Carol Marie Downing

Monica: [00:00:00] Well, welcome to the revelation project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed. He gets healed. Hello. Hi everyone. And welcome to another edition of the revelation project podcast. Today. I'm with Carol Marie Downing, who is a coach song leader and facilitator passionate about creating resilience through challenging times. Her initial career was in nursing, working in areas of hospice and integrative medicine. She then shifted to coaching after receiving a master's degree in psychology with an emphasis in consciousness, health, and healing.
She utilizes both her professional background and personal experience to gently support clients in a tuning to their capacity to thrive. Especially after loss and major life transitions her most recent work as a song leader and music guide encourages people to sing and learn music in a way that creates connection and cultivates the transformational act of bringing our voices.
Fully into the world. Carol Marie lives in Portland, Oregon, and loves hot cups of tea. Making music out of everything life offers up and going barefoot in the sand. Hey Carol.

Carol Marie: [00:01:44] Hi, Monica. So good to be here.

Monica: [00:01:47] Oh, so good to have you. I love this piece about learning music in a way that creates connection and cultivates the transformational act of bringing our voices fully into the world. How beautiful is that?

Carol Marie: [00:02:03] Thank you. Yeah, it feels like, it feels like an important part of where we're headed in this world.

Monica: [00:02:10] Oh, it sure does. And actually a great place to start might be really understanding what attunement means to you so that we can bring the audience kind of right. To the edge of this world you speak of.

Carol Marie: [00:02:25] Sure. Yeah. And when I think about attunement, I'm reminded of a conversation. I had recently with a friend where we were talking about music and people and change and. The metaphor that came forward from me was one of an instrument. And if we were to look at an instrument that was out of tune, maybe had been out of tune for quite awhile, we wouldn't say that it was.
Broken or hopeless or anything else, we would engage in a process of tuning it to bring that instrument into the tune that it was meant to be. And to let it then go forward, resonating more closely to a way that was true for the instrument. And I really feel that about people is that we kind of tend to.
If life isn't going exactly, as we feel like, we feel like we're kind of out of sync with the world, or more often than not ourselves, that we go to places of self doubt or brokenness instead of looking at how do we re attune to what's most true for us to make our own instruments? Um, you know, whether we're actually seeing in the world or. Just being ourselves in the world, more in alignment.

Monica: [00:03:40] Gosh, I mean, that is so beautiful. And it is such a powerful perspective when we can look at. Our lives, our relationship to ourselves as kind of being out of harmony or out of tune. And there's a gentleness or a compassion that I sense in that, that feels so much more. Humane so much more loving. Right.

Carol Marie: [00:04:08] But in that it's not always about like making huge changes that we can bring ourselves back in tune in ways that, and maybe even re you know, when you say that, what I think about is rediscovering, you know, how are we really most aligned? Like we may have never felt that way in our whole lives.
Um, so to come back to that, to find that, discover it and come back, rather than thinking as something that ourselves. That again is broken and needs to change. And instead just how do we find out what's most true and aligned for us?

Monica: [00:04:42] Yeah. I love that. And I also really love that. You're talking about the whole being as the instrument, not just the voice. Can you talk more about that?

Carol Marie: [00:04:53] Yeah. I mean, I think most of, you know, the way that I work is with the voice, but it really is about, yeah, the whole bean it's about everything in our lives. And how do we find. What's most true for us. I mean, I think we can use the metaphor of singing, you know, there's the saying, um, you know, do what makes your heart sing so that it doesn't necessarily have to be about actually singing in the world, which a lot of people get nervous about, but to really align with what's, what's true for our heart.

And that may be a lot of different things for a lot of different people. Um, and it's what makes our whole body resonated with money. Use another term in music. To what brings us joy. What makes us feel open? What creates a space or a container within which we feel safe and drawn to and desiring of beginning to create in the world from our own unique, well of knowledge and experience and

Monica: [00:05:54] And tuning, you know, you call your programs, tuning to joy. Is that right?

Carol Marie: [00:06:01] Yes.

