It’s You
Surrender Song
Once a romantic, always a romantic
When Love Bites
Singing With Self-Love: Open Mic With Jordan Serra
My good ol’ only-ever jam partner Jordan Serra and I performed our third ever singing open mic concert series back in Rhode Island last week. We’ve messed around holding “band practice” in his basement studio for about an hour or so before each performance, and more than anything we’re just having fun– Jordan more so than myself in our first few performances, where I held way too much pressure on myself to even enjoy in the slightest something that my soul deeply loves.
It’s about the one year anniversary of facing my open mic singing-in-public fears, and the evolution of my voice, confidence, intuition and ability to open and exercise my throat chakra is due solely to my newfound self-loving practices. My active self-healing and loving journey this year has transformed my life in every single way, and I believe that was evident beneath the spotlight at Perks and Corks that evening.
Our blast of an experience and the renouncing of my perfectionist standards was only exemplified by my excellent support team of friends who came to watch and my stage partner, who always emphasizes the fun factor behind a solid jam sesh.
Thank you all who have continued to support my feeling, healing and revealing, and I can only hope that these videos inspire you to get after something that makes your soul sing, too. Also, go give yourself a huge love-hug. Because you are magnificent. XO
The Jordan and Olivia Experience’s cover of ‘Valerie,’ by Amy Winehouse last week (August 2017).
The Jordan and Olivia Experience’s cover of ‘Alaska,’ by Maggie Rogers last year (December 2016).
A Jordan and Olivia Experience’s cover of Aaliyah’s ‘Are You That Somebody,’ last year (November 2016).
For more giggles and listening (including me trying to multi-task singing Beyoncé and tapping a tambourine, check out the YouTube channel. More than anything though, smile and have a little fun 🙂
Rhode Island
We Got Lost
Birthday Dreams: Flowers & Potatoes
I woke up from a dream yesterday morning where I was losing myself in falling in love with another person. In the past of my reality, I have tended to do this. In my dream, I felt it coming, and while this person was incredibly special to me, I felt that I hadn’t connected with myself once in the time my lover and I had been spending together. I went for a drive in this dream-land and ended up at a small, charming flower stand where I parked and was met to my emotion-processing dismay by a mother and two young daughters who, unhesitatingly, hopped into my car to sing along to the pop song I had playing.
The woman sat beside me, her daughters in the backseat singing and giggling in their own la-la-land that is life before the treasures and trials of love and loss have occurred, and she looked to me and spoke. The woman asked me if I had a love-person in my life, and if they were at the root of the heaviness in my heart that she could feel coming off of me. I told her I felt I was losing myself and it saddened me. I told her that he was treating me, but I was still aching for my own love. In that moment I stepped outside of my car, leaving behind my new friends. I saw serene pools underneath white, Greek columns above and I felt compelled to dive into them. It was my turn to lack in hesitation: I dove into the first pool, traveling its distance underwater until I reached the other side, got out and dove into the next one. My dream-gut trusted the women in my car with all of my belongings, and I needed to be swimming and diving into these pools at the moment.
I was immersing myself in the third pool when the mother and daughters called to me. When I returned to my car, all of the doors were open and it was covered in flowers. There were flowers in every door handle and crack of the window, underneath the windshield wipers and on the roof of my car, and a woman was still walking in circles placing more petals and stems to add to the collection.
“Some days, it’s potatoes that they cover your car in,” the mother said, coming to stand beside me.
“Happy birthday, love,” she said.
And with that, I began the first day of my 24th rotation around the sun feeling a little lighter. A little bit more self-aware. Incredibly immersed, and reminded to be fully diving into my self-love first. More than anything, I am grateful. I spent the first few hours of my birthday Saturday sobbing tears of joy feeling entirely overwhelmed by the magnificent amount of love in my life. This emotional overwhelm is not uncommon, and I embrace that part of me. I am grateful to have been touched by every one of you in this life-trek, and if I have ever looked into your eyes, know that I host unfaltering love for your presence no matter how close we are. I am grateful for my journey and pains and trials that have allowed me to feel such love and joy and light in this life. I am grateful for my truth and for learning to speak it. I am grateful for here and now. And of it all, I am endlessly grateful for all that this life is to continue offering me– be it flowers, or potatoes.
I’ve Never Loved You More
Forgive To Fly
Let’s talk about forgiveness. Not too long ago, I was in a darker place. I was not surrounding myself with kind, insightful, loving thoughts, and that reflected in the life I led, my notion of self-worth, my dreams and the low-vibrating, also struggling, like-minded company that I kept. I was stuck. And I knew the health of my well-being and spirit desperately needed to spread their wings to fly and soar into a space of love.
Fast-forward to my present, and Good & Grateful‘s blossoming in the beautiful San Diego. I found that space of love, but I did not find it in California. I found it in myself, though distance from the negative associations of my prior helped allow for my discovery.
There is an important distinction here in running from problems that are within, and removing oneself from an external environment that no longer serves us. I am sure, as I continue on this learning-journey, I will find that my environmental struggles were only mirroring my unhealed internal, as everything comes back to the self. I am sure, as I continue on this learning-journey, I will be able to return to those once-places of pain, and lend enough love to them in order to rewrite their scripts. That, I believe, is true growth.
But back to forgiveness. In this current life-chapter, I have focused intensely and intimately on self-love. I am, like many, often too hard on myself. I hold myself to unrealistic standards of perfection that only perpetuate a mindset of not being, and never being enough.
Intensifying healthy, loving scripts and positive mantras have helped me to shift my thought-patterns. Meditation, exercise and conscious eating have aided me in a newfound understanding of self-care. Treating myself magnificently, and humbly, remembering that I am the full moon as I am the mud that hosts the lotus, has taught my new company to honor, respect and love me in the same ways.
@Goodgrateful: The quarter moon on April 5, 2017, at Balboa Park.
“May we exist in muddy water with purity, like a lotus.” – Zen Phrase
But at the core of it all, I am relearning that we are all and only human. If we are the universe and the earth, then we are every piece of it. We are the full moon and the sun, as we are black holes and vast emptiness. We are the flowers and the trees and the ocean, as we are tornadoes and dirt and the tectonic plates that crack and shift. We are everything while we are nothing. We are light and dark.
A flower isn’t perfect with its curved stem or curling petals, but it is beautiful. The sunset is only as spectacular and special as the clouds that blur and shape it. We humans were not made to be perfect. We are breathtaking and magnificent only because we are not so.
In this space of love, within myself, I have come to forgive myself for my shortcomings, my mistakes and my pain of the past and current. I am freed from the suffering that I clung to for so many years. And remembering that I’m trying my best and that our best is all we can do has helped me to heal painful relationships of the past. I am able to forgive others and accept that they are on their own journey– one that I may never understand– and they are learning and trying, too.
Self-love has permitted me and encouraged me to break free from the past. I am ever-growing with deeper learning and loving, and I am ever-releasing myself as pain’s prisoner.
With forgiveness, I have tasted unwavering joy and contentment. My relationships with my self, and others, have peacefully heightened and become more enriching.
We are much less defined by the outcomes as we are the way we handled things in getting there, for it is never the destination: it is the journey.
And I plan to continue making this joyous journey beautiful: to be ever-learning, ever making mistakes, ever-falling and ever-getting-the-heck-back-up, gently and lovingly. And now, once again, I am soaring.
And now that I am here within myself, I can finally say:
I forgive you. I forgive me. I love you, and I love you, me.
goodandgrateful 