, not so much”. This is part of the path of finding our passion. And once we have found our broader passion we must continue to fine-tune it, and mold it into that perfect cocktail for us. Some may say that I’m just being picky. And, you know, "you can’t have it all". It may sound like I’m lazy and just quit when the hard work comes around. But I don’t think that’s true. I’m not afraid of hard work. I don’t think anyone who has met me would ever call me lazy. Workaholic, maybe. In fact, when I’m working in my “zone of genius” as one of my favorite authors Gay Hendricks describes it, time flies by. It hardly feels like work at all. It feels like life. It’s finding that particular life-cocktail that is my zone of genius that is so tricky. And then being able to spend enough time inside that zone, that is the hard part. Because, yes, bills need paying and dog needs feeding and oh yes, we gotta eat. So if my life isn’t built in a way, at least not yet, where I can spend my entire waking life in my zone of genius, I need to spend at least some of my time on these things, more likely to fall into the zone of excellence, competence or, dare I say it, incompetence. That one is the worst. And then sometimes, you just need something for a time. You need a certain type of break. A reprise. A minute (or three years) to breathe. And that was me. And it has been really good for me. I realized so much about myself in these last three years that I never knew, and never would have known had I not taken that step back. But then what you want and need shifts again and you have to move with it. And I think this might be the biggest lesson of all. Everything changes. Especially our wants and needs. They aren’t this set thing that you can aim for and then go “once I’ve achieved that, I’m done”. Because we are never done. We must move with our ever shifting wants and needs as they grow and evolve. Some move slow, some move fast (like that top I wore every other day for 2 months and now I’m over it). But always moving, always changing. And I am moving with these changes once again. Welcome to my first Blog Post. These are going to be living on Patreon, but will be free for everyone for the time being. Hope you enjoy! ![]() Nashville, February 10th, 2019 - Yesterday, after my own set, I was watching Georgia Middleman and Gary Burr's set at All About Z Music house concert in Franklin, TN. Georgia was talking about the journey of dreams. How you set out with dreams and goals in mind and some come true and some don't. This really hit home for me. I came to the States almost 9 years ago now, with dreams and goals in mind and started immediately working towards them. Along the way they became refined. I started realizing that I was a beacon, a light that some people look at as a "she's following her dreams, I can do it too". An inspiration, with how many obstacles (inner and outer) I have had to overcome to get there, most of which I'm not sure anyone but my closest actually knows. I have made a business out of "follow your dreams" by doing it myself. But one of the things that Georgia said, that cracked me wide open was how the dreams can change. This was leading into a song with an "if my dreams had all come true, I wouldn't have met you"-theme. (Those aren't the actual lyrics, but that was the gist of it). This hit me deeply because after coming here, finding my way, refining my message and keep going for it - over time, my dreams change. I change. And lately, I've been doing the inner work of "who am I now?"... |
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