Monica: [00:06:01] And so how. So help me understand, I of course have a little bit more background and I, and I want to really invite our listeners to understand more about kind of how you got here, because I know that you and I have had some pretty deep conversations about grief having actually been one of the.
Experiences that really started bringing you into this work. Is that correct?

Carol Marie: [00:06:33] Yeah. Yeah. And I, yes, grief has definitely been the pathway for me. You know, and I can say unfortunately, and still really feel, you know, the, the tenderness of the grief that brought me into the work that I do now, but it also really helped me discover where joy could come in and how to navigate for, or with joy as more of a compass out of grief.

Monica: [00:07:00] Yeah. And would you share a little bit about that personal journey of grief?

Carol Marie: [00:07:06] Sure. Yeah. You know, I think the first place of grief, you know, always goes to, um, my dad died when I was 33, so a bit younger and. You know, I think that experience, I mean, I had been a hospice nurse before he died. Actually I had just left hospice nursing was going to take a sabbatical and he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

And I ended up going back to Alaska where I'm originally from, to be with him in his last few months. And I think the most challenging thing for me in that was that in the world of hospice and bream, and I thought I really understood grief. But to go through it personally, it came a whole nother way of experiencing grief and to begin to understand the depth of what it does to our hearts and minds and bodies.
And so that was kind of the first layer. And then my husband died in 2012, also from cancer. And after he died, there was this place of, of emptiness that. I had never experienced that grief brought me to a place of darkness and a place of, I think even more than darkness feeling like what I was experiencing, wasn't normal.
And I didn't have any information, even with all of the studying that I had done and professional work I had done. I didn't have any experience to relate to. What I was feeling, being normal in any way, shape or form. And so in the process of doing that, I started, I ended up writing a book about it, but to help normalize it for others.
And I feel like that's how my work continues as to try to normalize some of these things we go through that don't get talked about as often in our culture. So grief was, uh, a doorway into how do I normalize that? Depth of feeling that I had never been asked to face before in my life.

Monica: [00:09:09] What comes up as you're saying that for me, is this understanding that there's experiences in life that we don't have a sense of relating to, or words to relate to. And that there's. Other ways of accessing or processing or healing. And of course, as I'm saying this, we've all felt, I think at one time or another, the power of music in that way. And yet it's not necessarily something that we, you know, kind of easily have. Names or, or expressions for it, because of course, as we're in the depths of, I think kind of that existential experience of feeling our own mortality or loss at such a level that it literally brings us to our, our knees.
That there's a way that music just seems to, like you said, be that. Uh, be that gateway, that doorway into another way of being with something, being with an emotion or being with a human experience that we otherwise can't. I don't know what you do, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, I'm even, this . Is so perfect. Cause I'm even struggling to describe it.

Carol Marie: [00:10:47] Yeah. Yeah. And I, the word I wanted to fill in there was feelings of that. We can't bear. The heaviness is. You know, unimaginable in terms of what I'd ever faced before. And I think that that's where this final, like, is this normal, like, is it really supposed to be this void?
And I think, you know, whether it's in terms of music and I do want to definitely talk about my process with music in that, but that, you know, to go back to that concept of tuning to joy, because I think that there can be, I know in my own heart and in other people's. This pushback against a joy, like how can you feel joy in the midst of grief?
And for me, joy was wasn't. I knew that I wasn't happy and happiness seemed a long ways off because I think of happiness as like a state that you know, is a little more even, and that seems so far away from me with, again, these emotions that I was bearing and they felt really heavy. But then if I could experience a moment of joy, which I translate into, you know, moment of awe or wonder whether it's in nature or just stepping back to observe the world around us, that if I could experience tiny moments of joy, In tune more often to those, it would make the grief more bearable.
And that eventually I could gather up enough. I saw it's funny. I saw them as like little beads, almost that I could gather up enough beads of moments, where I felt relief from that. In a tiny moment of joy. If I could gather enough, then eventually it would feel like a necklace that I could wear that would feel like, uh, you know, a different, you know, Healing. I think of finding a way to be happier in my life, even with him gone.

