Learning is the journey…

Learning as I went, I have to say that the most important thing I have learned to date is that I am only as good as I decide to be…we don’t always have a choice in personal circumstance or situation, often things happen beyond our control but we can decide not to be emotionally controlled by them. It took me a long to time to realize that I had nothing to do with being sexually abused, I had to un-learn the notion of me being the problem versus him being the sick man. And yet we go through every possible reason why we let it happen, that we are the weak ones. I was in my early thirty’s when I decided I was okay, it wasn’t me, that I wanted to move on, I decided then to fight for my life. Part of what brought me to this place was deciding I was/am an artist, I write, I sing, I create with my hands, I am an artist and for the first time in my life I was starting to feel like I belonged, the irony of it all was I had also never been so alone, not lonely but alone. I think I knew that I had to go it alone for the first little while, I had to find myself before I could let anyone else “help me”.

I think that I have always been a see as you go kind of person and so have often been misunderstood, this created a kind of awkwardness in me that I have never been able to really shake off so that when I connect with someone, I don’t hesitate to befriend them, I can honestly say that in my life I have had 4 very close friends and thank God for them because those days of being lonely as well as being alone came and I often had no one to turn to for guidance, I had management, I had an agent, a band, a crew but no one who really knew me or really knew what was going on in my head.

I remember the drives into Clayton, Ontario while writing for the Arctic Rose album, the discussions about song writing and me thinking huh? Me, songwriting. Meeting other legitimate song writers, me!!!! And than driving to the studio and drive alone was an experience, driving in the country, looking in awe at everything around me and loving it, getting the studio and meeting musicians and singers and thinking eeeef! What do I do now!!! And I would ask, where do I go? Even standing differently to release the voice, loving the small vocal booth, listening to the banter, the tuning of instruments, and then the drive back into Ottawa and back to my day job the next morning thinking did I just dream that? And no one to share that feeling with, the fear, the elation, the daunting-ness of it all, the joy, the fear, the fear, the fear, I couldn’t help but think I’m not a singer, I’m not really a song writer, they are, why am I here! I would sometimes start to be overwhelmed with paranoid thoughts, it’s not me they want to work with, it’s the “native artist”, I’m really not talented, I’m just different, all of this would keep me up at nights and than I’d hear a piece of music and I’d know that I had to keep writing, that stories needed to be told and I should at least do the one album, I had demons and I needed to exorcise them.

I think that is why I could never give up on my dream to fly airplanes, to me it was/is the ultimate get away! Literally! Thank God for friends and thank God for pilot friends!

So my first big choice was deciding to learn, to embrace it all, to be a part of it instead of letting it all happen to me, I will always treasure those drives to Clayton, I think of John Park Wheeler who did more than co-write and co-produce and produce some of the early stuff, he was also the driver, the company to and from the studio, someone I will always treasure as a good friend and early mentor.