The Night of the Lime Green Light
Chronicles of the Bloom: Night of the Lime Green Light
Reflections on a Debut Performance
written by Shelby Gene
On a journey under the Neon Moon, my dreams came true when I met the ones who would give me a mirror and a microphone. I would love to tell you about the Night of the Lime Green Light and how it felt to finally live in my truth. I’m walking down this path, and I’m so thankful destiny would lead me to you. Allow me to paint the picture in the most vibrant hues…
These days, I’m singing in the rooms I’m meant to be in.
Walkin’ down this golden yellow road…
I’m always laughin’, listenin’, and anticipating the way
it will all change when I blink.
A dragonfly guides us across an amethyst horizon, emerald cities emerge through the clouds bright with inflection. We have arrived to the first word on the first page at the start of this first chapter.
There is so much yet to unfold. I ponder what that may entail, especially with you by my side, but I keep myself tethered to these glimmering flashes of connection I’m lucky enough to cling to. We will turn each page together, and open the doors we are ready to reach for. Take my hand, I’ve been waiting for you to hear my story.
The essence of my identity unfolds in the next five melodies. I’ve written these songs while on the Path to Becoming. I hope each letter written within this self portrait glows unforgettably fluorescent shades of pink, green, and cyanine blue… just like beautiful tulips blooming in the limelight. Today, I stand tall in the Sunshine. Hopefully, these words will echo love, harmony, and happiness into your soul.
Take what you may need. Please, leave what you don’t. Take your time. We can study and pray together. After all, there’s a rainbow waiting for us at the end. A beautiful, mesmerizing, breathtaking rainbow.
Honestly, a rainbow is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. As the sun dances through misty skies, I’m convinced love lives in the clouds. As the thunder rolls, and the creeks meander, one should remember to feel the rain on their skin and the sunshine on their shoulders. Today, I stand in the rain, and I remember.
You can be the Muse
And you can be the Artist, too.
You can admire beautiful things
and be admired, too.
I used to daydream of the moment I would create something beautiful, something I may be remembered for. Like Van Gogh with his sunflowers and starry skies, or Judy Garland with her ruby red slippers tip tapping along the yellow brick road somewhere over the rainbow. I used to. Gone are the days I could only envision this legacy with eyes wide shut and my mind quiet. I find myself on the path to becoming, and it all feels so real.
What you create starts to feel more real
when you start loving you. Do you?
Love who you are? I do. I sure do.
I am draped in silk, and my evolving form warms under the stage lights. I steal a glance in the mirror, adjust my posture, and prepare to open the door to a room destined for me. My eyes are glittering technicolor tears of joy, and I am overcome with the realization that I am ready. Something has changed within me.
Oh, I feel like the Muse in my mind.
I see it in the gaze of others sometimes,
I’m too afraid to learn into it sometimes.
The air is still, the audience awaits. My fingertips rest along the keys, I take a breath. As I spread my wings my body whistles and hums.
I am on a stage. A stage! This story I had been telling myself my entire life was no longer a vision that only existed with my eyes closed. The room is waiting for me to sing. Is this real? This is real. This moment is my destiny. Finally, metamorphoses in the blink of an eye.
It’s scary being seen, at least for me,
‘cause that’s all I’ve ever wanted.
Spiritually, I am fluttering across echoes of lime green light. Physically, I am singing into a microphone and hoping my hands remember what I have taught them to play. I have words written down on a piece of paper to guide me through the journey that has finally began. I am ready to fly, and I do. I flutter into rooms full of inspiration and muse. I think of beautiful souls and I am hungry for their connection. I see the journey ahead of us, I anticipate transformation. My feet drive me forward as my hands steer rhythmically. I am lost in inspiration.
I stood by Aphrodite last week,
I was among the statues from Greece,
and I felt like I was lookin’ at a mirror
pointed right at me.
They are all looking at me and I can feel their hearts beating to the message I’m preaching. I cling to the mystery of their perception, and free myself from any expectation. I soften my shoulders and straighten my spine. “It doesn’t have to be perfect” flashes like flickering neon buzzing on the back of my ears. I’m carrying this tension, and I make the decision to let it all go. As I let it go, I let it out. It is so beautifully blue.