Monica: [00:12:40] Wow. I love that image of a necklace. It's like I have chills because I think, you know, it's like adorning yourself in your life experiences in a way that honors. In a way that cultivates in a way that creates, because there's also this idea of joy.
And I know what you're talking about because it's like, I used to really resent people. I used to really resent, you know, my brother and I, who are both can tend towards being kind of cynical at times, you know, we'll be like, what are they so happy about? Let joy though, for me is more about. This sense of really feeling our lives and that it's in the depth of the feeling that we're able to access joy, that joy somehow is that place that feels, that invites other emotions to belong there with it.
Does that make sense?

Carol Marie: [00:13:41] It makes total sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Monica: [00:13:43] Right. Be both. Cause I was feeling this the other day. Right. I have a, a young. I was going to say a young woman. I was going to say a young child, but she's not, she's a young woman. I have a child going off to college. It's like, and that's where I am. You know what this like, ah, I'll just try to breathe into that for a moment.
This idea of sometimes my heart stops because I'm like, you know, all of the ways that I'm suddenly both. So. Proud and celebratory of this milestone in her life. And also as her mother, like just wanting to shut all the doors and windows and keep her safe forever. Right. All at the same time.

Carol Marie: [00:14:24] Right. And they, and they think there's that sense if we let ourselves feel, you know, the duality or if we let ourselves feel the grief of things, like we really allow those feelings to come in, then joy is accessible too.
But if we shut either one down, we don't feel at all. And we numb and, you know, I've spent plenty of time in numbness in coping, but every time I would go into the feelings, it was almost like joy was this flip side of the coin. That was kind of a gift for going into the grief almost as if they play big dance together.
I was willing to deal. I would get the other as well.

Monica: [00:15:09] Yeah. That's, that's really, that's really true. It's really true. It's it's this, it's this allowing place. There's, there's definitely like this allowing place. And you know, when I, when I step back and look in another or through another lens, I also really see, how allowing ourselves to use our voice or our body as an instrument opens up these whole new possibilities for. How to live. And so, uh, yeah, so, sorry, I want, wonder if you have anything to say about that?

Carol Marie: [00:16:01] No. Like what came forward with me with that, you know, and we're willing to use our voices or our bodies is an instrument.
I think when we're willing to do that, we have to be accepting of this voice and this body who yeah. And. You know, I think so often people don't express whether it's bodily expression or voice express, and especially because we don't like the sound of our voices or someone else has told us that our voice isn't on tuner doesn't sound good or whatever it is.

And so when we can begin to open into our voice, even a speaking voice, you know, not even a singing voice, but when we open into. Being inhabiting our voice and finding out like, what is its range and how does it sound? And what does it sound like when I say something in the world, but it's only when we tune into our own voice that we can say what's uniquely true for us, but it takes a lot of trust.
To let our own unique voice come through.

Monica: [00:17:09] It's fascinating, right? Because the voice is such a part of, I think, of our visibility. And when you, when you think about the voice, you don't necessarily think about it as visible, you think about it as auditory and yet there's something there isn't there.

Carol Marie: [00:17:25] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think about when you say that, I think about sound waves, you know, they're invisible, but the impact of, you know, when we make sound it ripples out into the world, so we're seen in a way that's perhaps even more palpable than our eyes can capture

Monica: [00:17:46] Well, and I also really, I love kind of, as you know, all things, invisible, all things that we cannot see because for me, it's, it's that place, you know, I always say we live in two worlds.
We live in the visible world and we live kind of in this, this world where. You know, we can't necessarily see, but we know. And if we allow that world to inform us, to influence us, we, we really have access then to this whole other way of being, you know, we talked about earlier, you, you brought up the word duality, but it's like when we allow both of those worlds to co-exist it's like we kind of then find ourselves transported into what I'll call this. I don't know. What would you call that? If it's not duality? It's, it's certainly like a mutuality or it's like, I don't, you know, I don't know what term I'm trying to come up with, but there's just this way that it all, it all then feels so.
Exciting and mysterious and wondrous and awe inspiring. And I want to go back to what you said too about, you know yeah. We're so many of us are raised to think that in order to sing or in order to be heard that our voices must be acts and acts appealing or in a certain range. And of course. What I've learned over the years is that everyone can sing and that singing and using our voice in that way is such a conduit for finding our people, you know, for attracting, for manifesting.
And I wondered if you could say. You know, a little bit more about that.

