Raise your hand if you’ve ever stopped singing and felt the emotional or even physical pain that comes with the void you felt (or still feel) in your life. Maybe you’ve stopped singing because you no longer felt the love you once had for it. Or it could be that you’ve had physical issues that caused you to stop singing for a period of time. Or it’s possible you’ve struggled with your technique or some aspect of singing or performing and just couldn’t shake the issues you were facing enough to keep going. Or perhaps, life just got in the way and even though you loved singing, it just didn’t fit in anymore.
Well, I stand here with you raising my hand, because I also stopped singing for all of these reasons…plus a couple more. As I’ve stated before, singing just became too painful for me because I no longer felt like I knew why I was working so hard and sacrificing so much to do it. I simply wasn’t getting anywhere and finding the help I needed in order to have everything in place and singing well just seemed beyond my capacity. I was out of bandwidth. Then, as the years went by, life just happened and it became easier and easier for me not to sing than it was to make time or room for it. So I stopped.
If you’ve felt any of this before or are experiencing it even now, I know this feeling all too well. I’ve lived it time and time again throughout my career and then again as a mother to 3 young children. I still continue to go through periods of time in my life where singing is just not my top priority and has to be put on hold. But over the years, I’ve realized that I can’t let myself go too long, and I believe that it’s important to clearly understand the consequences you inevitably face when you put your singing on hold for too long or give up singing altogether.
For some, identifying the specific pain that comes from not singing is just as important or perhaps even more important than discovering your initial why for singing. We can know that singing brings us great joy, and we can pursue it and know why we sing. We can feel all the feels and experience all the great experiences singing has to offer. But there will inevitably come a time when singing also brings us great heartache. It’s like a marriage of sorts. We can marry the love of our lives, but until we know that this person can and most likely will deeply hurt us and we can deeply hurt them, we can’t fully understand our commitment to making it work while making the conscious, intentional choice to stick with it and ride out the storms.
So what’s your pain point? What does not singing do to you? And when is enough enough? Do you ache inside when you hear someone else singing and using her talent while you sit on the bench and know it could be you? Do you secretly wish someone would ask you to sing for some event so you would have the excuse to work your voice back up and come out of your shell? Does a tinge of pain hit you when you hear of someone else’s success when you should be excited and celebrating too? Perhaps you even feel the pain physically and notice that when you do attempt to sing, your voice just isn’t doing what it used to do anymore. It’s out of practice. You don’t sing with the stamina or strength you used to have. Perhaps you’ve lost your top or your support has dwindled. And that hurts.
Whatever your pain points are, they are real and they are trying to tell you something. We typically feel pain in our lives when something has changed or needs to change. And if you love singing and are not engaging in the activity of doing it regularly, may I suggest that this is something that needs to be addressed ASAP? I know it’s sometimes easier said than done. After all, if singing were simple or fitting it into our already busy lives were easy, we wouldn’t be in this predicament, would we? But my hope with this series is that you see that you were meant to be singing, and you need to find a way to reconcile your life to making it work. Because living without it is much more painful!
My hope is that this series is just the nudge you need or just the fire lit under your proverbial behind to get back to singing again. This week, I’ve included a free printable download for you to continue doing your inner work and discovering where your priorities are and where you eventually need them to be again. As I’ve said over and over again, it’s OK if we temporarily need to take a break, but we just don’t want it to be a long one.
So get this printable and if you haven’t already, go back and read my introduction to this Getting Back to Singing series and Part #1 – My Why so you can catch up!
Happy Singing!
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