Antiquity.
Something that just gets more beautiful with age.
Oh, like fine wine or whiskey in that barrel that time.
Drinking in an indescribable feeling, I let my spirit linger on familiar faces in the room. They keep me tethered to the moment. I see so many people I’ve known and knew, and even more faces I’ve yet to memorize. I feel seen, I feel heard. I feel loved. I close my eyes. You look so good, baby. In this moment, I’m convinced I sound so good, too.
I’m the muse,
I’m beautiful,
and I know
I can be the artist, too.
In the blink of an eye, I am transported back to the brick house at the foot of the Stony Gap that I am still so fond of. As the adults toted themselves outside to smoke, socialize, and more frequently argue, I would sing & dance in the empty living room. In between games of make believe and fantasy, I would daydream of being a star. I knew how to find MTV before I knew what Nickelodeon was. I’d watch and study visions compiled as Top 10 music video countdowns, and I remember the finger-crossing “pretty please” innocent hope that the next song might be by Britney Spears. Mesmerized, I remember trying my best to memorize her so I may perform like her.
I’m always ready, I learned you ain’t gotta get ready
if you stay ready, so stay ready!
I’m ready for change.
“Listen, and learn!” I heard over and over and over again, and when it came to inspiration I took that personally. As my body grew, so did the resonance of my developing voice. “Shelby, you’re singing too loud!” So I learned to hum when I was scolded for being too excited. I learned how to be good. Do good. So in this moment, on this stage, to have the freedom to use my voice in all its power… I feel limitless. I am feeling good.
As wonderful as it is to paint beautiful pictures,
and how you admire all of it, remember
you are the muse too, baby!
I have spent a lifetime musing for inspiration, and in this moment I am affirmed that I am the inspiration.
You are worthy of being seen,
you are worthy of being heard,
you’re worthy of being held in love and feeling invincible.
On June 17th, 2026 at Paddy’s Irish Public House, a moment was made for me by Shawn Adkins at Back-A-Round Records, host of the evening’s Art Attack. I took months to prepare, and the experience felt like a match striking into a white hot flame that carried me far away from any doubt, worry, or shame.
I’m going through something you might call a creative breakthrough.
I’m painting my pictures, I’m singing my songs.
I’m having a creative breakthrough.
I blink, suddenly I am sitting on the porch with my Nana. My body remains on stage, but my spirit is in reminisce. The breeze smells of azaleas and the sun beats like a heart through the trees. The birds are flying through the pines, bumblebees hover above the concrete. “Shelby, sing me a tune” she would say. I’d sing familiar melodies, and if I forgot she’d ask to hear Amazing Grace. “I’ve never been able to carry a tune” she told me. Time after time she’d softly ask I sing her favorite song. As I did, her eyes would crinkle. The crows feet lining the corners of her smile would fold into themselves like a well-sewn quilt. In these moments, I was convinced I could do what I wanted to do the most: sing.
I used to doubt and worry, but not these days.
See, I believe in my ability to see it through.
Finally, finally, finally.
I am told I have a gift. I am encouraged to sing. I sing, and I sing, and I sing. I run around in my childish wonder and my feet shuffle to the rhythm of my ill-tuned melodies. I fall on my face, over and over again. I keep singing through moments I am hungry for embrace while living in a world where no one will slow themselves to hold me. As bright as life shines, those moments that feel like darkness that still stay with me.
I’m taken to church and put into a choir. I sing hymns and learn not to sway my arms so much. I fall asleep in the church pews laying in my Grandma Jewel’s lap, and I could count on a few peppermints from her Bible bag if I was well behaved. The organist would play as the pastor preached, and it all felt a little silly to me. We rose from our seats and went to the page we were told, and everyone would sing along in harmony - young and old.
My ears understood far before my mind could process and articulate what this music did to my body. As I would recite the 23rd Psalm to my saving grace, sing like an angel in Christmas plays, or made my elders Thursdays when singing at the Lutheran Home, even in my little body I could sense how amazing it was to use my voice. Singing liberated my soul, it set me free.
