018 | Knowing While Becoming
11:37 AM , Sunday
Sitting in my Room
Dear Beautiful Humans,
It’s 11:37am on Sunday, and I’m writing later than usual. I had a show last night (Hello new friends from the show who are receiving their first letter!), and thought I’d drive for Lyft after. Sooooo, I got home at 3 AM. Hehe. But it was a great night!
As I sit here drinking coffee from my Niagra Falls mug, Billie watches over me behind me as she did what only she could do, which is sing like only she could sing, which came out of a spirit of being who only she could be.
Her words have been sitting with me all week actually. She said,
“If I’m going to sing like someone else,
then I don’t need to sing at all.”
—Billie Holliday
A profound statement from one of the most iconic singers to have ever lived.
Did you know she actually had a pretty small vocal range? But it’s what she did with it and how she sang those notes in a way that only she could that made people lean in.
Some of you know from previous letters that my friend Beck died last month. She was someone who always believed in me and my voice. She would always make me sing when I was around her, and absolutely made me sing if I had a guitar around.
The day after she died, I got this tattoo on my arm.
For a long time, I made myself small because I didn’t sound like this person or that person. I would dwell on how I couldn’t do that amazing thing with my voice that so and so does, or how I couldn’t hit those notes that they hit and so wish I could.
Remembering those old thoughts reminds me of something that came up in last week’s letter.
Who you aren’t isn’t interesting.
What you can’t do, isn’t interesting.
Imagine if you met someone for the first time and they started to list off all the things they are not and cannot do. You’d be like, uhhhhh, okay, but who are you then? It would actually be confusing. I would think, “Why does this matter? Why are you telling me this?”
And yet, we do that kind of stuff all the time in our heads.
I feel like I’ve gotten to a pretty good place over the years of loving my voice and how I sing the majority of the time, but there are certainly times where I find myself listing the things I am not in other ways.
Billie’s words have been a reminder to me in all areas of my life. If I’m not going to be me, what’s the point? And I’m also finding that as I stand more confidently in the fullness of who I am, I’m better able to see all the people around me for the beauty and complexity and glory of who they are as well. It’s all connected.
I’d like to sit more intentionally with this question this week of “Who am I?”, but hold it loosely. It’s a big question, and not one that has one answer. It’s an evolving response, a question you live into.
Paulo Cohello posed the idea in a podcast conversation about how discovering who we are is a pilgrimage we go on every day. I’d never heard it put that way before, that we’re constantly discovering and changing who we are and on a journey to discover it.
I think I more often hear language of being confident in who you are and knowing who you are and being certain of your identity. I imagine it’s both, that we have strong legs to stand on, but we’re still working to get stronger.
I wonder if who we are is more like a constant unfolding, like a flower blooming, then dying, and growing and blooming all over again. An unfolding in which we have to be soft with ourselves as we’re continuously in a process of knowing while becoming.
Knowing while becoming.
I like that.
And so, let us end there.
Sending all the love to you wherever you may be today in your own unfolding.
Much love to you all,
Shel
I’m hoping to start posting more cover clips on Instagram and maybe even full songs on YouTube, but until then, here is one of my favorite covers I've ever done! It's "You're The One That I Want" from Grease sung with my friend Sam Brewer.
