CLAYBORN TEMPLE NAMES ANASA TROUTMAN FIRST EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | JULY 3, 2018
CLAYBORN TEMPLE NAMES ANASA TROUTMAN FIRST EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Transition team to guide community engagement process for this National Treasure
(MEMPHIS, TN) – Clayborn Temple announces today that cultural strategist, writer and
producer Anasa Troutman will lead the organization as its first executive director. Memphis
Business Journal broke the news with an exclusive story this morning.

Troutman first joined the Clayborn team for ‘Union: The Musical,’ which she co-wrote, produced,
and presented in the church for multiple performances around the 50 th anniversary of the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. earlier this year. The musical tells the story of the
1968 Sanitation Workers’ strike that led to Dr. King’s fateful visit to Memphis, illuminates
Clayborn’s critical role in that movement, and draws parallels between America in 1968 and
America in 2018. The development of ‘Union’ was born from the feeling of Clayborn’s leadership
that the full story of this sacred space wasn’t widely known, and that sharing it was part of a
critical foundation to building Clayborn’s future.

The building has been home to myriad arts and culture events since reopening its doors in 2015
after being shuttered for 20 years. It was purchased as a philanthropic investment by Memphis
entrepreneur Frank Smith, who became interested in the property while scouting for a new
home for Downtown Church, where he is a member. To lead the work of developing Clayborn’s
next iteration, Smith brought in Rob Thompson, who’s led Clayborn’s team for the past two
years.

With a background in real estate development and nonprofit leadership, Thompson says his role
was never intended to be permanent. In fact, he says three things became clear early on: first,
that an artistic use of the space felt important and authentic; second, that a robust and
intentional community engagement process was necessary; and finally, that this sacred African-
American space demanded a visionary African-American leader to move it into its next phase.
“When I first started talking with Anasa, I was thinking about how we could plug her in and utilize
her talents,” Thompson says. “But pretty quickly my thoughts changed to, ‘We need Anasa to
lead this whole thing. Is there any chance she would be interested in that?’”

As it turns out, Troutman was more than interested – and she sees what’s ahead of her at
Clayborn as a natural continuation of the work she’s been doing for the last 20 years.
Troutman builds and executes culture-based strategies for artists and organizations that are
aligned with the vision of love as justice and equity in action, and her belief in creativity as a
pathway to personal, community and global transformation. She is best known for her work as
the long-time friend, thought partner and executive producer for GRAMMY®-winning artist
India.Arie, and has worked with many artists and organizations to intensify the strategic impact of art and narrative storytelling on social and political realities. She is sought after for her
innovative thinking on the transformative role of art, culture and creativity, and infusing love as a
fundamental core value, an ethos she brings to her work at Clayborn.

“We want this to be a place where people have the space to heal, transform and create,”
Troutman says. “The transformation of a city requires the transformation of the people who live
there, and we know there is no more transformative force than love. It’s critical for us to embody
love, particularly in conversations about justice and equity. We believe that love was the core
value that Rev. James Lawson and the Sanitation Workers carried with them in 1968. In that
spirit, Clayborn will be a place where people come together to heal, vision, and co-create the
future of Memphis.”

Thompson will continue to advise Clayborn on real estate development, and a transition team
will help guide Troutman’s first 90 days in her new role. Troutman says the transition team is
another important element of Clayborn’s intentionally collaborative approach and reinforces that
the space is a community asset. The transition team will focus on a few key areas during the
transition period, including finalizing the vision for the organization; helping to install a more
permanent board of directors; fundraising and development; and building out other essential
infrastructure.

Transition team members include Roshun Austin, Tonya Dyson, Gayle Rose, Elaine Turner,
Michael Rhodes, Justin Merrick, Stuart Harris, Montgomery Martin, and Kirk Whalum.
Troutman’s first priority in the executive director role is to begin that extensive community
engagement process.

“Starting this fall, we will host a series of community-based conversations that will determine
how we develop the space as related to our core goals of historic preservation, cultural
expression and racial and economic justice,” she says. “We will continue the legacy of Clayborn
Temple and the Sanitation Workers and be committed to bold and innovative approaches to
economic justice, while acknowledging that the power and ability to transform our communities
lies with the people who live in them. Our number one goal now, is to let Memphians know that
we are here, that our doors are open and that we are working to build relationships that
communicate the truth that everyone is welcome here. We want to be a contribution to the
future that works for all of Memphis and we know that starts with love and inclusivity.”

