As I write this, we’re on our 5-week long tour with the Waking Up In America show.
This weekend we were in Roseburg, OR, and Alturas, CA. We have a good friend there, Dan Roeder, and it was great to be able to see him (
check out his message on Patreon Page 🙂 )
The concerts are great and well-received by the audiences (judging from standing ovations we’ve been receiving). We also have had a chance to perform for students from elementary public schools – and THAT has been an amazing experience!
In Roseburg, a little girl came to me and said quietly: “Remember how you said you always wanted to move someone’s heart? You moved mine today.”
During our show, I tell them about Croatia, we do a few different styles of music (jazz, country, pop), I explain a few things about singing and we play several different instruments (piano, guitar, flute, midi strings and accordion)!
But I also tell them about my time as a pop star, when I wanted to sing songs that would build people up – especially little girls – and not make them feel bad about themselves. And how, because I was young, I wasn’t able to stand up to my producers’ team, whose vision was different from mine.
I tell them how I had the courage to leave my home and my career and to find a way to get back to my dream of inspiring people through music.
I sing Over the Rainbow for them and they sing it with me…And at the end of the song, I tell them how I changed the last line from “Why, oh why, can’t I?” to “Watch me, so can I” 🙂
It’s a beautiful moment.
And a powerful one.
Because everything changes when we realize how much we CAN do to make our dreams come true – how we can find that place ‘where troubles melt like lemon drops,” a place calm and comforting, which we heard of “once in a lullaby.”
It’s not magic.
It’s also not a ‘five year plan’ that we can achieve by meeting goals and crossing off milestones. Achieving your dreams happens somewhere between doing the work, showing up with courage and persistence, and surrendering to the Divine Love (some of you will call it “God’s will”). This Love is what carries us to exactly where we want to (and were meant to) be, and where we get to serve others.
On the first concert of our tour, I stood on a beautiful stage and sang Over the Rainbow (it happened to be the 81st anniversary of Judy Garland recording that song). I looked up at the spotlights and felt goosebumps on my skin. I realized that this was the exact moment I had envisioned so many times before. Somehow in preparing for the tour (and working on several different projects at the same time) I didn’t make the connection that this was what I had been working towards for many years…
One of my dreams was to have my own show, perform it in beautiful theaters, and to sing Over the Rainbow. It was so specific: I could see the spotlights and feel myself connecting with the audience when I thought of it.
I didn’t have a roadmap on how I’d get there. And at times, all of it seemed so difficult and impossible.
When I pitched Live on Stage (the agency that organized this tour) with our show, I was mostly excited about having work: I’d have a well-connected partner who would book my shows. I was also super excited about working with my sister and Brian Hanson (and David Langley who has been a huge support to us in building this show and who will tour with us next season).
We are doing this show together – and all of us need this work. I was grateful that we could make this happen. I wasn’t thinking about my own dream…
But when we have a dream in our heart, when we put ourselves aside, when we are willing to show up, work hard and then surrender, magic happens! God and an army of angels are at your side… Or, like Paolo Coelho wrote in his book, The Alchemist, ‘all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.’
I’m sure if you look back on your life, you can see how this has already happened for you… and I hope you still have faith and courage to dream up a situation in which you want to find yourself.
I can be as simple as a vision of having a cup of coffee with your loved one in a peaceful place or enjoying a sunset in someone’s embrace. Or it can be building a business or a social enterprise that would help people in need, the homeless or the abused.
It can be anything… you’ll find it in the depths of your heart – when you silence your mind and are willing to listen to the Guidance greater than yourself. Don’t be afraid to look for it!
And today, perhaps you can become aware of one such moment of Grace that you are living now – and will recognize it as the moment you’d envisioned in the past. Again, they can be as simple as watching your children peacefully play, or coming out of Church with a sense of fulfillment and joy. Make yourself fully present in that moment, and fill your heart with gratitude…
And enjoy it!