But at home, I am constantly told I am too loud, too clumsy, too much. I learned it was safer if I only sang in the rooms I was told I was allowed. I listened, and I tried my best to learn. I followed the rules. Then, I broke them.
Sure, I make mistakes, I fall on my face, and I cry, too.
It’s been so long since I said goodbye to my saving grace, my Great Grandmother Jewel. The woman who took me to that church, encouraged me to sing, and reminded me how precious it was to be me. I think of the love she wrapped me in often. As a baby, she would swaddle me in her blankets and I would sleep in a dresser drawer by her bed. As I outgrew the makeshift cradle, she made a home for me in her sewing room. This is where I would play with buttons and other pretty things to satisfy my curiosity. We would rotate through Hallmark Channel and her DVD collection: The Little House on the Prairie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Shirley Temple, Andy Griffith framed my childhood in her bungalow. When I was hungry, alone, or just needing to be seen, I could walk across that creek and know that She would be there to receive me.
Even when I made mistakes, she never hurt me. Once, I expressed myself a little too freely. I took a pair of scissors to carve into the legs of her expensive wooden furniture. In the moment, I was lost in creativity until I was confronted with the weight of my expression. I was terrified. I was certain she’d tell me to go get a switch, or worse… she’d tell my momma. Instead, I heard “it’s going to be okay, I’m not upset, let’s talk about a different way” as she wiped away my tears.
I’m having a creative breakthrough.
On this stage, I am holding back tears of joy. I am self-actualizing, and they have no clue. Or maybe they do. I’m so worried my music is boring, but when I look out into the audience I see harmonious expressions of what I could only describe as mesmerized. Am I any good? I don’t know, but I think so. Their attention gives me the courage to keep singing, and the confidence to find memorized melodies flowing from my fingertips.
For a long time, I felt as if my moment to shine would never come. My voice left for nearly a decade. Every time I tried to sing along to my favorite songs, doubt would choke away any melody I found myself eager to cling to. I felt safe enough to hum in the car, or sing in the shower, but that’s where it all ended. “Shut the fuck up!” would ring into my ears in my mother’s voice every time my body sensed I was singing too loud. I was terrified of being seen, for I might be told again I needed to change - how I look, how I move, how I smile. I could barely tolerate the thought of being heard and being told to cange how I sound.. Frustration bubbled inside of me, as if I was somehow too much yet never enough to be loved for me.
Nearly a year ago today, I manifested this very thing:
A creative breakthrough.
Last summer, I sat under my cherry tree and learned to let the wind rock the hammock that held me. I would close my eyes and ask myself “what do I want?”
What did you wish for a year ago, around this time,
as the seasons changed?
What have you learned since?
After a lifetime of being told that one should need and never want, the desire to be desired caught up with me. As I opened and closed my eyes, I began to personify these questions and visions in sketchbooks. I took soft pastels and acrylic paint, and I created ambient reminders of who I was, who I’ve always been, and proclaimed who I was meant to be. I realized who I am. I am an artist!
Are you having a creative breakthrough?
If not, would you like to?
My Nana would drive me around town, and we would stumble into thrift stores and garage sales looking for hidden treasure. We would eat at Wendy’s and “the Blue Bay” (she’d say in her southern twang). She’d take me to Wal-Mart or JC Penneys to make sure I had pants that fit and shoes to walk in. I kept a simple white hard cover sketchbook with me, and makeshift piles of pencils, pens, and markers filled my pockets and purses. I have so many memories of drawing in that sketchbook, and just as many memories of Nana celebrating my creations. One day while going down the road, I studied her features and created what felt like a masterpiece: a portrait of my Nana as I saw her. Beautiful, but with a big nose. She called it her bird nose, and I may have poked fun at her playfully and childishly, but I have always thought her nose was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. She taught me the beauty of being authentic to your capacity, what it means to give when you have so little, and showed me what it looked like to work hard. Have you ever worked hard and seen the reward?
I’d recommend it, it’s a lot of fun.
Sure, it’s been difficult in many ways,
I’ve learned so much.