Troutman says she will work closely with partners including the National Trust for Historic
Preservation – which recently named Clayborn Temple a National Treasure – throughout the
transition and community engagement process to think about institutional storytelling and how
the Clayborn story can be told in Memphis as well as around the world. Clayborn will soon begin
raising funds to fully restore the building, and in the meantime, it will continue to host local and
national groups in the space, a key source of income for the nonprofit to keep the building
operational long-term.

‘Union: The Musical,’ where Troutman’s time with Clayborn began, also remains a priority.
There will be several more performances of the current production this fall while the Clayborn
creative team, led by civil rights scholar Greg Thompson and writer/composer Justin Merrick,
continue to engage Memphians to complete the story.
“We have a responsibility to retell the story, and use it not just to learn from history, but to
inspire and reframe how we think about the present, the future, and what’s possible,” Thompson says. “‘Union’ was compelling and risky but it was a manifestation of our desired outcome: Keep
telling the story. Music and art has the power to help people make connections between 1968
and 2018 that are powerful and important. We were struggling to figure out how to do that, and
we meet Anasa and realize ‘This is what she does!’ We’re so grateful to have her in this role.”

Troutman adds: “This is a powerful moment for Clayborn Temple. We’ve all spent the last
several months with MLK50, Dr. King and the Sanitation Workers, and that work has taught us
to see ourselves not at the end of a 50-year journey, but in the middle of a 100-year journey. We
learned that we had to look to the past to prepare ourselves to look forward to the future. We
understand now that our work at Clayborn Temple is about the next 50 years of manifesting
equity, of justice, of love and we are ready to do that together.”

########

Seeing myself... →

I don't have a lot to say about this except for WOW. 

I walked into a coffee shop a few weeks ago and sat down to do some work. After a few minutes, a stranger walked up to me asked if he could sit, pulled a chair up super close, sat and proceeded to introduce himself. I laughed to myself because after 3 seconds of conversation, we were in it; face to face, no barriers, full disclosure with barely more than an invitation between us. The stranger was Chris Daniels and the invitation was to sit for a portrait, answer a few simple questions and be one of one hundred and four people that would do the same over the next year. 

How could i say no? I am a Leo after all, lets not be silly. What Leo doesn't want to be photographed. Besides, Chris said some really nice things about me and how I impacted the room when i entered it. He looked right into my ego and spoke to it LOL....of course I said yes.

Anyway, the result was astounding. After i saw and read it for the first time, i was a little off kilter for about an hour. I felt like i was having an out of body experience, like i was looking at photos and reading the words of someone else.  It was jarring to see myself through the eyes of someone that doesn't hold the hangups, doubts, disappointments and criticisms that I hold when I look through my own. It reminded me that so much of who we think we are is a story and we can learn to see ourselves as we really are, we will be free. When I look at the images i don't see any of the things that i don't like about myself or my body. I just see me. Its actually quite beautiful. I like seeing myself this way. I like it quite a bit.

Thank you Chris for showing me another side of myself.

Check me out, portrait #13 and all of the other amazing portraits that are a part of Chris' vision at http://chrisdanielsphoto.com/project104-portrait-13

Lovin’ Ain’t Easy -or- Thanks God For This Hard Ass Lesson Of A Birthday Present

Today is my birthday.

My birthday is my favorite holiday and I tend to make a big deal about it. I always do something; a dinner, party, a trip, a day of silent mediation, something. If nothing else, i'll put on some sequence and a tiara and walk around the house to generate the spirit of celebration. Not a year goes by that I don’t mark the anniversary of my birth with joyous intention, celebration and thanksgiving.

This year, I spent the entire month celebrating. I don't usually do that, but this year, I needed more than just space for gratitude and celebration. I needed space for restoration.

2016 has been a painful year for a lot of us. There is really no other way to put it; this has been a year sodden by death. Black men dying on camera at the hands of the police, police murdered by military trained killing machines, irreplaceable cultural icons gone and lost forever, mass shootings and bombs killing people en mass all over the world and the pulling back of the curtain to exposing our electoral system s empty of honor and democracy.

I know. None of this is new but somehow 2016 has plugged the ugly into an amplifier that makes it all feel, sound, smell and look so big. SO big, that it has almost too big to manage. For many of us, 2016 has been full of anger, disgust and deep sadness.

As if that isn’t enough, on top of what is going on outside my door, there are things happening inside my private world that feel just as big and just as difficult. In 2016, the happenings in my personal and professional life have asked a LOT of me. I have had to have very difficult conversations, I have had to manage complicated relationships, way too much travel, contentious interactions with broken people, I'm still getting used to living in a new city, have endured the stress of launching a new enterprise, and I have had to push myself to become the next version of myself; to be harder, work harder and push harder than I have had to in a long time.

