Happy 2023. Here we are on February 6, day after a full moon in Leo and finally feeling like we are truly moving forward into a new calendar year.
I am reflecting on the power of our own voices a lot lately. I am a human who has sung since I was a small child and made a life of writing my own songs and then singing them, in my own voice for the past 35 years. (recording a few of the songs along the way) What have I learned doing that? Not unlike what Lizzo shared last night at the Grammy’s: Even if you feel like an outsider, like people don’t get you, keep going and be yourself. You will find your people. You will attract people to you that will support you. This is so true. In all areas of life.
Not all of us may experience that Truth at the level of Lizzo, but we can experience it and the experience of listening to your own voice, acting from it, sharing it and having someone else acknowledge with joy and love that your voice is special is such a thrill and something I want all beings to experience.
Perhaps this is why I find myself teaching children music. When they feel heard and honored for their unique voice, they light up like a lightbulb and we can all feel it in the room, including me.
What lights you up right now? How can you allow for more of that as we continue on in this year? Everything is possible in any given moment and we can always invite in something new or amplify something present that we want more of. This is the power of our voice – inside and out. I am thrilled to have begun work on a new album (creating new music always lights me up!) and hope to release it to all of you before year end.
I am also thrilled to be returning to Ireland March 17-19 to lead Song of Rebirth at Creacon Wellness Retreat. This amazing opportunity to return to this beautiful place each year and travel with a group of souls exploring, healing and rebirthing the power of our voices is such a blessing for me.
There are still spots left, so if you want to remember, discover new sounds and amplify the power of your own voice, consider joining us. Book Directly At Creacon Website.
I am so grateful for my absolutely dreamy experience in Ireland and at Creacon Wellness Retreat Center. I was able to have some solo retreat time and then lead 6 other women through the Sound of Solstice Retreat. What an absolute joy and gift!
I am sharing a general message to them all in hopes they might tune into my website and soak it in.
I collected all their email addresses to send them out a private message today, one week after the retreat and alas, I have lost the list of emails. Business manager anyone? 😉
Open your heart. breathe deeply. All is well
During the weekend we chanted, laughed, created our own mantras and songs and rested. It was a unique and personal journey for each of us and a collective one that inspired and healed all of us.
In the transformational coaching practice I am trained in, there is a mantra: “We do not become ourselves by ourselves.” After this time with these 6 beautiful women, I can feel this truth in every cell of my being.
We all have a gifts. We all have struggles. I invite you to take this month to tune in deeply to your own vibration and seek out similar vibrations that reflect the best of you and can nurture you as you become tender and more flowing in the harder parts.
The favorite mantra of our time together at Creacon was the heart sutra (not suprising).
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bohdi Swaha
For more chanting, songs and good vibrations, join me at the Maine Yoga Fest July 15-17 and in Hyannis overlooking the harbor on July 21 6-7:30pm.
If you are interested in a coaching or Rising Star Healing Session, NOW IS THE TIME to reach out, as I am off from teaching school full time until September.
Here we go again. Does anyone else feel like life becomes more and more non-linear and time moves in a whole new way?
I am grateful to be here now and feeling like something is opening up in a new way I haven’t felt in a long while. There is the obvious practical parts of that. For instance in just a few weeks I will be a music teacher again without masks. Teaching children, singing freely without masks. Alleluia!
Also, many of my friends and colleagues are beginning to tour and play as live musicians again. It’s been a long long couple of years for us independent musicians.
There is also a much deeper energy happening internally that I am aware of.
As I write this I am sitting at a kitchen table on Cape Cod – the kitchen table that I have experienced many ages. A kitchen table that has fed and loved me and my family through multiple decades in multiple moments of time.
What a gift and privilege to have this physically manifested anchor in my life. The gift that allows me to see how sometimes this table has been an incredibly comfortable and safe place, while other times it felt alien and scary to me. The table has always been the table, so what is actually shifting?