Carol Marie: [00:19:48] Yeah. You know, I think when we begin to talk about the voice and having that be a conduit, it makes me realize how much our culture influences, whether we feel safe enough or. Confident enough to bring our voices in the world. And I, you know, I think people have this idea, like you said, that they have to sound a certain way.

And that brings me back to the very beginning. Like, you know, when we first began to share a voice, it's not going to be right in tune. Um, and it's that practice of starting. To share our voices to hear how we sound, to hear how we sound. As you said, that we attract other people around us, like to, as we bump into other people's voices, you know, where are we in harmony with others?

Where is there disharmony? How does that feel? I mean, I really believe, you know, that we can learn everything. I think everything I've learned about life that I really stick with me has. Then from being in a choir to bump up against my own harmony and disharmony with other people.
Yeah. It's definitely a way to.

Monica: [00:21:01] Develop trust for yourself, you know, to actually, and for our listeners out there, you know what I want to, what I want to invite us to kind of think about here is that there's so many different access points to stretching ourselves, to learning more about ourselves, to getting out of our company for zone.
And I would assert that singing would be. You know, kind of like the fast track to getting out of the comfort zone. And, and it's so funny because again, I want to demystify singing for a moment because we can all access this and we're all, it's our birthright to use our voices. If you, if you weren't supposed to speak or have your unique sound, you wouldn't have been given a voice.

You wouldn't have been given a voice. And so we all have a unique sound that belongs here. And I, some of you know that a couple of years ago, I decided I saw a leadership experience that involved inviting women to who've never sung before. In public to do so as a leadership experience. And I was so terrified when I saw that invitation and I knew that I wanted to do it because I'm a little twisted like that.

And I, it was such an amazing experience, Carol. And so I know that this is. Something that you also offer and we'll get into that in a moment, but I just wanted to share my own experience of having learned so much by daring to sing. Right. Because there's so much that was available in that experience. It wasn't.
Even about the song at the end of the day, it was what it was really about was revealing all of the. Fears and misconceptions and all of this whole new world that I had kind of not been aware of before. And it, it really cultivated in me this whole new level of appreciation for sound and music and harmony and leadership.

And. Using my voice and inviting other people to use theirs and all the ways that translates it will.

Carol Marie: [00:23:43] And I love what you said about it being the fast track. And, you know, I honor your courage and being willing to say like, Oh, I want to go try that. Even though I have this sense that it's going to reveal all of my fears and I really believe singing is that.
And, and it's that partly because I believe we are. In a culture where we really honor performance when it comes to the voice and singing and music. And in reality, we are a new beings who have been singing around fires together or in rooms together forever. And that, that kind of loss, I think the edge of that.

Every voice participating in song. And somehow we put it as something that other people do on stage to perform. And that that's the expectation. Anytime anyone wants to sing, instead of what you said earlier, like everyone can sing, we have a voice and that's. You know, that's the only prerequisite to singing.
And even that, like we can sign songs as well. I really believe that our voices are here to be in the world

Monica: [00:24:55] Me too. And I, and I, I really, I agree with what you're saying, you know, about kind of the performative nature, it's it becomes kind of the. The reason or the evidence for why, you know, we shouldn't or something. And yet it's so far from the truth.

Carol Marie: [00:25:14] It makes me think about when I first started singing him. And I'm actually, as I was thinking about our conversation, this man I'm kind of in a ten year arc around when I first started singing again, um, was 10 years ago and I was in a. Master's program for psychology. And we had to do like a project that would last a year.
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And I came in thinking, I'm going to write a book or I'm going to start a probing, you know, all of these do, uh, do in the world kind of projects that I had on my mind. And we went into kind of a centering exercise and an imagery exercise. And this little voice kept saying to me all through the weekend of class sing.
And that's all it would it was sing. And I was kind of like, are you kidding me? And at that point, I didn't even remember when I had stopped singing. All I knew was is that there was this tiny voice telling me to start singing again. And I ended up doing that for a year project and the landscape that I covered.
In terms of fear and insecurities and the emotions that singing brought up. I don't know that I would have found it in more of a traditional project that I've been thinking about. And it's informed now 10 years of my life of having song. Bring me alive.

