🎧 I Can Sing Again!
The moon is in my throat and on my voice. There is poetry stirring in the waters, and notes ebb and flow with the tide.
Dearest Friend,
I went to my appointment on Monday. I needed a minute to let everything sink in. I’m excited to share a little bit of magic with you.
Sweet MJ and I are on a walk together after my appointment with the speech pathologist and my videostroboscopy.
Geese fly overhead. They catch my attention. I’m riveted as if I’ve never witnessed their flight before or heard their call.
Starlings swoop out of the trees by the farmhouse down the road, fly straight for the ground, then shoot back up, crying out like kids on a roller coaster.
I think of the large white goose that used to live there, before her owners left and took her with them. The Canadian geese would nest by the pond and soon after dozens of downy babies would emerge. The old goose believed these geese and goslings were her flock, and she was the matriarch. She guarded them fiercely. The Canadian geese loved her.
One time, when I was driving through her territory to get to my home, I had to stop, because you know, geese crossing. She attacked my car. Her wings spread wide as she rushed it, honking and cursing. I’m sure that was the gist of her hissing.
I heard her beak bill strike the side of my car. As soon as my way cleared, I pulled away.
“And don’t come back!”
There’s no way I’d be going for a walk down this road now if she were still here. The Canadian geese aren’t nesting yet, but she’d know they would be soon. My memories of her make me smile.
A light drizzle of rain falls on my face. That makes me smile too. A short gust of wind strokes back my hair.
“I’ve been given my life back”, I think out loud. “I’ve been given my life back.”
I thought I blew it.
These past six months I learned the many ways we can damage our voice. I’ve done most of those things for decades.
In my mind, the best-case scenario was that after seeing what the video showed her, the speech pathologist would point out the damage I had done but tell me we could repair it with therapy. There was no way my vocal folds could be fine…
She told me my vocal folds were fine.
No inflammation, no nodules, no polyps, no cysts, no scarring or anything else. No pathology. Just a little aging at one end, where the muscles were weakening a bit, a little bowing. That’s normal she said. All it means is that I won’t have the same range as I did in my 20’s or 30’s.
My hoarseness, she explained, was caused by lack of coordination between my breathing and speaking, and the muscle tension outside of my larynx or voice box. She said we could work on that in therapy.
I know I carry a lot of stress in my body. And I have been in one of those on-going wars within my own self—Speak your truth… No, don’t! You’ll die!
One foot on the gas. One foot on the brake.
She also heard some glottal fry in my voice, which is caused by speaking in a register below my normal range and how I’d have to be mindful not to get stuck there.
I had to ask because it wasn’t fully registering, “My vocal folds are fine then? … I can sing again?”
“Yes.”
It took a moment, then I felt the soft weight of realization sink in, and right there, in the chair, in that room with the beautiful, beautiful video of my vocal folds doing their thing in front of their own little strobe light and tiny digital camera, I wept.
Overwhelm.
Between tears and catching breath, I said my thank-yous. Thank you to her, this bearer of better-than-I-could-anticipate news, to the Universe for this moment of wonder, and to Grace for giving me another chance.
I was given another chance.
“I’ve been given my life back” I say to myself and to the sweet pittie mix walking beside me.
I’ve been given my life back.
I love saying it. I love the sound of it. Because music is my life. It’s how I live and how I love.
It’s in the lullabies I sing to my grandbabies, even when my voice skips. It’s in the songs I bring to people who hurt. It’s in the stories I tell for those who can’t tell them, themselves.
And even though I can’t sing a full song yet, I already feel the rising of a song in me.
I’m amazed how something I thought I lost has come home, not just back home in me, but how it now seems to permeate everything around me— the trees, the pond, the birds and breeze, the rain and sky.
Everything catches my attention, vibrant. All around me is Song, and I’m part of it.
Did you know healthy vocal folds are pearly white? They are. Mine is.
The moon is in my throat and on my voice. There is poetry stirring in the waters, and notes ebb and flow with the tides
This audio is not a reading of this post.
I recorded some thoughts on my phone Monday evening. Hopefully, some of the wonder and emotion I was feeling at that time comes through. That’s what I want to share with you ❤️ (I edited out the part where I recorded my understanding of the diagnosis.)
We will take it slow. We will get there mindfully. My speech pathologist will help me with the physical stress I carry in my body and voice. My trauma therapist will help me with the psychological stress I carry in my body and voice.
While my speaking voice has improved over the past six months, I can’t sing an entire song yet.
But I will. We’ll get there in our own cadence.
There are no do-overs. Not really. You can’t turn back the hands of time. There may be new opportunities, but not the same ones in the same place. Time moves on and takes us with it.
Still, I can’t help feeling this is about as close to a do-over or second chance as I can get.
We’re both aging, my voice and I, maybe just a little bit in the larger scheme of things. But we can show up.
That little gap in my vocal folds isn’t a little glitch in an otherwise perfect miracle. It’s the perfect message.
Just as we are, who we are, and what we are, all of us, have many beautiful things to create before our time is done. We can do it, right where we are.
I can sing again! This is a turn in the road. I’m taking it and I’m glad you’re here with me.
From my heart to yours,
Demian Elaine’ Yumei—Definitely Silent No More
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I am in awe!! Truly. Thank you for sharing this journey. I can only imagine your fears and frustrations. But you are here and so is your magical voice, to greet us and the little ones you hold dear. A gift. Thank you thank you 😊
Such joyful news. I am so happy for you - and for the rest of us who will get to hear your beautiful voice. Hooray for your bravery and for the gift of grace! <3