Daughter and Mother: Words and Music Part 3

My Mom and I taking a break for a selfie during one of our music sessions during the summer of 2016, Miami, FL.

I write to save myself. I write because I must. When I say, writing, I mean just that, not typing as I am right now, but the actual pen to paper experience.

For my Mom, it was music. Mainly singing and playing the guitar. Except, she had not played in ten years.

The songs I wrote during the summer of 2016, which my mother then put to music and performed, were born out of a need to cleanse my soul from a series of bad relationships, wrong men, and exhaustive patterns I kept on repeating. Different relationships, same story. The songs, captured the various stories. 

For my Mom, it was about claiming her power, although she didn't know that when she embarked on the journey. 

Most of my love stories, except for my first love, had dysfunctional characteristics, including my two marriages. Songwriting became the tool by which to explore my love life.  As the process took its own path, I realized it was helping me heal, it was showing me the characters I was attracting and attracted to, my behavior, their response.  By the end of the summer, as I began to see my relationships clearly, I made some radical decisions. I moved to a new state, new job, new surroundings.  Although, I made a couple of wrong love choices after my life changes (cause we all know geography won't stop unhealed wounds), with help from my therapist, I caught the behavior quickly, emotionally understood why I was being pulled in those directions, and stopped the demise. My wounds were no longer bleeding. In fact, they were healed and new skin was emerging.

I had finally learned the lesson -   I needed to start by loving myself first so that I could love others fully and have that love reciprocated.   I needed to understand the joy of solitude. How being alone is an opening into the imagination, into listening and receiving. In the company of others, how it merges with mindfulness and presence.

Through this journey of songwriting and creation, I helped my Mom embrace her gifts.  I was giving her an opportunity to explore where they may take her.  For the first time in her life, she not only sang, but also created melodies for my songs and built upon them to make music. To see her do that at 77, was a powerful exercise on empowerment and living out your true nature.  She surprised herself with her own power and to this day, she still talks about that summer and shares our songs with whomever will stop and listen.

Below is one of the songs that claims just that - self love - and it is called Hoy celebro mi amor (Today I celebrate my love), in the style of a Peruvian waltz, sung by my mother, Lizzie. The song is registered.​

My Mom, Lizzie, practicing during one of our summer 2016 words and music sessions.

Next week is the last of this  blog series dedicated to my mother and all mother/daughter relationships. I hope you come back and listen to more of our songs. 

​Have a love filled day, week, and ... life.

AMO

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Ana Martinez Orizondo

My initials, AMO, stand for "I love" in my native Spanish. I am  am a Cuban American pastel artist, writer, photographer, community builder and artpreneur. ​