Monica: [00:26:30] Yeah. Having some bring you alive. That's so beautiful.
Isn't it? And it's. Yeah, that rich rich landscape. And of course I loved that, that higher voice, that higher self, it was just that simple word. Right thing, same thing. Uh, cause it is it's that sometimes we're waiting for that really complicated message. It's just like, no, it's really that simple. Just saying it's just like profoundly.
Beautiful and moving. Um, because of course that has informed now your life's purpose, hasn't it?

Carol Marie: [00:27:08] Absolutely. Yeah. And believe me, I tried to make it complicated.

Monica: [00:27:11] Oh my God. Don't we don't. We.

Carol Marie: [00:27:15] But I knew how it had to look, but it really was about just singing and it, yeah, it is now even more than ever before, as in these last weeks and months as unconventional, as it seems like singing really does feel like my life's work.

Monica: [00:27:32] Yeah. So so let's talk now a little bit more about like, how. Do you use music to heal and to help others heal and not only through loss, but like what other, maybe stories or examples do you have that you can share with us? And maybe even tell us some more about how you've. Worked music into COVID and kind of how that's all going, going

Carol Marie: [00:28:03] Yeah, I mean, and it, it's interesting because as a coach, you know, working one-on-one with people feel like we're able to shift so many things people want to in their lives. And yet I started to realize I would start singing to my clients and that took. You know, some courage on my part, but I found that they would respond to song in ways that talking would take so long to do was one specific song would just kind of go right into their heart and body in a way that then they could bring forward.

Or we would begin writing songs about what they were feeling. Um, just tiny little. I like to call them coaching jingles, actually like little mantras that they could use. With their voice that I felt like bypassed the thinking brain in a way, and just went right into the rhythm of their bones. And then I also noticed, as I became more confident became I was leading a community song group before COVID and I would notice that, you know, people would come in and.
Wait, we never really knew with each other, exactly what was happening, but you could tell that there was friction in people's lives or they're healing from a certain thing, but that the same game gave them just a moment to lift, like the singing would lift whatever was happening and kind of. We could bouy one another with music and that, that would linger, you know, kind of like sound vibrations, linger in the world.

And I've been noticing that the people that I work with that I now run a monthly singing group online. If you can believe it. And I just feel the healing of that rippling through in a way that's really accessible and not as based in talking and thinking and more based in using the body and the voice to transform whatever's happening for us, that may be challenging.

Monica: [00:29:59] Mm. I love that. I love what you said too about sound vibrations and. You know, how, how the sound itself just kind of finds its way into the, like the rhythm of our bones. Gosh, there's this is such a huge conversation. Isn't it? I always find that. I always find that when I start a conversation, it's like, It seems contained.
And then as you start really exploring, there's so many different avenues that to unpack and follow and to talk about. And I find myself really recognizing here that there's a number of different directions that we could go in. But what I want to ask you is like, what do you think is most important for our listeners? To hear and to know about the work that you're doing.

Carol Marie: [00:30:54] Yeah. I think what I want to share, um, and the word that came forward right away when you ask that question is about humming. And that wasn't what I expected to come forward. But that to S you know, to hum, is to start with the most gentle place with your voice, and then to open into singing, and then the potential of singing with others and singing in harmony.

But to know that, that we can start gently and have. You know, an infinite amount of opportunity to see how our voice sounds in a world and that it won't always be harmonious, but there's no, there are no wrong notes. Um, and that sometimes finding a note that's out of harmony or discordant. Can bring us back into a place of like, Oh, that doesn't feel good. So when I shifted this way, Oh, that feels good.

Monica: [00:31:51] Yeah. It was like, the wrong note is just as important as, as the one that's, you know, harmonious or beautiful that it's informing us.