Our world right now is also reflecting to us the same thing. How does your world feel to you? Is it safe and comfortable? Does it feel alien and scary? If you are anything like me, you probably feel your life, your body, and your world in both ways.
This is the time I believe we are in. A time of holding the paradox. a time of incredible transformation and evolutionary expansion. It reminds me of the song “Isn’t it Amazing?” I released in 2012. In fact, that whole album seems to have great resonance in this moment right now.
Our awareness and ability to hold multiple beliefs and vibrations has expanded. This can sometimes feel overwhelming and confusing. And yet, it feels to me like this is exactly why we are here. This time invites us to become clearer, softer, stronger and more willing to hold the paradox in every moment and in every cell.
It’s easy to think you know. It’s easy to persuade someone else to your side. It’s easy to hold onto to answers or solutions, even if they no longer work.
What I am interested in is opening to new questions. Can I have the courage to stay curious and keep asking questions when so many around me want answers and certainty? Can I remember my soul is here to seek and wonder and LIVE in the questions opening to more and more love, acceptance and co-creation?
Being a seeker, a songwriter, a singer, a teacher, a healer, a mystic wanderer. This is who I have always been. And this is what I will continue to become and express. What it may look like day to day will always evolve, but the vibration of love, peace, truth, right-conduct and non-violence will continue to be my anchors.
It’s hard to believe we are here – November 2021. It was two years ago that I moved to Boston and began teaching full time while also continuing to perform and record music.
With the pandemic, much of my performing stopped and deep transformation began to unfold within. During that time I also turned 50 and ran my first 10K.
Now, here I am feeling a return to the very essence of who I am and why I am here. This essence also feels new and expanded – older and wiser, capable of holding more and worrying less. What a gift!
As I begin to record my 6th album, I wanted to invite you to two upcoming opporutinties to be with me, my vibration and some new songs.
First on 11/11, I will be doing a chanting event on ZOOM. It’s a pay what you can situation, though you will need to register to get the passcode. Check out the FB event here.
On 12/21/21 – Winter Solstice – I will be chanting live at Power Yoga of CapeCod with a limited number of guests at 15. If you don’t register in time or would rather not be in person you can also sign-up to livestream it.
This will be a true coming home for me – to my beloved Cape Cod and on the winter solstice, a time when I love doing events. The energy will be healing, uplifting and sacred. I would love to be with all that feel called – whether in person or online.
Enjoy this new moon in Scorpio. We have all been evolving at a rapid rate.
10 years ago I was flying to Lebanon to teach music at the American Community School in Beirut. It was 2010 and I am pretty sure the apartment I lived in during that time has been blown up. My heart is with the Lebanese people and all helping to support them in this moment. I remember singing Better Me at a school talent show and a student coming up to me and saying, why are you a teacher? Why are you not a famous singer? I left Beirut 3 months later and recommitted my life to why I am here. That led to the 2012 release of Isn’t it Amazing?
Now here I am in Boston, MA stepping into a new teaching position at The Meadowbrook School of Weston in the middle of a global pandemic and the cultural pandemic (and hopefully transformation and reparation) of systemic racism. Full circle for this little human being, I must admit.
If there is one thing I know now on the eve of my 49th birthday, I was born to be a teacher and my students are here to awaken me.
In September of 2001, I was living in Brooklyn, NY and was working on the 16th floor of Rockefeller Center as a temp when two planes hit the World Trade Center. This past March, as COVID took NYC by storm, I was in Boston, MA remembering that time vividly.
2020 has taught me time is a spiral, everything is energy and when in doubt, I choose love. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.
To celebrate my favorite time of year on Cape Cod, I have decided to create Sweet September: 12 Days of 12 Rebirth.
In this series I will be sharing a track from my recent Album 12 Rebirth, talking about its creation and also linking it to an earlier song of mine. Read more about why I am doing this at Day 1.
Day 9 Love Again and Highest Good
Day 9 has arrived and it also happens to be Sept. 9th.
