I have always wanted to do music. I was born to be on stage. My grandma came to visit me a couple months back with a man she calls her "friend" (he is really her boyfriend, she should just call it like it is), and she told him that I was singing before I could talk. I couldn't form words yet, but music was in me to share, and I wanted everyone to hear my song. My brother and I would sit in the basement for hours with our little one octave piano and make up songs, usually on my suggestion. When I was around six, I performed for the first time in front of a crowd that I didn't know. I had done it before at home for my parents and extended family, but never for a bunch of people who didn't really know who I was. I sang this song called Fingerprints, accompanied by my uncle on guitar, for the evening service at our church. I was upset that not everyone got to see it, so the pastors allowed me to perform it again for the morning service the following weekend. Music has always been how I express, and there is nothing more fulfilling to me than standing up in front of a crowd as a confident yet relatable woman and singing my heart out while watching the audience respond. My heart feels so free and light.
But I had some terrible experiences; not performance experiences, although there are several that I'm glad are not on tape. People have come in and, knowing it or not, have ruined my self-confidence one ill comment at a time. The first, and most hurtful example, was right after Christmas in 2003, when I was 15 years old. I woke up one morning to my door partially open and could hear my father playing Mariah Carey's version of Oh Holy Night. Their bedroom was just across the hall from mine, and obviously he had no idea I was awake. My mom went into the room where he was sitting and said to him "you know, you really should encourage Steph and her music more." He did not hesitate to respond, saying "well, she can't hit the notes that Mariah Carey can, so there's no point." I cried, harder than I had cried in a long time. I wasn't worth it. If I couldn't do what a professional, trained vocalist could do with zero formal training of my own then I wasn't worth encouraging. And it may be different if they had invested in my music and sent me for lessons, but they didn't do that, not for any of us.
That moment has plagued me ever since. It devastated me as a musician, as a performer, unlike most other bad experiences I have had. Since then, I have had numerous of the same sort of comments carelessly flung at me by important people, and have been even more sensitive to them because of my father's lack of love. Most recently, one woman at my old church, the same one who tried to mediate my relationship with a former good friend, asked me if I was jealous of this friend one day. This friend is a musician also, and a damn good one at that. She is incredibly passionate and talented and, like me, has known her entire life that music is her calling. Her and I had been pit against each other in high school by teachers and peers, so I kept to myself and didn't get in her way. She did all the big performances, and I stuck to writing with a close friend and performing in smaller events here and there. Anyway, so this woman asks me if I am jealous of her, and I say no, and that I respect her as a musician, and that she is very talented. This woman said "yes, she is very talented" quite excitedly, and then said "and, you know, you have your gifts too" with a manner of uncertainty to her tone. She also told me once that my dream to win a Grammy was too big, and that I should seriously reconsider my desire to be so involved in the business of entertaining. It was awful. Once again, I was being compared to someone with entirely different strengths than I. She was the golden child, the one everyone wanted, and because I was not her clone I was not worth it.
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| Yup...meant to do this... |
I don't believe this entirely, not anymore. It's hard for me not to think low of my own talents sometimes, but I know that I am growing and changing, and that the world is at my fingertips if I am willing to reach out and grab it. And I am lucky. I have an amazing group of professional musician friends who are encouraging and readily point out my strengths and help me to grow in my weaknesses. I attend a church where I am respected and my input is listened to and implemented. I have a husband who is my number one fan. And I have been playing more in the past few months than I have in years, and that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment.
Just like when I was young, there is still nothing better for my spirit than being on stage and performing. I love it. I am truly free and happy and myself there. I am comfortable; comfortable to be vulnerable and allow strangers a glimpse into who I am. And my dreams are not too big or unrealistic. I think that discouragement from other people comes out of their own insecurity most of the time, and not from truth. It is simply not true that I need to reconsider the call that I have had since I was a young girl, because I'm not good enough. Hopefully I will one day full and completely believe that.
So dream on, dreamer. Nothing is impossible, that has been proven over and over again. God doesn't place dreams and desires in people as a joke. He created you to want certain things, to hunger after purpose and to be fulfilled in your call. Don't settle for anything less than fulfillment.
-SP
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