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Julie Clark Shubert’s Rockin’ Story

Donna HighfillBlogNo commentsSeptember 17, 2014

Several of you have shared  incredibly touching stories with me, and I’d like to start sharing some of them with you. This story is told by Julie Clark Shubert, a funny, talented woman with a fascinating story. It’s all about how she “powered up” during a difficult time. If you want to find Julie and her music, find her at www.allthingsjulie.com. A couple of other links and a fun video by Julie are found at the end of the article.

If you would like to have your story shared, just send it to [email protected]

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I found myself turning fifty. I’m not really sure how that happened; it didn’t seem so very long ago that I was sitting in class at Ellis Elementary School, dreaming about running off with David Cassidy in the Partridge Family bus.

The day I turned fifty I panicked and developed a bucket list that consisted of two items: 1) learn to tap dance, and 2) learn how to play the electric guitar.

I had never held a guitar, but I had played one in my head my whole life. I listened to all genres of music as I raised my four kids. I danced with them, sang with them and used the music to bring me happiness as I drove a million miles back and forth to flute lessons, soccer games, and theater camp. I was caught in Minivan hell.

I was stunned when I unwrapped my 50th birthday present from my husband Gary. In the corner of our living room stood a sleeping bag, apparently of its own power.  I thought it was weird, but it also piqued my curiosity. I lifted up the bag and found a Fender Stratocaster. I didn’t know much about electric guitars, only the music they made, but I did recognize a Fender Strat. I named her Stacy and I fell in love with every inch of her. She was majestic in all her blondness and she smelled like rock’n roll.

I assumed that just holding her would bring out my inner Jimmy Hendrix. Not so much. In fact the sounds I made sounded like something was dying in my arms. Stacy was too beautiful to torture. Guitar lessons were in order.

As I tried out different guitar teachers, I discovered that menopause had changed me. When I was younger I had facilitated everyone’s life and dreams, my own life taking a back seat; but apparently when my estrogen disappeared, so did the seating arrangement. I had no patience with people who called themselves teachers but who were actually guitar players. I demanded that this experience be about me, not someone else’s broken dreams.

What complicated things was that I had started to write my own songs, waking up with music in my head that demanded release. My fifty years of life experiences mixed with all the music I had ever heard had somehow morphed into songs. I would hear a melody in my head and I would chase it with chords, then lyrics would start to pour out. I was writing music that was too complicated for me to play with three chords so I started practicing constantly. And I became the mamma bear of my songs.

I adamantly rejected the guitar teachers who wanted to make my music about them. I felt a great responsibility for the music I had birthed and had a resolve to nurture my songs, performing them in a way that would allow them to develop into their potential.

This meant that I would have to play my songs in front of people. I consider myself as a person who sings, not a singer, and I had not sung in front of people except in church choir. But I was excelling at playing the guitar. And I loved it; man did I love it. I spent hours every day playing. For months I tried to play the F chord — I called it the F’n chord — but when I finally conquered it, I felt like I could do anything. So when the time came to play my first house concert, or make a studio CD, or develop a website, or make a video I would always remind myself that it’s just a F chord.

And through this journey, I discovered that as people we are never defined. I had no idea that there was a singer songwriter guitar player gestating inside of me all those years, and that one day I would play a song and someone would come up to me and say Thank you, that song was written for me.

Because I wrote them to discover my possibilities, but, somehow, that gift became another person’s answer. And that’s the miracle of our untapped possibilities.

My newest endeavor is the http://www.ladiesnighthomeconcerts.com/ where women support the performing arts one woman at a time! Come join us https://www.facebook.com/LadiesNightHomeConcerts!

 

Tags: Change Stories, donna highfill, inspiration, Julie Clark Shubert, motivation

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