A year has since passed since meditating in the breeze, and I’ve since learned how to celebrate the gifts destined for me. I’m so lucky for those souls in the garden that took the time to plant seeds of creative liberation in my mind. I was once just a seedling waiting to sprout. But, now… wow, look at me now. I am in full bloom.
I’m having a creative breakthrough,
I’m so happy to be in this moment with you.
I’ve been told I was running before I could walk and I started singing as soon as I could talk. My very first CD was Shania Twain’s album Come On Over, and these days every time Man! I Feel Like A Woman plays I do, in fact, feel like a woman. Just like Britney Spears, Shania showed me what it meant to use my voice in all of its nuanced power.
Growing up, the world was as flat as a plate and only as big as the foot of the mountain I called home. When music played, I teleported to paradise unknown.
I grew up in a tiny single wide trailer with no AC and fire ants everywhere. I had a momma and daddy who couldn’t stand each other nor the responsibilities my existence shackled them to. I’d spend my days hiding in the bedroom I shared with my brother and sister. I would sneak down the hill to see my Nana or across the creek to see my Grandma Jewel. I’d make myself pretty before church and wait for Grandma’s green car to chug up the driveway to whisk me away to the rooms I was allowed to sing.
In kindergarten, Grandma made me microphone out of a toilet paper roll and a golf ball so I could be Britney Spears on career day. The next year, my momma and Nana would take me to my very first concert in the First Grade. For weeks, I beamed with excitement and danced with anticipation. Then the day finally came, and it was time for the concert. Momma curled my hair, Nana walked up the hill, we all got into the gold Astro van and made the journey to Charlotte.
It is July 11th, 2002 and I am standing in the audience watching my idol rise from the stage. A Dream Within A Dream begins and she begins to sing. Britney Spears whips her body from stage left, right and center, and visions for the future emerge right in front of me. She paraded around the stage performing You Drive Me Crazy with the giant pop-art illustrated houses and cars. That was a scene that has since fueled an entire lifetime of creativity. I studied Britney Spears in all her wonder as I was learning how to become a woman myself. These days, I smirk at the fact that I shave my head seeking the same cathartic relief she would five years later.
Now, here I am on this stage, and I am singing a song inspired by her vision. I am at a Crossroads.
I can take my time, study and pray.
I can get it right, get it wrong today.
I’m taking my time today.
Somewhere in between that little house on the hill and now, I lost bits and pieces of myself to the chaos that fueled their normalcy. I am not always ready to explore these threads of recollection, but I am trying my best. Life was all over the place, and that world was ruled by death, violence, and destruction. Life was about surviving and hiding hope in plain sight. Then came the Birthday of Broken Promises. I blew out those candles, made my wish, and did what I was told would bring me to calmer waters. In fact, I was jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire.
Burnin’ up white hot flame,
this fever I carry inside of me,
that I’ll never tame.
These days, familiar melodies act like hopeful strings to strum to reconnect with those parts I thought were gone for good. I’m not always ready to face what the music has to tell me, but I’m getting better at trusting myself to receive answers I may be lucky enough to find.
After years of singing in the choir, someone gave me a karaoke machine. This microphone I’m holding isn’t much different than that very first brassy karaoke machine from my childhood. “Another thing for her to make noise with,” I remember my momma grumbling about. Eventually, the karaoke machine would be lost in the chaos of my parents divorcing. I missed that karaoke machine for a damn long time. There were so many opportunities and spaces to sing around me, yet I was made to feel I was entitled to none of it. Be seen, not heard. I know I am worthy of being seen and heard. I sing and I sing and I sing, and quite frankly I am making up for lost time. I should have been singing all along. I might have known you sooner, after all.
No, I’ll never tame this fire burning inside of me.
After the Birthday of Broken Promises, I left my dad’s house on the hill to live with my momma. One day, I will be brave enough to open the door to the house on Ruth Street. But for now, that door remains closed.
Drivin’ down the road today…
“Not sure where I’m headed,” I say.
I am thankful the journey has taken me far away from the bricks that made me feel prisoner to my own mind. I left home, and I didn’t look back for a long time. I can still see it all from my rearview, but the horizon assures me I am safely inching toward my destiny.
But I know where I’m going
is meant for me.
