Life. There is so much to take in and so much to let go. There is too much to analyze and too much to sort through. There are deadlines, budgets, school projects, sports games, running between social events, and so many headaches.

There are accomplishments and failures, truths and untruths, realities and imaginations, perceptions and misunderstandings, people: woke and un-woke, profound and unspoken, ambitious and apathetic, wise and ambitious all in this thing we call life. Living in freedom every day. This is the American way of life is it not? Living In Freedom Everyday. LIFE is what I call it.

What exists in our small part of the world likely exists in its own form in places across the globe. What one can speak on however is simply what one understands in their own perception of reality and truth. True understanding needs to come from multiple sources, and each of us has our own truth and the truths we see in others. How do you live your life? Do you feel free? Do you believe in the American dream? I do. Raised as a pretty white female in a world full of opportunity, I was ready for the world at only a young teenager.

My dad encouraged me to go in to the local music store and play a song for the owner. Maybe he would give me a job. I was fifteen, walked in and did what dad had said, nervous and awkward as I was. To my absolute shock, the owner said, “you’re hired”. Now, I had never taken a real piano lesson up until this point. But coming from a musical family, learning Suzuki style was just in our nature. For those of you not familiar with that term, the Suzuki method refers to a string teaching method that is based on repetition and memorization in the early years. I was my dad’s little project, and when I was small he just wanted to show me off to his friends who couldn’t believe I was rocking out to Eric Clapton’s “Layla” at age 8. Later in my musical discovery years, I would check out books on J.S. Bach, and teach myself the bass clef notes. I would give my grandmother a call when I didn’t know the meaning of a classical symbol or key. She almost always had the answer. My parents realized how much I had progressed on my own as an inquisitive child, and during my sophomore year I got to take an entire semester of piano class from the Community Music School at Webster University. To this day I don’t know what my parents spent on that semester. But I know it was not within their budget. But they made it happen anyway, and it changed my life!

I got to wait in a hallway until it was my turn for a lesson, listening to the other students practicing in their rooms with their teachers. It was a feeling I had never before had. I mean, the music job started when I was only a freshman. I guess my parents figured they had better get serious if I was going to be this focused on music. I will never forget that semester.

I graduated from a private all girls high school here in St. Louis. I remember feeling so excited to be getting a music scholarship. It may not have covered the tuition, but it made my grandmother proud. She had a degree in piano, and wanted to see me follow in her footsteps as the first educated woman of her family, a Webster College graduate herself. We had the most influential man as a choral director who was so far beyond just a music teacher. He directed our jazz band, classical band, choral ensembles, and was everyone’s friend. He instilled in me what would be the core of my teaching philosophy later in life. Privilege. It really was the life. I was really living in freedom every day.

Graduation came (and went), I decided to major in music at both grandma and dad’s alma mater : Webster University. I would go on go graduate school there, eventually transferring to an MBA program concentrating on nonprofit leadership. This would help to shape my later life’s mission: Prestige Performers and bringing progress and change to the community through the arts and music programs I had been directing my entire life. Sounds like such a privileged existence. And it was. I still believe I have a privilege, and I recognize (and OWN it) when my son tells me his friends think I’m way younger than I am. My face, my skin, my freedoms granted to me by my birth right would one day come back to haunt me, and I would want nothing more than to relinquish this privilege in hopes to free myself from the chains its existence locks upon you.