My Mary-guided soul song healing journey

I’m sharing this with you because I see so many clients whose throat chakras are blocked. This manifests in many ways… as inability to sing, or fear of singing or talking in front of others… strained sounding vocal tone… difficulty in expressing ourselves… challenges in manifesting our desires… timidity in claiming our authority…

For me, one of the wounds I carried in my throat chakra was the trauma as a child of watching my mother, a lovely singer, suddenly barely able croak out her upper notes and having to cut out the higher soprano songs from her recital. All this in the months leading up to her death, a symptom of the lupus that had been invading her body.

So… every time I sang, and I was a pretty decent and trained singer… I had unexpressed grief and fear squeezing my throat, affecting my ability to fully express my sound. Add to that the pressures of trying to make it as an actress/singer in my 20s in what is a very competitive business… and the result was shaky vocals at times, reluctance to sing solos and nerves even in more recent years during choral performances where I could be safely enfolded in the group. My lowish blood pressure under the heat of stage lights didn’t help. 

Yet I truly do love singing, and when I’m in the flow it’s ecstatic for me. I can ping the strings of the universe.

Fast forward to last weekend, as I stood in front of a full house of 800 people at the Academy of Music in Northampton, Massachusetts.

I’d elected to stretch myself and audition for the fairly demanding solo on the song “Under Pressure,” written and made famous by David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. I got the solo and things were going pretty well in the rehearsals with the Rock Voices choir I was part of, but as the concert approached, I began hearing the famous “Why” of the song as… Why had I chosen to put my own self “under such pressure”?

During the two weeks before the concert, I had to use all of my emotional tools to stay afloat and not fall into the pit of terror… all this despite the fact I sang the song well and was getting lots of appreciation from fellow choir members. Still… what might happen during the actual performance?

I set up things to help my body… the arrangement to sit down before my song, setting in the wings a stool in case I needed to perch during my performance, a hand-held personal fan so that the suffocating heat of the lights wouldn’t cause me to pass out… soothing my belly with my hand.

And I had to keep breathing… and working with my mind. Turning nerves into excitement… engaging positive self-talk and self love… This was supposed to be fun, after all, as my mentor reminded me, offering me a vision of just the right colors to put in my crown chakra and auric field to support me with enjoyment energy.

And… I prayed. To Mother Mary and to my own mother, another Mary (Marie), with whom I associate the red cardinal, the forest singer who is the messenger between us and our ancestors. Mom, from your vantage point on the other side, can you help me sing out with confidence?

During setup before the concert, a sister soprano loquaciously engaged me, prattling away, and I wished she would quiet down… until, she pulled out her phone and said, “Guess what I saw today?” She brandished her phone to reveal a red cardinal. “I know my father is with me,” she said, indicating this bird was a symbol of her deceased parent. I guess it was doing double duty that day, I thought, not saying anything more.

My song was the fourth one on the roster, and suddenly there I was, walking to the mic. I felt… yes, I can do this.

I had planned out each part of the song, where to belt, where to use head voice, how to phrase, how to command the stage and transmit the energy of the song. It had taken me two months to perfect it. There I was, hitting my marks. And then came the pause leading up to the “Why….” in the song, a glissando of a full octave, culminating in the A just below high C. This is a long, sustained phrase worthy of opera, and even Freddie Mercury didn’t always sing it in concert.

And, dear reader, I did it. Not only did I do it, but I fully opened my throat chakra like never before, even in the comfort of my own home. I opened to the heavens, and the heavens opened to me, full power vibrato, totally in mastery of the glide and the final note, and able to convey the plaintive meaning of the “Why”… which had to do with the deep human pain over “love being slashed and torn” that the song expressed.

Wow. I was stunned. Happily, joyfully stunned. And so, so very grateful. YOU CAN WATCH MY PERFORMANCE HERE.

I later learned that the cardinal also transmits the medicine of confidence. And I recalled that during her training as a priestess, Mother Mary “heard” the hymns of the heavenly messengers and danced for them. I interpret from this that she actually toned and sang with and like them, that Mother Mary was a “singer.”

May the vibrations of this story of healing from the Marys bring frequencies of transformation and help open your throat so that you may speak and sing with the power of the angels.