Day 9 on 9/9. LOVE that alignment. What does the number 9 mean to you? For me, it has always meant completion. Something is completing for me, individually and collectively.
A completion doesn’t have to mean a dramatic end, it could be a very subtle internal shift. The great thing about life, consciousness and meaning is that we get to create it for ourselves. That’s right.
We are the creator of our own reality.
It’s amazing to me that on this day of completion, I am sharing two songs that are about love and how to remember love even in the face of loss or change or completion. Both of these songs were inspired by beautiful women that I loved. Both relationships changed and “ended” in the form they had been, however both these beings are forever in my heart and have forever changed me for the better.
In Love Again, I explore my whole experience with loss, not just romantic love but that early loss we may feel as children when we offer our heart in its purest form and someone else just doesn’t get it. Some of us are more sensitive than others and so this early experience can be marked deeply in our psyche even if the moment wasn’t really that big a deal in another’s reality.
And so, it really becomes our responsibility to love ourselves, acknowledge the truth of our experience and remember how to love again. Love bigger, love better, love with joy and risk even knowing that love can sometimes lead to loss.
In Highest Good, which I wrote in 2008 and recorded on Winds of Sinai, I was very inspired by the music of India Arie. (If you have never listened to her music, I recommend I Am Light)
A relationship that I thought was deeply spiritual and absolutely “meant to be” ended. The writing of this song was my practice of letting it go and allowing a bigger picture to be made known to me.
Since writing that song, my understanding of love and connection has matured greatly and I now truly believe that all relationships are reflections of our relationship with our self and that the end of any relationship is never a failure but rather an opportunity to go inside and reflect on who we are and what we are attracting into our lives.
I fly off to Ireland tonight to be at my spiritual home, Creacon Wellness Retreat and I am beyond grateful that I will be completing this 12 part essay series in that amazing vortex.
Thanks for tuning in and remember wherever you are, whatever you are experiencing, All is Well.
Nothing is here to hurt is.
Everything is here to awaken us to more of who we truly are.
I was reminded today by facebook of a campaign I did 8 years ago called 40 and Fabulous. I was on the verge of turning 40, having recently returned from a middle east/age crisis (that’s a whole other blog) and was regrouping on Cape Cod.
Cape Cod – what an amazingly blessed place to regroup.
In this practice and campaign I created, I filmed myself everyday for 40 days chanting a different chant and posted it on youtube. I asked people to donate to SQ Foundation if they resonated with the videos. My goal was $40,000. HAHA. I have always dreamed very big.
This experience was an extraordinary lesson for me in consciousness, desire and how energy works. I can see now, that my intentions were multi-fold.
Yes, I wanted to share myself and my gifts as a singer to help support a foundation I believed in.
Yes, I wanted some structure to help me birth this career as a spiritual singer that I knew was real, but had no idea how to create.
And YES, I wanted to be seen and known for who I was, even though my external life seemed like it was going nowhere.
When I didn’t get close to reaching my goal but received an email from SQ Foundation within the next couple months saying that they had a set a goal to reach $40,000 in support of their programs, I learned so much!
It was not about ME being the one to raise the money. It was about ME showing up in my gifts and planting the seed so that WE could all thrive and empower ourselves and each other. Thank God I was crazy enough to do that and give myself a truly healing and awakening experience.
The other thing that happened during that campaign was on day 8, after committing to doing this, I got a bad cold and lost parts of my voice. I RARELY lose my voice. So there I was, humbled, having to acknowledge that singing and chanting is never about how you sound, but about the intention and devotion with which you offer your vibration.
All healing is Self-healing.
Now, as I travel sharing my songs and leading people in chants (as if it was something I always did), I reference this personal experience often to illustrate how we may not ever know fully why we are urged to do things from within. We may feel that the inner guidance we receive or desires we become aware of are crazy and illogical and …..they may be.