My urge to drive fast cars and run away lives in the past. These days, I yearn for the opportunity to take my time, study, and pray. I put my records on, I listen to my favorite songs. I think of the people I love and I am inspired to say what I need to say. I dance, shake my tambourine, and I let loose enough to wink. I allow myself to act on impulse and sometimes I have a drink.
I get drunk on the thought of those who inspire me to create, and I resist any urge to shrink. I write songs! I use my heart when I think. Once hollow like a tin man, and just as clumsy as the Scarecrow, I’ve found this courage to roar like a lion and believe in what is meant for me.
I feel it at my fingertips,
I hear it when my voice rings out in the wind.
This June version of me isn’t so different than the little girl who stood in classrooms as a first and second soprano to sing. I blink and I am back at the desk where I learned to feel like me. Seventh grade, I am wearing a sunflower yellow uniformed shirt and Mrs. Cook hands out the song we are meant to learn. Over the Rainbow reads at the ledger. I am thirteen, and feel on the brink of finding out who I might be. Moody, angsty, afraid. My whole world was falling apart constantly and I was terrified every day. But still, I would sing, and I sing, and I will sing.
Just a few weeks later, we would learn the next song, Nina Simone’s Feeling Good. These days, every time I sing there is a rainbow in front of me, and it feels SO good to sing so freely. . I am there, and I am one of them. I am a singer, it was who I was meant to be. Even back then, when the melody I carried was a bit off key, but who can blame a thirteen year old girl so determined to SING!
Can’t always get it right in the moment,
but I come back to it and surely…
it all comes to me in the moment.
Coming back to my destiny, after all these years sleeping along the narrow way, I happily exclaim this dream within a dream came true, truthfully. After a lifetime of being convinced I had to earn the right to speak, I am so confident that it is my duty to bring melody and rhythm into every room meant for me.
Here I am today, in the moment with you today
We’re takin’ our time, I’m takin’ my time,
let’s take our time, today.
I must sing to you and I hope you might sing back to me. All I wish for is the opportunity where we might form harmony - even if only just two parts to be shared briefly. I wait for the moment the light shines on who I am so I may be seen and wanted for me. I sing my songs so they might hear my message of peace and blessings. I yearn for kind hands to guide me to the stage, and I wait for those that hold me close enough I know it is safe enough to feel everything inside of me.
Do what you gotta do,
but do good, too.
For far too long, I abandoned myself for the sake of other’s opinions on what it meant to get it right. I let people convince me I couldn’t follow my dreams, I couldn’t speak my truth, I couldn’t sing my songs. Now, I know they were wrong… so very wrong. This cry baby was meant to be on a stage. I’m letting their doubt go. In this moment, I am letting it out. I am clinging to hope. I am singing the blues and I’m figuring something out, even while falling down and crying out loud.
You gotta doodle, you gotta let loose.
You gotta dance, look in the mirror,
say “I love you!”
On this stage, I am wearing my favorite wooden soled shoes. They are worn leather with pointed toes bleached by the sun and heels tattered by gravel paths. In the moment, I am tapping my feet to the rhythm of my hands while my mind whirls and twirls to the thought of the piece of me that wanted to dance like Shirley Temple. In a few tip taps, I’m looking in the mirror and there is a snaggletoothed freckle faced Shelby grinning ear to ear. If she gets anymore excited, she’s gonna start crying, I guarantee. Oh, dear.
I’ve grown stronger and learned to live with it all resting at my shoulders. I embrace the push and pull, and organize my thoughts into counts of 5, 6, 7, and 8 so I might by happy and remember what it’s like to play.
Take your time,
study,
and pray.
I’m not a little girl anymore. I am a woman. Softly, strongly, and persistently, I chase rainbows and inspiration each and every day. I call the birds. I swim towards calm waters. I celebrate the rain. I am tending to the garden planted by the souls who have loved me, and life is so peaceful on cloudy days.
I’m still the girl in the Sunflower tutu, but now, I am in full bloom.
When you look at the flowers think of me.
It’s who I was meant to be.
I have been a singer before anything else in this life, and I am convinced in every life I have lived and will live I am a singer. I am convinced of these gifts, and it is my cosmic destiny to share it with you all. I have left the chrysalis that was spun inside of Mr. Orbison’s classroom more than a decade ago.