Carol Marie: [00:32:01] Yeah. And, and when you say just as important, I was just about to say like, maybe even more important. Ooh. Yeah. That willingness.
Am I willing to go? Am I willing to be discordant my willing to be out of town or disharmonious and to feel into that and then be like, Oh, what brings me back into harmony? And I bumped up against that and then notice where I do feel in harmony. I think it points it out more clearly sometimes, especially if we're trying to be harmonious, there's so much effort in that.

Monica: [00:32:37] Yeah. And there's, there's also, you know, I immediately kind of think about, you know, are a lot of our groomed behavior as women is to be pleasing is to comply is to. Um, to be performative, you know, if I'm honest about it, you know, we're, we're taught to perform. Yeah. And it's no wonder then that we have such a shitty relationship with discord.

And don't really know what to do with it. Exactly. Yeah. It's like full permission place that just feels like, gosh, there's so much freedom there. Giving people a context to experiment with dis harmony is, feels like really lovely, actually.

Carol Marie: [00:33:32] Yeah. And to take the performative nature out of it and to be imperfect and maybe not pleasing, I think about, you know, so many people will say like, well, I do sing. I sing in the shower or in the car, but I don't sing in front of other people. And realistically, I mean, believe me when I'm jamming out in my car, like. If I'm seeing with someone who's not in my voice range, like it's not gonna sound great, but Oh my gosh, my whole body is in it because I have the freedom all by myself in my car to sound.

However, I want to sound. And yet something about being witnessed in that imperfection, I think is what we bump up against. Like if someone else hears us. As out of tune or not quite right. You know, then we, we stay safe, you know, even in music. And I could talk about this all day, but in terms of like in music, you know, if we stay right on pitch and we never try to find a harmony, that's different from, you know, what someone else may be singing sometimes trying to find that harmony is tricky and we're not going to sound perfectly in tune when we are trying to find that.

But if we really lean in and let it not sound great, we eventually find the place that locks in with someone else. Um, but it was only through the courage to go for something different than what someone else was singing that we find that harmony, that does match in and does take the music to a different plane. We have to be willing to be witnessed in fumbling around a little bit. Until we can find that piece that fits

Monica: [00:35:14] I'm of course, like jotting that quote down with my pen because I love it so much. Uh, yeah. I, I know that, you know, that I'm a big fan of the mess, anything that has, you know, the invitation to fumble or fail or to bump up against to be imperfect.

Those are all my. That's when my shoulders relax there. That's where I can breathe. That's where I feel connected. It's where I feel like I belong. I can't do the other, I can't do the other thing. It kills me. I can't breathe there. I can't thrive there. And so I love just, I love knowing, right? That your work in the world is all about helping people. Attune, not only to their own joy in their lives, but using it and thinking about its power to help us harmonize with the human race is an incredibly powerful thought. And you know, when we think about how much. Discord there's been, it actually makes me kind of flip the script, listening to you talk and think about that.

That's actually, I could look at that as a positive, as we're finding our way, because at least where. Seeing and experiencing the discord because before, when everybody was quiet and nobody was talking about it, let's talk about racism for a moment. Let's use that as an example. It was just keeping that status quo.
And so, yeah, we're all aware of the discord and the disharmony, but that that's progress.

Carol Marie: [00:37:08] Right.

Monica: [00:37:09] I love that. You know, I love that because it, again, it's, it's like looking at where we're. Shifting where we are being more courageous. And I think that's what you were just pointing to.

Carol Marie: [00:37:28] Yeah. And I think, you know, with the current discord in the world, um, or, uh, when we're going through challenging times in our own life, which, I mean, I think right now we're in this place of like my head.

I don't have. Time to be performative or live up to expectations or stick with the status quo. Like, I need something to kind of open into a willingness to be messy and imperfect because it means things are changing. Like you said, like there's no time anymore for the status quo.

