My REBEL YELL

enjoy the show- (video inside)

I sit here in the innate quietude that requires nothing of me but to be. The paralysis of decision making softens as I say YES to what is and follow the current of my heart. Today. That may change tomorrow, or in the next breath. But this is what is alive now, and I am grateful.

It has been a long journey in unwavering faith in Love. Lifetimes of wandering into and through the dark with only a prayer as my guide.

I have stepped forward toward something new. The subtlest pivot toward trust is all it took to silence the storm just enough to steady myself in the present moment. Although everything looks the same around me, my inner landscape has flourished into some exotic garden of which I have been given the holy task of tending with tools shaped by the hands of the Unknown.

Awestruck, I stand in witness and wonder at how the great leaps in life are made up of the most homeopathic micro movements that frustrate the eager mind.

Daily drips of patience, practice, perseverance- after lots of face plants.

5 years ago I began to sew the seeds of a new life as a harp landed in my hands. It has taken time to fully commit to this dauntingly audacious artist within me. It took many little deaths, and the Gods of illness, to allow it to speak in the way it has been asking.

The Ancestors have been trying to birth a new story through me. When they renamed me Shira in 2018 my belly twisted up a bit. It means song in Hebrew.

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My Grandmother is walking towards the end of her life. She was a singer- she is a singer. When she opens her mouth spun gold spirals forth creating new patterns of light for humanity. Her laugh. Her laugh. How does she still laugh after all of that?

There was a moment her voice poured through the radio on the old 1940s gold grill cloth speaker and that day her voice caught the eye of a talent scout when she would travel locally and sing for the troops. But her talent never made it past the trauma. Her regrets are haunting her, her survival tactics are dying alongside her body and all she can talk about is:

I had talent, I could have followed that dream
and don't go getting married Jame Jame like I did
guard your heart above all else
you don't know how beautiful you are 
you have a good brain Jame Jame
set your sights, gird up your loins
put that sadness down and fly

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My body has been breaking under my resistance to this Ancestral inheritance gone silent in too many generations to name. It isn’t about me, and yet can only come into to being through me. Blessed dance.

I denied it for decades under lies about my wisdom and worth. Wretched thoughts about beauty and belonging. Misguided beliefs about Love and God.

I don’t know where this completely irrational ;) trust fall is headed, but I am no longer saying NO to myself. My inner child and my heart have had enough.

“Do NOT give me all of this ability to share love and block it. I will kill you to do what I came here to do” -She screams inside of me.

~Two weeks ago, after being {mostly} in isolation for over a year, I leapt wobbly knees first, into 5 days of Voice Works, a vocal art immersion, with 160 people. I stood up, and sang unrehearsed, sans an hour in the car right before, to the whole group in the student performance concert. I was the last of 25. I sang The Sound of Music. I got hugs. People cried.

And not because I sang like Julie Andrews

Last night as I was volunteering at the Writer’s Conference, I listened to a black man, once incarcerated, now a Yale educated lawyer, widely published writer and founder of a non-profit focused on getting art and literature into prisons, recite his poetry at the age of late 50-something.

Shapeshifter. Way shower. God never stops unfolding unimaginable possibilities through us.

I know how this goes. I must invest in and surround myself with what I want to see grow. I might die trying to fly somewhere over the rainbow, but what a worthy way to work this body to the end of this life.

So, I am sharing a new song. It’s in its infancy. I can hear my grammy, voice coach and harp teacher in my head- which is so much better than all that has been yakkin away in my mind. This is take 2. Not trying to be perfect, just trying to listen and allow.

I call it my REBEL YELL.

Thank you for being in this moment with me. I recorded it on the last full moon before listening to “Evolve or Flounder”- another profound astrology forecast by

ERIN REESE

. Seems like maybe, just maybe, I am right on time.

Love, Shira

P.S

I am holding space for Holistic Spiritual Mentoring. The heart knows how to steer you through the storms of transformation.