Needless to say, I haven’t had a year this hard in a long time. I have experienced fun and triumph and lots and lots of joy this year too but at the risk of being dramatic, (and I have been accused of being dramatic a time or two) I don’t think that I have ever had a year like this with so many challenges packed in so close together. 2016 has been an emmer-effer, if you know what I mean. Like I said, one day wasn’t enough. I needed an entire month to celebrate and restore. Happy Birthday to me.

Usually, when faced with difficulties, either those that are personal to me or those that I share in community, my approach is always love and it has ALWAYS works…every time.

You know me, I am ALWAYS doing my best to bring love into the room, to show that love is the best and only answer but this time, love, at least the way that I have known it just hasn’t been enough. I had a moment that I tried to conjure up love and all I could conjure was despair. That scared the crap out of me.

Wait…I want to acknowledge that this story is getting really depressing. Don’t worry, this isn’t a Steven King novel, it’s an Anasa Troutman blog so bare with me the sunshine and unicorns are coming. I promise I won’t leave you down here in this pitt of despair and anyone who can tell me what movie I just gave a shout out to without goggling it should absolutely consider themselves one of my people.

Anyway, where was I? Yes, things have been difficult in every area of my life. Thank you 2016. I have learned that if every room that I walk into has a note on the wall that says, “Hey Anasa, there’s a diamond unicorn your pocket”, I should probably check my pockets. Even if I ignore the first sign or two, eventually, I’m going to have to pay attention.

That’s how it works, right? When the student is ready the lesson/teacher will come? When its time for you to expand your consciousness, God shows up and sticks a giant post-it note that says so on every situation, conversation and interaction.

These are the times when we are called to grow, to be a better, more aware, more honest version of ourselves. This is the opportunity to do the hard work that pays off in more clarity, better relationships, and more success? Right? Well, that’s how it works for me. When the time comes, I can’t avoid a spiritual lesson. God never takes no for an answer.  I don’t even bother trying to ignore it anymore. Eventually I’ll have to pay attention because the signs get bigger and bigger until they are so big that I can no longer see around them. Better to answer the door when it’s only a knock and not wait for the wrecking ball to bash that door in.

The tricky thing is that rarely does the sign provide breadcrumbs to something as marvelous as a diamond unicorn. More often, the signs say something waaaaaay less enticing like, “Hey Anasa, learn to be vulnerable and share yourself with people”, or, Hey Anasa, be more disciplined and work harder to achieve your goals”, or, in the case of 2016, “Hey Anasa, I know things are hard but its time for you to expand and learn how to love when $%#! gets unrecognizably hard.” Awesome. Can’t wait. Yep, why don’t we do that? Happy Birthday to me.

And before I knew it, I accepted a graduate level life seminar on love in hard times. Exhaaaaaaaaale. Ok. God, here we go.

I will spare you the course work and go straight to the thesis.

One day, earlier this month, the day I was feeling that despair, my mother called me. She had no idea what was going on with me. I was sitting on the couch crying. The phone rang and I pulled it together quickly so that she wouldn’t know that I was in tears.

The news about Philando Castile’s murder had just come out on top of the news about Alton Sterling’s murder, I had just gotten home from the toughest, most stressful work trip that I had ever taken and the night before I had been terribly disappointed by someone that I loved. It was an incredibly crappy day. I was fighting so hard to generate love, from the inside out, to heal my own heart first and then to find ways to heal the people around me that were hurting but I could not do it. I just felt the sadness and the pain and the uncertainly of all of it.

I say that my mother didn’t know what was going on with me, but I suppose mothers who know their kids always know what’s going on. She called me and said, “Anasa I called to check on you and to remind you that love is all around you. Even when you can’t see it, love is always there.” Then she told me that that was all that she wanted and to let her know if I needed anything and she hung up. Wow.

My mother is not an overly touchy feely person. By no means is she a hard woman and she definitely expressed her love to us but she is not the poster child for emotions. I am the emotional one in my family, for sure, my mother, not so much. I called her once boo-hoo crying because I had run over a squirrel on the road and she told me to pull it together and get on with my life. LOL. She’s a Capricorn, what can I say. Shrug.

As Capricornian as she is, on that day, in all her mother’s intuition, she called me and reminded me about the power of love at a time when I had absolutely no access to it. In one of the most difficult moments I have had in a long time, my mother, the woman who taught me how to transform myself and my life, called her child to remind her that love IS the most powerful force in the universe, so much so that even when it looks, feels and smells like it is absent, it is there. Love is always present. Always.

