Dearest Tiana: Did you know I don’t sing anymore?
An open letter to my younger self on remembering the essence of who I am
I’ve decided to evolve this post, where I penned an open letter to my younger self, a recurring series within Conversations from the Lighthouse. It is my hope that through reading the real-life dialogue I have with myself, you will be inspired to reconnect with that part of you, too. I arrive to this very open and vulnerable correspondance by setting the intention to connect with a purer version of me, one unobstructed by the world or limiting self-beliefs. I write freely and candidly without pause. I then return to what I’ve written to fill in any gaps until eventually, I courageously hit “publish”. You can also listen to this post below.
Dearest Tiana,
I always address you “dearest” because the essence of you is so pure. Lately, I’ve come to realize I’m being drawn back home to you. I suppose a realization like that naturally comes packaged with the adjacent thought that in order to return I must have, at some point, left.
When I think about it, I love everything about you. Which is funny, because if I reflect on present-day Tiana too long, I sometimes want to crawl out of my skin. I often forget we are one in the same. I am because you once were.
You come to me in flashes, memories. That makes sense, given all the time that’s passed and everything that’s happened. The truth is, however, I ache to know you again. I don’t want the disconnect, the patches I can’t quite fill with any certain detail. I want your confidence to be my confidence. I want your thoughts to be my thoughts. Your tastes to be my tastes.
If I met you in the present, I would think you’re the coolest little girl around. You have such a confidence about you. It’s palpable. I hear you humming as you saunter up and down the hallways of our first apartment. I see you receive Mariah Carey’s Rainbow in your Christmas stocking with glee and devour every track over and over on your CD player.
Did you know I don’t sing anymore? I rarely share what I like with others—whether it’s music or food or anything really—because I’m so afraid no one will see the beauty in it that I do. You would never do that. You liked what you liked because it stirred something inside of you. Can you remind me what that was?
I know you loved it when your dad would wake you up in the middle of the night to cook. I can’t remember what time it actually was, but I remember you always thought it was late. When you were at your dad’s for the weekend, everyone stayed up later than they did at your mom’s. What did you like about that experience? I think it had something to do with the way the house filled with foreign aromas that moved you. The way you felt connected to him through the act of food preparation despite you not having any real culinary responsibilities aside from stirring and taste-testing. You were happy to sit and watch and attempt not to fall asleep. I do remember you loving whatever it was he prepared. You were never afraid to try new foods. And you especially liked breakfast sausage. I do remember that.
What else did you like?
No matter how hard I fight it, my mind continues to return to singing. And it’s a hard one for me because it’s the one thing I feel I’ve moved so far away from. It doesn’t feel a part of me anymore. Sure, I sing in the car and around the house. I’m not afraid to sing. But, I don’t think I do it for the pure essence of the act. There was something about you that sang because it was as if you were created to do so. You were a bird. You didn’t worry about perfection or the way you sounded. You didn’t care if people considered the songs you sang art. You just did it because it was a part of you. You let yourself be a bird.
My dear friend, Julia, sent me an image Maren Morris posted on her Instagram yesterday. It was her audition ticket for American Idol. Did you know she didn’t make it past the first round either? When I saw this, I felt a weird twinge of contrasting emotions. On one hand, it felt like an exhale…like hope. As if seeing all Maren has become out of so much rejection, in that moment, changed what was possible for me. On the other hand, this critical voice I’ve come to prioritize in my mind pushed its way to the forefront to remind me I have yet to even scratch the surface of all she has accomplished, and if I wanted to try to pursue a similar route, I’m a long ways away.
I don’t think I want to be a singer anymore. Like I said, it doesn’t feel a part of me. Which I imagine is a large part of why I’ve been feeling a pull to return home to you.
It started as a softening rooted in curiosity. What would it look like to take out my extensions and nurse my hair back to its natural state? Slowly but surely, it’s been a process of rebuilding—fortifying trust with myself once again, prioritizing my needs, speaking my truth.
I think it’s also about grace. I’ve been so hard on myself all these years, so hard on us. Like a militant sergeant, I’ve told us time and time again we have to be perfect, likable, small.
I don’t want to be small anymore. I want people to see me, to see us, for the magic we truly are. I just want to be. Fully, truly, loudly, colorfully. I want to create a rich life built on no one else’s opinion of what beauty or art or success or happiness is, but my own.
I realize I’ve entered the stage of homecoming because you want that for me, too. Because we shine too brightly to live a life that rigid and dull. Will you help me?
Every day I wake up and I question everything. But if there’s one thing I know for certain: it’s that you know.
I spontaneously decided to put on the Rainbow album, just to feel closer to you. Of course it opens with “Heartbreaker”, the single. I love it just as much as I did when you first received it in your stocking.
As I sit here listening, nearly unnoticeably, the album transitions into “Can’t Take That Away”. It sounds familiar, but I don’t know it word-for-word like I do some of the others. I listen to the lyrics, and I can’t help but wonder if I was reminded how much I love this album—today, right now, in the present—because there was something in it that seven-year-old me knew I would need someday, that by some small chance it was always reserved for this moment.
'Cause there's, there's a light in me
That shines brightly
They can try
But they can't take that away from me
I look up the music video to include in this letter and I see Mariah sitting there, journal in hand, curly haired and ponderous. I see myself in her. The video cuts to home videos of other girls recounting how hopeless and disconnected they feel from their dreams and the true essence of themselves.
Life works in funny and mysterious ways. I can’t say for certain that there is a connection there, but as I sit in front of my computer screen watching this music video from 23 years ago, I’m filled with a hope that’s both old and new. And for a moment, I find you again and, in turn, I find myself.