Fear is a Liar

I played for hours upon hours. My fingertips so tender, I would have to power through my daily practice until they were numb and bleeding. I wrote my first song at 11 years old, joined my first band when I was 15 and thus began my journey. My hopes and dreams were that I would one day grace the cover of Rolling Stone.

Fast forward through four decades, a dozen plus bands and one EP and CD...

When I regained awareness after a surgery to remove a tumor from my brain, I was faced with an uphill climb. My left side was deeply effected by the surgery. I had to learn to walk again and after a year of therapy was devastated when my PT said, as she held my left hand tenderly, that it was not going to come back. My left arm is permanently paralyzed from the elbow down. Talk about a jagged pill!

I kept my guitar packed away in the closet for over two years and began pecking at a keyboard to satisfy my need to make noise. I looked into adaptive guitar gear...like being a musician isn't expensive enough as it is...I had to find another way. A video of a stroke victim playing one handed was sent to me by a dear friend. Despite that hope, my guitar stayed in the closet until earlier this month.

During a video shoot for a Givens Brain Tumor Center fund raiser, the director asked that my guitar be displayed next to the keyboard. Sadness. Then I touched her, smelling the wood and like lightening shooting through my body, I knew that fear of failure was keeping me from something that was and always will be a part of me.

I am teaching myself to play again, albeit upside down and backwards, I am doing it. Yea, it's frustrating and I'll never play like I did but I'm working out scales and open chords. I want to tear it up like the old days but I'm forced to go further back and I am. Damn, my fingers are sore...such a familiar and welcome soreness.