Monica: [00:38:02] Yeah. There, there really isn't and I think we were all feeling that at different levels.
That there's definitely an opening that everybody's feeling, you know, kind of a real invitation, but also an urgency to really kind of step up and into, you know, and, and like find your, find the, um, find the edge, right? Find the edge that feels most resonant for you. You know, and, uh, it was funny cause I was going to say most countries, it's not supposed to that the growing edge actually like what we're looking for, what we want people to do is choose a way to.

Find their growing edge that resonates most because part of the, part of the stretch is I think the discomfort, you know, even when I think about stretching those vocal chords, that's it's that actually physically is uncomfortable for him while

Carol Marie: [00:39:10] Exactly and to, and to find the tuning, like, you know, again, I'm going to kind of like go back to that choir piece of like, to feel the discomfort and yet. Also know that we don't have to feel it alone. You know, that if we're sharing our voice and being next to other people who maybe are a little bit farther along than we are, that we can kind of start to tune to them, you know, to begin to see, you know, how do we support each other? In this container to be able to create, um, you know, want to be too metaphorical, but to kind of create a new song that we can share that, you know, includes more parts that it's not one voice speaking, but that it's all voices together.

And finding our way, um, leaning up against other people or having them lean up against us so that we're, you know, beginning to tomb together. And I think that the challenge in that is that we have to be. You know, embrace the discomfort and the messiness and be witnessed in that you don't have other people see us like this.
Isn't something that we can do alone. Um, whether it's our own life challenge or what we'll dealing with, you know, in our own country. Well in the world right now that, um, we have to be witnessed and willing to try things that are unconventional and new and might not be comfortable for our vocal chords or our being.

And that it's not all one big, all of a sudden, you know, we're singing a four octave scale that we're. Changing bit by bit and tuning bit by bit, but it's, it's a process.

Monica: [00:41:03] It's a practice. It's a process. Yeah.

Carol Marie: [00:41:07] Gentleness so much gentleness with ourselves.

Monica: [00:41:12] Yeah. And I, I love that you brought up unconventional.
I love that you brought up unconventional because, so how. So in this unconventional work that you do Carol, this beautiful, like thank you, thank you for daring to do such unconventional work, because talk about wanting to kind of come out there and have the elevator pitch that everybody, you know, like immediately kind of like, Oh, I know what she does.

Cause you know, I know, I know that, you know, I've heard that before. Right? Like being unconventional sometimes it's. Being willing to create something in the world to help people get somewhere that's not familiar. And I feel like that's what you're doing. You're using the voice and you're using music as a way to coach people.
And I'll let you finish that sentence

Carol Marie: [00:42:16] to coach people. To tune to their own unique voice and where it fits in, in the larger picture of the world.

Monica: [00:42:26] So what does that look like if somebody wanted to work with you, could they is, I'm imagining that you have both personal and possibly group ways of people working with you and that, and just so that I'm not.
Projecting. Uh, but, but we really do want to check in, do you then, so I'm imagining that you're working with music and working with song and maybe even with real instruments, but that I'm going to learn about my voice. I'm going to learn about being in harmony with others, but I'm going to learn a whole lot more as well about life and.Am I making that up correctly?

Carol Marie: [00:43:11] You are making that up correctly. Yeah, it's it's, you know, for me, the piece that I love doing the most is working with groups, you know, because again, we can bounce off each other. Um, it's interesting right now, in current times, all of the singing work that I do is online, which causes all of the singers because of technology delayed to be on mute, which has its challenges for me, in terms of not hearing everybody.

But it has invited people who maybe would never walk in a room to sing with me, to sing online in the privacy of their own home and do some of that. Like, what does it sound like if I'm on or off and to sing much more wholeheartedly to begin to feel that experience of what it's like to sing someone else?
You know? So that's one of the main things I do is, is I have a singing group once a month. And I also work with people individually, you know, kind of finding their own song, even writing their own song of who they are. And you mentioned instruments as well. And I think sometimes learning an instrument, both ukulele ukuleles, my favorite with that, because it's such a sweet instrument that if people learn it estimate.

You know, they don't come in thinking they're going to learn to sing, but they begin very naturally to use their voice in harmony with the instrument. So that's often another way is to have an instrument lead the way to finding your own unique voice.