However, I have learned, when I take actions from my inner guidance with the right motivation, amazing things can happen – for both me and the people who end up hearing or feeling me.
It is not always an easy path. It can be frustrating and confusing and lonely. However, here I am again at age 48, recommitting to this path. My path. Our path. A path of what I now call Self-Actualization or Living into my Destiny Path.
My only job now is to become uniquely me at the highest potential possible in any given moment. If I truly commit to this, that realization of my pure essence will be of the Highest Service to Humanity, of which I am a part and I will have fun along the way!
Some of you may have figured this out a long time ago. I often joke, I am on the remedial human path. I have always resonated with the spiritual path and for that I am beyond grateful. Now, I am excited and thrilled to walk into my human path of expressing my Spiritual Being at a whole new level.
Thank you for walking with me and sending me an encouraging smile/hug, note, or dollar every now and them. If you haven’t heard 12 Rebirth yet, I encourage you to tune in and watch the new promo video.
I cannot fully express in words what a gift it is to be a Creative Music Maker right now on this glorious planet. I guess I will have to just keep on writing songs and singing to share that joy!
Lucky, Lucky me.
Join me TONIGHT at The West End and beyond for some live singing on Cape Cod over the next couple weeks
I am writing from Cincinnati, having settled in here for about a week. After all the traveling, it has been nice to land. Preperations are under way for the first ever Gaia’s Love Festival and I am beyond grateful to be here offering my music and supporting the vision of my friend Vivienne Gerard, There are still some tickets left, so if you resonate with the energy, be sure to register HERE.
Before I got to Cincinnati, I completed my journey through Canada, came over the border at Detroit, had a brief stop in Ann Arbor before arriving in Cincy. So let’s rewind a little.
Last place I mentioned was Brittania Beach in Ottawa, Ontario. What a cool spot. I met some wonderful sound and yoga practitioners and they have invited me back to play at their Bhakti in the Woods Celebration – maybe August of 2020. That would be fun. Here is a picture of Rebecca’s apartment and all her Gongs. No matter where I travel, the Universal Energies always make sure I am give the opportunity to retune myself as much as I like. I am so grateful for the many Beings on this planet using Sound to awaken and balance themselves and others. What a gift to be one who creates Conscious Sound.
From Brittania Beach, I made my way to the Algonquin National Park, stayed at an air BnB in in Whitney, ON just at the edge of the east entrance to the park, hiked and swam my way through the park and then landed at my Friday Jim Grant’s home for a couple days. What a gift this time was. I joked I was going to write a blog called “How mosquitoes are enlightening me”, but will save that for another time.
For now here are some pics of the beautiful land I was blessed to experience. I sang the Algonquin Water Song often. You can hear it at the beginning of my song I am the Ocean. Or watch this extraordinary video of the Grandmothers. listen to the sound as you look at the pictures.
love seeing these
Being with Jim and Betz and fellow friends Ellen and her family was truly nourishing and inspiring. From fresh baked breads (check out The Oxtongue Baker), to ice cold micro brew on the dock, to beautiful deep conversations about why we are here and how best we can become our truest and most peaceful selves.
aaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuummmmmmm
Thank you Jim and Betz and all at Chape Inn. I hope to be back soon.
From there I made my way to Toronto for a night. It was incredibly hot that day – remember that crazy heat wave that was everywhere, so I mostly walked around a lot drenched in sweat. I did have a wonderful conversation with a local bartender, originally from Hawaii, who wanted to buy me a shot because he was so enjoying our conversation. He told me our time together helped him feel much better about Americans. I am happy to serve. 😉
From there I drove through some beautiful farmland of Canada, spent a couple days in the Niagara-On-the-Lake area, mostly resting and staying cool. This place made me a little home sick for the Cape, I must admit. Around this time I was really longing for magical swim in Barnstable Harbor.
And then off into the absolutely sweltering heat of the tunnel from Windsor, ON to Detroit Michigan. What an experience!