Who are you meant to be?
My junior year of high school, I was Lucille Ball during the annual Broadway Revue. I convinced the crowd Lucy herself was Doing a TV Commercial, and I sold a belly-laughing pitch for Vitameatavegamin. If you’ve got no clue what I’m talking about, look it up, your day will be lighter. Broadway Revue was so much more than singing and dancing. A three night run, and the show went on year after year. Mr. Orbison and Ms. Troutman created and curated an unforgettable musical theatre production that required night time rehearsals, months of studying music, scripts, learning dances, and auditioning for featured skits, this Revue brought together every clique and crowd within the four walls of our high school. Sure, you had your theatre kids, and I was certainly one of them, but there were also athletes, artists, nerds, quiet folks, loud folks… literally every color of the rainbow got up on that stage and put on a show.
During senior year, Mr. Orbison would cast me for a senior solo. The year’s show: Finale. The fated song: I Will Survive. I’ve since come to understand why Mr. Orbison chose that song for me, but in those moments the song felt like a daunting technical task I couldn’t possibly achieve. Nerves got the best of me, along with questionnable costumery choices, and on the second night I fell right from the stage onto my face in front of 200 people. I didn’t miss a beat.
I got up, kept singing, and did not miss a beat. I was mortified and singing through blushing cheeks, but I delivered a performance that no one would forget. 12 years later, it remains a memory I cling to in moments of doubt and worry. I am determined and that is what makes me me.
In Honors Chorus, we sang in churches, concert halls, auditoriums, and in the classroom we all felt safe enough to sing. These memories return to me again and again, in both reminisce and dream.Every Sunday, the forty to sixty student choir would pile into church pews and chambers to sing 4, 6, 8, 10 part harmonies. We sang like Saul, Still, and Jordan’s Angels. We sang so many songs and many of us remember them all.
I’d like to tell you about the very last song I would sing as a high school Honors Chorus student, it’s another time I made the choice to keep on singing. The moment was a culmination of four years of instability, parental neglect, and perfectionism. I knew when I left for college, I wouldn’t have a home waiting on me. Momma was always yelling, her lover could hit me, and I had absolutely no one to hold me. Everyone in that house was so angry, and the desire to get away outweighed any fear that might make me stay.
It's the night of the Senior Concert. I’ve rehearsed with one of my best friends, and her mom agreed to provide piano accompaniment for my rendition. I am nervous, but I am certain this is the song I must sing. She begins to play that familiar E flat melody, and a beautiful sound leaves my body. A rhythm I can still feel in my heartbeat, I chose to sing Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful written by Linda Perry.
I started off strong, but not too loud. I was on pitch. Then came the chorus. I scanned the room, and there was my momma right in front of me. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, yet she chose a front row seat. As she smiled at me, I began to cry. These tears weren’t of sadness nor joy, and I stammered for relief at the keys. I was angry. I couldn’t hold in the frustration any longer.
Just as I fought the urge to run from the room, a soft “Shelby, we can start again, take a deep breath, tell me when you’re ready” whispered from the piano. I looked at my best friend’s mom and felt so seen. She was an arms length away from me and I knew I could face the fears that had overtaken me. So, I stood beside her, turned my gaze and focused on the sheet music that would guide us through the melody.
I heard applause as I ended the song and rejoined the audience. Several kind strangers affirmed my performance and reminded me it would all be okay, as if they could feel the pain I was holding inside of me. My mother and I spoke half heartedly at the end and I swallowed those angry tears that tasted like microwaved peanut butter stinging the back of my throat and forming a pit in my stomach. I went home and hid under my covers crying myself to sleep.
Are you happy today?
I embrace that flow of emotion, it doesn’t hold me back anymore. I am so happy today. I feel beautiful and capable, worthy of what may be meant for me. Pretty soon, I will sing songs in front of hundreds…. thousands of people. I hope when people listen to me sing they are convinced it’s true for them, too. We are all so beautiful. Look at me, and look at you.
If you’re not happy, just try one thing.
