Dear Friends,

Friday evening I danced the 5 Rhythms for two and a half hours. Towards the end of the evening I noticed that I had been continually dancing the brokenness of my body and my Year of Trauma. A memory appeared of my sister gently inviting me to breathe with her. I could not do it at the time. As I was dropping into that moment I noticed that I could breathe now. I breathed deeply and rhythmically with the music and the dance became more fluid. In a moment of Grace, inspiration rose to close ‘the dance of the accident’ and begin ‘the dance of the coach’. My heart opened. Thank you, G-d.

Then, this morning I received a wonderful gift! I saw a picture of Melody Gardot in an ad and was inspired to look her up.

Only 23 years old, Melody Gardot is a lovely pop-jazz singer and instrumentalist. As I perused her website I noticed that in her videos she has a cane. It turns out she was struck by a car in 2003, an accident that left her with life-altering injuries. As she began an emotional expedition toward healing, she used music as therapy to heal her spirit and ultimately her gifts were revealed to herself and to the world.

Watch the joyful, colorful, sexy video of ‘Mira’!

And here is her ‘La Vie en Rose’.

In Gardot’s words, “‘La Vie en Rose’ represents a lot of things for me, but mostly it represents my feelings towards my guitar. What it has brought into my life and how things have changed. ‘La Vie en Rose’ is like food for my musical garden. For me, ‘La Vie en Rose’ like music, has allowed me to be reinvent myself, and even to change into somebody else completely. Waking up in the morning knowing you can’t move or speak, as was the case after my accident, can be difficult and painful. But your imagination feeds on everything that will happen in the future. We all need a new lease on life from time to time!”

As the 12 Steps tell us, life can change. Hope is possible. Miracles happen. There is the right food we need for our own musical gardens.

Love & Light,

Valerie