There was a LOT of traffic and I was asked many many questions as I re-entered the US. I realized after the fact, that the nice man just couldn’t quiet understand why I was driving so much and travelling by myself as a woman. sigh.
He literally said to me, “Next time you should bring a friend.” I told him I had my music.
Pretty sure this was like driving to the Cape on a Saturday around noon. OOPS!!
After that somewhat annoying journey through the tunnel and over the border, I arrived at a most magical air BnB in Ann Arbor Michigan. The funny thing is when I arrived there was no power in much of the city. Remember that crazy weather….
The good news was I had a grand piano just steps from where I was sleeping. What a treat! I even wrote a few tunes. I had forgotten how inspiring it was to write on a grand piano. so fun!
My final leg landed me in Cincinnati on Sunday night staying with my friend Tera for a few days, then another friend Alice in Northern Kentucky, and then eventually landing at Viv’s on Thursday. We all enjoyed a super fun house concert on Friday, celebrating the Galactic New Year and completing the celebrations of my new album 12 Rebirth.
While I was with Tera, we made a trip to see Serpent Mound. Very cool.
Serpent Mound
It has been wonderful reconnecting and hanging by the pool with Viv and her family, allowing myself to recharge and move a little slower after all that driving and traveling. And I had another wonderful experience with gongs, not soon after I arrived, again feeling the grace and gratitude for how healing sound is always present in my vicinity, kind of like Magic.
Now, I am enjoying the energy build to Saturday and performing at Gaia’s Love Festival. To learn more about this festival and how it evolved from Viv’s book One Day Gaia’s Gifts, visit her website.
While driving around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, there are many bridges. It seems no matter where I go, I end up on some highway and crossing some part of the river somewhere. This had me thinking about bridges this morning.
View of Cincinnati from Kentucky
Right now, I feel like I am halfway across a bridge. I can still see where I came from – the known place I had been living in and being me, as well as the place I am going – a little less known and unclear. What is it like to be half way across a bridge? How do we trust we can keep going and not turn back towards what is familiar?
Imagine if the bridge wasn’t solid. Like in that scene from A Wrinkle in Time, where the staircase only appears when she takes a step into what looks like nothing.
This is where we are now. At least that’s what if feels like to me.
Tomorrow is a new moon and mercury goes direct.. Then we head into what is known as the Lion’s Gate energetically.
There have been many moments in which I half found myself throughout my human journey halfway across a bridge. The last time I felt this much excitement and unknown at the same time was the summer of 2009, before I moved to Egypt.
The Sun rising at the Pyramids in Giza on 11/11/2009
hmmmmmmmm.
In past moments, I have not always had the courage to take the full leap into the unknown and see what happens. This time, however, I have never felt so ready or so joyful to keep walking step by step allowing the bridge – the LIGHT BRIDGE – to appear moment by moment.
I can’t believe it’s June 1st. Wow! The May 17 Official release concert in Brooklyn was so fun and it is so thrilling to have this new music out in the world and be hearing back from some of you about what you are liking and what is resonating. Have you heard the CD? Or received it in the mail? Send me a message and let me know how you are listening and what you are loving. Those little messages mean more than you think and help keep me going.
TONIGHT I will be enjoying a beautiful experience at the Harwich Cultural Center with a local group of Cape musicians backing me up. so so fun. Catie Flynn, who sang on the record will be in the house along with her band mates Aaron Mayo and Karl Hoyt. Rich Buck will be on drums which is such a treat.
There will be more to announce in the next couple weeks about dates in Canada and the midwest, but for now, I wanted to say THANK YOU and if you have not taken a moment to tune into 12 Rebirth, I encourage you to. It is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon (among other platforms.)
You can go to Queen City Records and see all the lyrics and cover art as you listen.
It’s an amazing time to be alive and creating music and I am so grateful to have you with me on this journey.
May All Beings in All the Worlds be Happy and Free.
Alicia Mathewson 