I imagine what it might feel like to stand out in wide open spaces and sing hopeful bluesy tunes, with the sunshine on our shoulders, clouds rolling on by, and a breeze blowing through.
If the sun is shinin’,
go out barefoot and look up at the sky.
Remind yourself you’re part of something bigger today.
I don’t want to be angry. I’ve been angry my whole life, yet forced to pose for pretty pictures and premeditated imagery. Always expected to smile, never allowed to cry. Now, I want to be happy. I want to smile. I want to cry! I want to cry these Judy-blue tears and let it all out.
We’re not meant to understand everything,
but we’re meant to learn.
I learned to lean on the sunshine on my darkest days, and to watch the rain fall in hopes a rainbow may call my name. I fantasize about how it might feel with the grass beneath our feet as I teach you how to imitate the crickets rhythm with our teeth. I daydream about the faces that will find me in the clouds, and how the sky might widen when they love me. Time passes and I wait for the moment we might go down memory lane, sit on the river bank to pray.
Are you happy today? I really do want to know. What makes you happy? What makes you smile? What’s the funniest joke you’ve heard in a while. I would love to know, so I can make you happy the next time I see you. Hopefully, it will only be a little while. What makes you go… wow. What takes your breath away? When I say I want to be a part of your world, fight those visions of a mermaid to be saved. I want to understand you. I want to know you. I want to love you. I want to walk with you, ask my questions, and get some answers. Like what’s a fire? Why does it… Oh, you know how it goes. I’d like to know how you’d like to be seen, so I may paint you in the brightest light in which you beam. What are your favorite hum drum melodies and what makes you weak in the knees?
So, when it rains go sit in a spot
where you can learn.
Sometimes, we love people with guarded hearts, and that’s okay. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that we are the love we give. Pain shapes the way we see the world, and we’ve all been through so much and had to figure out how to love our way. The love we crave exists within us, and the love we give always comes back around to us.
Love looks, love listens, love learns. So, please, remember you must love yourself. You are allowed to want, desire, dream, and yearn.
When you love the way you sound, music will find you.
When you love the way you look, beauty will find you.
When you love the way you move, rhythm will find you.
When you love the way you smile, kindness will find you.
For the love of life, love your self!
The rhythm of the clouds, the cadence it’s so loud.
Let it calm your heart and be happy.
It’s okay if you feel like you can’t.
I embrace the craving to be seen, I know that I am being heard, and I wait for the moment I may be held.
As I stand in the rain, I’m reminded of the softest and brightest days behind me. While the clouds roll away, I think of how sunshine would peak through my Grandma’s green sedan as she imparted so much wisdom onto me. I wait for the breeze to bring desire and I fly towards it hopefully. As I sit under my cherry tree, I connect with the version of me that climbed pecan trees and read books lying on the trampoline. The rain makes me want to dance to a hummingbird’s heartbeat, but still remain aware of everything beautiful surrounding me.
I promise the sun will shine.
I promise, I promise.
It will all work out fine.
I am back in this moment with you, on June 17th, and I realize this melody is nearing its end. It is nearly time to sing the song that taught me to be me. I am so ready to receive and love to flow from my spirit when I sing. I tether myself to the moment, I remember to breathe.
I can’t always be happy. I understand there is no sunshine without rain. These days, I am surrounded by love. I am comforted by community. I am encouraged to create. I am so deeply in love with this life that I’m living, and every person that truly loves me has loved me so intentionally. I won’t always get it right. I’m certain I got something wrong today. But the sun still shines on me, just as it falls on your shoulders with the afternoon breeze.
It’s okay, cry if you need to,
sit in a dark room if you want to.
Be by yourself if you have to.
If you take some token or lesson from my rambling, please, let it be to love freely and fearlessly. Love out loud with the door wide open. Give freely and receive eagerly. Allow yourself to exist among the glimmers of creativity that remind you life is worth living. It is never a waste of time to make use of our time.
Don’t forget you deserve the sunshine
just as much as everyone else today.