I was so deeply touched that my tears of sadness instantly turned into tears of gratitude and hope and joy. Even now, it brings tears to my eyes, the power of that conversation. It was literally two minutes, but it reminded me of who I am, what my mission on earth is and it turned 2016 around for me. That brief conversation made me start to look around with different eyes. Of course love is all around by why can’t I see it? Am I looking in the wrong corners or am I looking for the wrong thing?

Right, that’s it. I am looking for the wrong thing.

I have said this before, but I spent much of my life being a complete and total Pollyanna. I am not as bad as I used to be but there was a time that I would have been the nicest person that you had ever met. Always positive, as nice as I can be and always carrying the goal of leaving people feeling loved. In my mind, love looked only one way. Good, warm, sunny, happy…that’s how I wanted love to look all the time but that not real. Sometimes stuff gets hard. Sometimes life is hard. Hell, most of the time life is hard. Does that mean that there is no room for love?

Love is an action word, we all know that. I define love as honoring your connection with someone (or something) in word and deed. That’s easy to figure out and to execute when we’re talking about someone that is good to you or it is even easy when it’s someone you don’t know at all.

Sometimes a smile and a well wish to a stranger is the most loving thing we do all day, but how to you honor your connection to someone that hurts you? How do you honor your connection to someone committed an unjust murder motivated by racial bias? How do you honor your connection when that someone disrespects you or lies to you or when that someone actively works to undermine goodness and decency in the world?

How do you love when $%@! gets hard? In your life? In your work? In the world?

Those who violate the rules of human interaction, the ones that lie, cheat, steal, kill, are unkind…I guess that’s all of us. We, no matter who we are or what we have done, we are all one in the soul sense, in the divine family. We are all connected. That never changes, no matter how gross the violation. Whether you say a cross word to someone or commit genocide, that oneness does not fade. So how does one honor our connectedness, our sameness, our divinity AND our violations at the same time? That is the question for this time. How do we embody love with people that need to transform to align themselves with the principles of love?

It is clear to me that the upheaval that we are seeing and feeling is a call to acknowledge and address ills that have persisted for hundreds of years. The history of the world is violent and the legacy of patriarchy and imperialism has showed up on the camera phones and 24-hour news channels in a way that we can no longer ignore. As my mother used to tell me when I was a kid, “Its time to pay the piper.”

If we truly believe that love is the answer to the questions before us (and I sincerely do) and if love is, indeed, most powerful force in the universe, then what does that love look like in this moment in history when it is clear that a smile and a well wish isn’t even in the same galaxy as enough?

A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other a simple declaration, “Love is not enough.” While I understand where he is coming from and must say that I totally disagree. Love is always enough. A fairytale, one-dimensional benign love may not be enough but a robust, honest, action filled, accountable love that considers that interpersonal and the institutional, where all are considered and the well being of humanity is the goal is enough.  

I know that sounds complicated but these are complicated times…life is complicated. I bet there has been someone in every age of time that said, “these are complicated times”. Times haven’t changed, what must change is our ability to deal with what is, to be the balanced love, the love that requires our whole selves, even the parts that make us afraid.

See, that is the part that I was missing. That is the BIG lesson that I received as a divine gift for my birthday this year. I was pretending that love was easy. I used to say love is easy its all the stuff that goes with love that’s difficult but no, love is not easy. Not at all. Its actually can be quite scary.

I liked to ignore the parts of love that scared me and made me uncomfortable and required me to say and do hard things. For me, love has been a hiding place. That’s hard for me to admit but I have used love stay safe. I have allowed love to be limited to compassion, empathy, caring, generosity. All of these things are the parts of love and come VERY easy to me. I am the queen of these things. The QUEEN!!!  Love is also a few things that I am notoriously not the queen of.

Love is also holding people accountable, being 100% honest especially when its hard, love is sometimes saying no or walking away. These things are love too. In fact when its time for these things, when there is something to be said and you don’t say it, when there is something to be done and you don’t do it. When someone is out of alignment with the principles of human interaction and it is not addressed, this non-action, this cowardice is the absence of love.

You see, my mother was right, love is all around but sometimes we don’t want to see if because we don’t want to be the ones to have to do the difficult loving thing. We don’t want to be honest, we don’t want to hold others accountable, we don’t want to take the risk and sometimes, when we DO do these things, we don’t want to have to do them while simultaneously being kind, openhearted, generous compassionate. As I am learning, love, true love (there’s that movie again) requires a balance of what comes easy and what is difficult. Real love is compassion and authenticity, kindness and accountability, generosity and honesty…no matter what. One without the other, like I said, is a lie.

