The Long Arc of Becoming

A small refresh for new and longtime readers — a reflection on how this space has evolved and what continues to call me to the page.

After two years of writing Well Canto, I’ve come to see how it is evolving alongside me. What began as a space to explore mindset and resilience for musicians has widened into something more spacious; reflections on creativity, loss, reinvention, and the strange privilege of continuing to grow older.

This feels less like a pivot and more like a settling into a broader landscape — a settling into the kinds of questions that seem to matter more as time goes on. In other words, I’m not changing direction so much as naming what has already been happening here: a deeper exploration of voice, in every sense of the word.

I realized it might be helpful to share a kind of ‘starting point’ essay for both new and longtime readers, with deep gratitude for all you creatives who insist on depth and clarity.

The Long Arc of Becoming

Years ago, I had a dream during one of the busiest stretches of my performing life, and it’s never quite left me.

I was standing alone onstage just before a performance. The thick red velvet curtain was down, and the quiet hum of the audience waited beyond. As the audience hushed, the orchestra began the overture … but I didn’t recognize the music.

I looked into the wings for someone, anyone, who might tell me which opera we were about to perform. No one was there. I looked down at my costume, hoping it would provide a clue to the role I was meant to sing, but all I could gather was a vague 18th-century silhouette.

The curtain began to rise.

Panic set in; I had no idea what I was supposed to do, so I stood straighter and smiled. The conductor and I made eye contact as he raised his baton. Aware of 3000 sets of eyes on me, I breathed in, felt the orchestral vibrations, and simply started to sing. Somehow, I knew the music. I knew the character. I knew the story. The panic dissolved, replaced by the familiar feeling of embodying deep preparedness, even if it had eluded my consciousness just moments before.

I woke up wondering what it meant.

Over the years, I’ve come to see it as a metaphor for the creative life, and perhaps for life itself. We spend so much time thinking we need certainty before we step forward, when often what carries us is the preparation we don’t realize we’ve been doing all along.

For a long time, I thought certainty lived somewhere outside of me — in instructions, expectations, or approval — when in truth it had been quietly forming within me my whole life.

Well Canto grew out of that understanding.

After more than thirty years as an opera singer, I welcomed a new chapter that included becoming a board-certified health and wellness coach. Both paths, in different ways, were about voice — not just the technical voice, but the deeper voice of identity, expression, and meaning.

Writing began as a way to explore questions I couldn’t fully answer onstage or in a coaching session. Questions about creativity. About aging. About awakening to collective feminine power. About reinvention. About what it means to keep growing when the world expects you to have already arrived.

Over time, these reflections became essays, and these essays became this space:

Well Canto.

I write about the long arc of becoming — about the ways we continue to evolve long after the roles we once played have changed. Sometimes I draw from my life as a soloist in the top-tier of vocal arts. Sometimes from coaching conversations. Sometimes from the quiet observations that surface when we begin listening more closely to our own inner lives.

Here, we reflect on creativity, identity, artistic courage, and the subtle transitions that shape us. Occasionally I’ll share glimpses into current writing projects, including a novel that is beginning to take shape, because storytelling feels like a natural extension of questions we explore.

If there is a common thread, it is this: our voices do not stop developing simply because we reach a certain age or milestone. Instead, they deepen and expand, shaped by experience, loss, curiosity, and time.

This space is for anyone who senses that there is still more to unearth; more creativity, more meaning, more possibility, even — or especially — now.

I’m glad our paths have crossed.

May you live in ease and kindness, with a free heart.