Sunday night, in Atlanta, I watched a woman dance across a stage, lift her voice, and bring a sold-out, diverse crowd to its feet.
I know Taylor Swift was in Atlanta, too, but I’m not talking about her (even though I do hold a special place for her).
I’m talking about Natalie Merchant.
I first fell in love with Natalie’s voice when I was a teenager, unsure of myself and my place in the world. Natalie and Dolores O’Riordan (of the Cranberries) presented to me a way to be free, to be fully authentic and spirited. They bore such strong influences on me as a budding singer/songwriter, that I garnered comparisons to them anytime I played live in coffee houses, living rooms, or the recording studio.
I never made it to Lilith Fair, even though I badly wanted to. My self-directed (and inflicted) homophobia and shame for who I am kept me from throwing myself whole heartedly into the things I most wanted then.
A few years later, while in college, I viewed Natalie’s music through a different lens. This time, as a student in a Psychology of Women class. We listened to “Tell Yourself,” as we reflected on the messages girls receive and then internalize about themselves, a powerful activity I repeated when I led women’s empowerment groups.
While I was pregnant with my daughter, I listened to Natalie’s album “Retrospective” on repeat, and prayed/sang the words of “Wonder” as I held my belly, over my daughter along the way. And it was the children’s album, “Leave Your Sleep” that I played after we brought her home from the hospital. I hoped by starting this early, better messages of self-love and empowerment would somehow sink in to our daughter’s mind and heart.
But what I thought I knew about women’s empowerment, self-love, and authenticity was all swept away in a flood as soon as Natalie Merchant took the stage.
The second she came into view with a long pink coat, to start to sing “Lulu” I started weeping and trembling. I had to grip my wife’s hand tightly, not understanding what was happening to me and powerless to stop it. I couldn’t put my finger on why I continued to weep even as I sat down to write this. But then the answer has come in like a flood ever since:
On Sunday night, I earned a master’s degree in authenticity and women’s empowerment, through witness. And not only that, and even more powerfully – I learned to love myself in a profound way that I can only label as a spiritual experience bordering on a conversion or epiphany. I’ve always been a mystic of sorts, and this was a truly mystical encounter.
As a 59 year old woman with almost completely gray hair danced and bounded across the stage with flamenco style skirt dancing in her bare feet, I watched the Divine Feminine in embodiment that invited everyone in the room to look at themselves with Wonder, Kindness and Generosity. She payed homage to the women who’ve gone before, the “girls in the fray.” She stood in front of us, recovered from a major health crisis that nearly stole her voice and declared “Life is Sweet” through her own tears and struggle to make it through the song due to the emotion that overcame her. She called upon Aphrodite with nothing but her voice (that unmistakable voice), a simple gray and black ensemble, and her child-like delight and immersion into the symphony orchestra that accompanied her.
She hid none of her aging. She just was.
Through her authenticity and presence? The wrinkles on my neck, my messy hair, my imperfect teeth, the changes in my body, the fact I couldn’t stop crying – the things I criticize and pick myself apart for because of the messages I’ve received… They didn’t simply stop mattering – instead they became celebrations. Celebrations of who I am now, the places I’ve been and the life I’ve lived to get me here. The way my messy hair has a gray streak now and marks my own resistance to standards, how my teeth look like my late grandmother’s. The way pregnancy and mothering changed my hips and stomach, the way the lines have deepened on my face through many rivers of empathy and love, the tears that wouldn’t stop as an outpouring of love and gratitude for music that has healed and sustained me, for a voice that is enough like mine to inspire me to keep creating and dreaming. That my own incredible sensitivity puts me in tune with emotion, connection, love, creativity, and nature. All parts of me that suddenly became worthy and lovely instead of needing to be concealed. For the first time in my life, I felt truly overwhelming love and appreciation for myself.
It was as if the spell of deep and sticky self-loathing and truly crippling self-doubt broke the moment she came into view and continued to purge as her voice went through me, the reverberations still echoing as the poison continues to drain through the tears I continue to cry even two days later. A poison that has found itself displaced by what I dare say is falling in love with me and the fullness of who I am.
Natalie Merchant is radical. The simplicity in her appearance and complexity of the way she brings old wisdom and youthful vigor together are resistance and protest and bold statements against the many forces and voices that would seek to silence women and hide us today.
As I face my own health challenges and continue to work toward embracing living a truly creative life and reconciling to my calling to music and writing, I do it through a new love. The love of myself. A bold, transformative, healing love. And connection to the Divine Feminine within myself.
Thank you, Natalie. You’ve been so kind and generous with your gifts. And this was a day I’ll remember, never before and never since, I promise. I now see just how blessed and lucky I am.
As in the words of her new song, “The Feast of St. Valentine” –
“Keep your courage, keep your faith… Love will win. Love will conquer all.”