My eyes are like misty skies and there is a bright beam of sunshine beaming at me from across the room. This moment feels like when thunderstorm clouds collide, my eyes sparkle under the stars on the ceiling. If this isn’t the most beautiful, mesmerizing, breathtaking moment of my life. There is a rainbow in front of me. Like the wicked witch of the west melting away, I let all my fears escape. I relax, I take a deep breath, and I think of the rainbow I am ready to run to.
Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high…
There’s a land I heard of once in a lullaby.
I’m looking into the eyes of someone I felt safe enough to let down the walls I built to keep the nightmares away. There are these amber colored eyes that have a way of making me feel seen and heard and loved in a very real way. In so few words, I am understood and encouraged to run free. I know in this moment I need to say what I need to say. Soft, sweet hum drum melodies inform my imagination. I’m clicking these ruby red shoes, and hoping and praying for home.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue.
The dreams that you dare to dream,
they really do come true.
I am living a dream within a dream. That little girl who worshipped Britney Spears and knew every word to Can’t Be Tamed? She’s still inside of me. She is the light within me that shines bright neon green. I am still the little girl who would study MTV. I am still the little girl that watched Britney drive herself crazy for being in too deep with those cartoon cars. I am still the girl that stays up all night anticipating, thinking, hoping this time the right moment is waiting for me. I am the little girl watching Crossroads in the movie theater with my momma beside of me.
Somewhere along the way, I stumbled onto the Path to Becoming. A fated night in my favorite bar would lead me here to this moment, with you, as we have taken our time to meander down this creek of understanding. I’ve been plucking clover petals and blowing dandelion seeds in the wind, truthfully, all my life making silly wishes that somebody, anybody would just love me.
Some day I’ll wish upon a star,
I’ll wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
I made those wishes, held my breath at 11:11, and would look up at the stars waiting for a comet to fly by me. I wasn’t a girl, not yet a woman. Life made me wait, and I’ve learned many lessons along the way. I don’t believe in coincidence. I trust fate determined when I would take these steps toward destiny. Surely, love lives in the clouds and this river was meant for me. I am just a wayward traveler searching for eyes that feel like a sunrise where red and green meet.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
away above the chimney tops,
that’s where you’ll find me.
I have left a window open for whatever may find me. Time after time, I find myself in refuge at these keys. I imagine my life as beautiful harmonic melodies. I sing and I sing and I sing. I wait for the moment they may sing to me.
Somewhere, over the rainbow,
way up high, there’s a place for you and I.
I yearn for the souls that draw me into my brightest light. There is a power in holding yourself in love, especially after a lifetime of waiting. I am the love I give, and I am so determined to love intentionally. Love is liberation, and I hope I’ve convinced you that you’re worth being seen. Your story is one worth telling, You are worthy of love.
Somewhere over the rainbow, I clearly see.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
All the colors in between.
I close my eyes and I see cardinals, orioles, warblers, hummingbirds, blue jays, indigo buntings, starlings…they’re all flying around me. The crows, the robins, the mockingbirds sing. I see rubies, citrine, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, aquamarine on the horizon, sparkling like destiny. Dragonflies are flying over, ultraviolet scenes decorate the pages when I think of this light inside of me. This is the Night of the Lime Green Light, I am so happy.
Somwhere in that rainbow,
there’s a spot, there’s a place
for all of you and for all of me.
I am on this stage, sharing my dream with you. I’m so happy today. I am so thankful. I am so lucky. I never want this moment to end.
I’m so happy the sunshine will bring us so close.
I get to see you in the light you beam.
There is no sunshine without rain. Darkness is met with the light of day. Today, tonight, and tomorrow, the moon will continue to wax and wane. I’ll keep on taking my time to study and pray, and I have to remind you one more time: you deserve the sunshine just as much as everyone else today.
A rainbow through the clouds,
if that’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I hope you are happy today. I am truly so happy to have shared this moment with you, and I am excited to find what is waiting for me along this yellow brick road. Love lives in the clouds, study the rain, and I promise you’ll see.
Somewhere over the rainbow
all your dreams are waiting for you
to find the rainbow destined for you
My dreams came true. Thank you to every person in my life that have led me to my destiny at the microphone.
To love is to see, hear, and hold. To be loved is to be seen, heard, and held.
Peace, blessings, and butterflies.