Monica: [00:44:41] So how might our listeners know that they would want to work with you?
Like what would their, what would maybe. Someone be feeling or thinking in this moment that would maybe get them to reach out and learn more.

Carol Marie: [00:44:57] I mean, you know, I'm going to be silly about it, but it's interesting. I think if they're listening to this and there's a place in their body, that's like going, ah, like I feel really uncomfortable, the thought of singing or if there's that same little voice that I have that said saying.

That's it so simple begin to sing or that, that place of feeling out of tune, living up to life's expectations or kind of performing, going through the motions. I think it's more of that going through the motions, kind of a feel. That my work tends to in terms of tuning more towards, um, it sounds a little bit cliche, but towards what brings you joy.
And when I talk about joy, it's like a longing for more wonder or, uh, or that feeling of being in harmony with your life, your own life with the world around you, or with the people around you.,

Monica: [00:45:52] Right. That it becomes a real. Connection a deeper connection point to, to our lives, to really feeling the substance of our lives.
I love that. I love that. And, and so as we wrap up, which I hate doing, I'm always like, how did the time go by so quickly? But I love to. You know, check in. And I guess my final question would be, well, two things. One is, is there a recent revelation that you've had recently that you. Want to share with us or that you've had as we've spoken today.

Carol Marie: [00:46:38] I think this little, very recent memory has been niggling at me for the past 24 hours, thinking about our conversation today. And, um, it sounds very simple, but I think that that's what I love is that. Singing and using our voices brings the ordinary to life and makes it much more extraordinary. And I was in a very ordinary place.

The other day, I was going to trader Joe's a grocery store and walking in the parking lot. And there was a gentleman, you know, kind of one of those awkward moments where, you know, you're both going to hit the line to the grocery store at the same time. And you need to. Let the other person is, I was about to be like kind of motion for him to go ahead of me.
And he stopped very abruptly and motion for me to go ahead, you know? And I smiled at him and then we got in line and he was humming. He was like, kind of singing this like sweet little sign. I'm like, of course he let me go first. He's happy. Like there was that. And it wasn't that I wasn't happy, but there would like, I, I recognized in him, like he was humming.

It's just like, Oh my gosh, like there's an, a liveliness in him that just, you know, you can let everyone go first.

Monica: [00:47:49] It just extends into a generosity, doesn't it? Yes.

Carol Marie: [00:47:54] And you know, it brought forward from me all the times of me, you know, going through the grocery store, humming a song, you know, and I know I'm happy when that's present or at least in a moment of connection with.

You know, the wonder of being in these ordinary places and these extraordinary times

Monica: [00:48:14] love that Carol, I just, and I love you. I love the way that you just think about things and feel things and share things, you know, and with that, of course, I just want to just thank you so much. Thank you for giving us this time today with you and sharing. So generously about your work. It's just beautiful. Thank you.

Carol Marie: [00:48:37] And for years as well, I adore you as you know, and just the work that you're doing in continuing to reveal and pull back the layers.

Monica: [00:48:46] Yeah, I it's it's, um, it all belongs together and I love the fact that every, you know, conversation that I have leads to kind of the next, the next piece of the. The puzzle, but what I'm finding is that there's, there's so much, the more I reveal, the more I realized there is to reveal in these conversations. And I'm finding so many amazing people to keep building the wonder to keep, you know, the. To keep inspiring and talk about creating a harmony in the world with even just these episodes.
It just feels, it feels really aligned with what we were talking about today. Absolutely. So as a final, do you have any, I know that you were, and of course I'm giggling as I say this, but you were saying that you have. A mantra that sometimes you sing, I don't know if you have a ukulele nearby, but I wanted to invite you to share with us any final things of, be it words or song that you might want to bring to the final minutes of our episode.

Carol Marie: [00:50:04] I do have a ukulele onboard, always, but I'm actually going to do this one from my voice because it speaks to something we talked about today. And it's a song that I wrote kind of in the midst of grief. There's many layers to it, but I'll just share the main layer. Um, and it goes like this.

Carol sings.

Monica: [00:50:28] Until next time. More to be revealed. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.