Reigniting your passion

www.musicwriter.ca this is what happens when you reignite the passion within you after years of allowing it to sit dormant. It's been an incredible journey to get to here. I find it so hard to explain in words how it feels to fulfill a dream that was tucked down so very deep in my heart for so very, very long....
It started in April of 2005 when it came to light that over the past many years while I'd focused all of my attention and creativity on meeting the needs of my son, and doing what needed to be done for both my job and the farm, the music that had once defined me had disappeared. A conversation with co-workers made me realize that the majority of people that know me now, didn't have any idea that for the first 30 years of my life, music had been my passion and my focus. How did it happen that something that had been so much a part of me for so long was tucked so far down that no-one even knew that passion existed.
'In the Company of Friends' was the result of that conversation, and the match that rekindled the flame. On a challenge to write a song that would encompass the importance of friendship, I was reminded about how much I enjoyed allowing that creative side of me to flow freely. It started things going.
At the end of June that year, Kelly Tomchuk, who'd been a friend of mine since childhood passed away as a result of a brain tumor. The family asked me to sing that song at the memorial...and that set off another chain of events. The compliments from the song, and the emotional turmoil that came with losing someone my age that I'd known so long was the catalyst that pushed me into what I lovingly call my mid-life crisis. On the way home from the memorial I said to my husband "gee, I really wish I'd done an album of my songs when I could have", and his response was 'why not do it now'.
From that moment on, it was like every single necessary thing just fell into place. My brother, Michael james Dickson, was able to line up a freind with a studio and set up the musicians. Chris Rolin, of Rolin Sound Studio, had the time necessary to engineer the project. The funding that was needed to accomplish this dream made itself known and available. Every single star aligned! My time had truly come!
At the time we did the cd, we stuffed 15 songs onto "Reflections", because I was convinced that this was going to be a one time thing. But I know now, that's not going to be the case. I refuse to die with my music inside me, and I've come to realize that there is so much more in there.
The world is such an amazing place, when we have the chance to reach out and touch folks around the earth with our song. I know that my commitment to my son is going to limit how far I can travel or push this dream for the next few years, but that's a minor limitation compared the the one I put on myself for so long.
Follow your passion, embrace your bliss, be who you were destined to be doing what you were designed to do. I can promise you, from my own experience, it will change your world. The missing pieces of the puzzle we call our life will fall into place and all will seem right again. Don't let your music die inside of you, whatever your music might be.
L