TOPIC: Anna in a Blinding Snowstorm, Driving Toward the One She Loves

This month I am sending you a song of LOVE that starts in a BLIZZARD of "nothing but white" and celebrates what it means to keep on reminding ourselves to REACH FORWARD, even when we find ourselves pulling back from love and connection. Read on to learn the story.

Here is the video of my talk and the song, "HOME,"created for TEDx WALDEN POND.

Song Audio is clearer on this mp3 audio than on the video:

I have always LOVED Ted Talks and was so honored to be invited to participate in the first TEDx to take place in my hometown of Concord, MA. It was a rare and special experience to get to stand up and share my story and this song, created specifically for this occasion. ENJOY! 

TOPIC: Reaching to connect with a sibling

My Sister Amy - I jumped off this dock without a life preserver and she jumped in after me 

What follows is the story of me and my sister. Of all the songs I perform live in concert, these two "Sister Songs"--a matched set--are the most frequently requested. When I play the first song, half the room tears up. When I play the second song, the other half of the room gets all watery-eyed. (The non-teary people know better than to come to my concerts, I guess). Each of us, it seems, can relate in some way to one side or the other of this equation: siblings who grow apart--and one who maybe struggles with it more than the other.

GROWING APART
When we were young, Amy and I shared a room, a bunk bed, and many late night conversations, giggling and doing imitations of the voices (and imagined gastrointestinal releases) of all of our neighbors. We had secret glances and little pieces of shorthand. Everything she did, I wanted to do. But when we grew up, Amy and I grew into different lives. And we grew apart. She seemed okay with it. I spent a lot of years, when I stopped to think about it, feeling somewhat tortured by our apartness. I came up with no end of stories, explanations, reasons, justifications, and excuses for what it all meant. On the surface, I am not sure what it looked like, but inside of me, down below the surface where no one could see, there were a lot of approaches, and a lot of retreats. I was hurting, and I didn't know where to go with that hurt, or how to give it a voice. 

TOPIC: Pulling away, coming together

TOPIC: Anna and her Brand New Husband (1997) Driving All Across the US for Months on their Honeymoon!

TOPIC: Wife to husband

TOPIC: A closer look at two love songs

FOREVER LISTENING: THE STORY (1996)
I wrote this song ten years ago, when I was newly in love with the man who turned out to be THE man--my husband Jim. This was one of those great experiences when a song just sort of "appears," fully formed. I was at a unique turning point in my life--I had left a painful marriage and a powerhouse Chicago advertising career in  the dust, and I was a 30-year-old, living back at my parents' house, licking my wounds, regrouping, working as a cashier in a little retreat of a store that sold incense and candles and spiritual books, and, all of a sudden, I was falling in love. (love!)  (LOVE!!!!) This song showed up in my head and it was sort of fighting its way past the piped-in music in the store so I kept on making up excuses to step outside with a pencil and a crumpled store recipt, scribbling down the words as they seemed to fall from the sky.  This song was like a marvel to me. I felt like I was almost "channelling" something, and that has been the feeling that has kept me creating songs for all the years since. This song is the most-requested song when I do live converts. It has been performed at weddings, played in birthing rooms, and every so often I get an email from someone who heard it at a spiritual retreat and wants to know more. It's definitely a song from one lover to another but I was astonished to discover when my son was born that it worked as a love song from a parent to a baby, too. And the folks who use it on spiritual retreats assure me the lyrics can fit for one's relationship with The Divine as well. Ah! The joy of tapping into a unversal truth!