Dreams Come True

Back porch ideas get front and center

Three years ago, Katie and I met on the back deck of my Sebastopol rental to talk about how we could breathe life into the dying embers of our music careers. Co-dependency, motherhood, and Covid had sucked up all the oxygen, but neither of us could bear to watch the coals fade from the brilliant orange bloom they were to gray.

Back then, we didn’t have any kind of clear idea about how we would do it, but could identify what we didn’t want— to go back to how things were. We loved the wild ride of gigs and festivals and the delightful, supportive fans, but that kind of lifestyle wasn’t going to work with our current reality. Could there be some other way to keep writing songs and getting to share them without two hour drives for $100 each from a 3 hour set list?

Sometimes we can’t explain what we’re looking for, but we’ll know it when we see it.

A couple of years into the process of recovering our creativity through sharing songs in progress and offering each other support, we’d come up with a podcast format and content as well as a plan for weekly meetings, courses, seminars and retreats. But it didn’t occur to us to host an open mic for women.

That idea came at the tail end of our rope. After several podcast launch dates came and went, I took a leap to attend a Gateless Writing Teacher Training in Joshua Tree. An incredible group of 11 fantastic women writers spent each day writing from prompts and sharing powerful, intimate, wildly creative pieces they generated in just twenty minute sittings. I witnessed the contagious energy of mutual belief and support that spurred us each on to go deeper and hone our craft.

At the end of the week, our fearless leader, Suzanne Kingsbury, asked each of us to share what we planned to do with our teacher training. She coached us through our obstacles and helped us recognize our resources. When I shared my vision of Supernova Support and listed “finding our people” as one of the challenges that could possibly be addressed by hosting an open mic for women, it was an instant yes. She instructed me to get my calendar out and plan which day the following week I would make calls about possible locations.

Within two weeks of returning home, Katie and I had booked Coffee & Moore with the 1st and 3rd Sunday schedule, complete with the online sign up genius ready for performer slots to be filled. We coincided the launch of our podcast with the open mic, and found, to our great surprise, that we had plenty of energy to do both! Clearly, a synergy would develop between the two.

Last Sunday when we set up for our second session, cheered by a few advanced sign ups, women started filtering in. Within minutes of conversation, we were exchanging excited, conspiratorial smiles like old friends. An encouraging warmth spread with each performance from woman to woman. We cheered, cried, and sang along feeling inspired, uplifted, and most certainly not alone. It couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect moment in history.

The whole time, Katie and I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing because we recognized the spark we’d dreamed of on my porch several years back. It was the supernova energy we felt as we supported each other. Now we knew for sure that other women were out there seeking the same indescribable something that we all knew we had just found.