That is not all…here comes my favorite part of the lesson…this love lesson isn’t just about how I treat other people, it also about how I treat myself.  Yay.

Often times, we…let me speak for myself…often times, my unwillingness to embrace the full balance of love has been about fear. Many people say there are only two emotions, love and fear, for me, this is an absolute truth. I am the most loving person on earth, until I get scared, then all bets are off. For many people fear makes the loud, angry, defensive. For me, when the fear hits, I shut down, tuck myself in an emotional corner and don’t say a word. See, the easy, fun parts of love are my JAM, my favorite thing on earth. The hard parts of love, the parts that shut me down, get on my last nerve.

Get ready because I’m about to get vulnerable here. My number one fear in life, probably the one fear that all of my other fears boil down to is that I am going to end up alone. So in the past, if being loving required that I do something that might result in what looks anything like judgment or abandonment, I probably didn’t do it or I needed a looooooooong runway to get there.

There have been many conversations in my life that I did not have because I was afraid that the person on the other end would be upset with me, judge me, disagree with me, feel attacked, etc. Many times, I hid behind love, convincing myself that it was my love for them that kept me from being honest but I realize now that it wasn’t love, but fear that kept me from being bold, authentic and yes, sometimes kept me form being honest.

Silencing myself about big things and small things has been my grossest violation against myself and the way that I have most often not loved myself. This is what the absence of love has looked like in my relationship with me. So how do I love (honor my connection with person in word and deed) when the person in question is me?

I heard someone say a few weeks ago that the scripture says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, not, “Love thy neighbor more than yourself” It hit me in the chest like a ton of bricks. How many times have I dishonored and been unloving to myself in the name of being “loving” to someone else. Yep, nope, that wasn’t love, that was fear of being honest, fear of being judged, fear of putting myself out front, fear of getting hurt, fear of being othered, of being alone.

When we stay silent because we don’t want to stir the pot, or upset someone, when we don’t hold people accountable to the values that we hold, when our soul is screaming out against the state of the world and we don’t take action…when we don’t speak our truth, we are lying. Lying is not loving, even when what is true is hard to say, hard to hear and hard to live with. Conversely, when we take bold action, are honest and hold people to account with no compassion, generosity and kindness, that too, is not love. How do we find the balance?

I am going to start to wind this down for two reasons. I think that I’ve said what was on my heart to say here. Also, its 11:30PM and I need to get to Barnes and Noble by midnight to pick up my reserved copy of the new Harry Potter book. Sometimes, divine birthday gifts come in the form of big life changing spiritual lessons about the true nature of love and sometimes they come in the form of new book from your favorite fiction series released at midnight on your actual birthday.

The lesson that I was gifted this year is this…

Yes, absolutely, love is kind and patient and all of those other warm, fuzzy things but that’s only half the story.

ALSO…

Love is BOLD.

Love is HONEST and AUTHENTIC.

Love requires ACCOUNTABILITY.

Love requires COURAGE.

Love is messy and hard to figure sometimes.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe and is always that answer.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you in the fullness of what love is. I’m taking this on…as my birthday gift to myself and as my gift to the world. I don’t have a lot of practice with this expanded version of love but I am going to make the road by walking.

Expanding my understanding of love and having the space to experiment with what it means to love and be loved in the fullness of this new understanding is the greatest gift that I could ask for. I welcome the warm fuzzies AND I deserve to be honest with my friends, my lover, and my family, with the police, my elected officials, my community and everybody else when I am feeling neither warm nor fuzzy.

We deserve to hold to account the people that we share space with on this planet. Sometimes that is a difficult conversation or a negotiation of the rules of engagement and sometimes that is a protest, a cultural renaissance, a policy change or a revolution (I prefer loveolution, but whatever).

I believe that this is moment when we need love more then we ever have in the history of this crazy world. Love IS the most powerful force in the universe. It is what we need to learn how to do, how to be and how to have. It is the only way that we will manifest the vision of a just world where all people are honored, respected, have their dignity and the chance to dream, achieve and thrive in whatever way is authentic to them. Love is the power. Love is healing. Love is freedom.

I invite you to love with me, fully, without fear.

Open hearted and fully honest.

Love all in the fullness of all that love really is. The fun parts and the scary ones.

Love all.

LOVE.

ALL.

Thanks for the birthday present, God. Expanded consciousness is always a great choice.

Live love,

anasa.

LOVE SIGHTINGS #1

I see love everywhere i go...

Love on a moving truck in LA. #lovesightings #livelove

The Patron Saint of Yes

The Patron Saint of Yes

If you follow me on social media than you know that my Grandma passed away in December. My grandmother and I haven’t lived in the same city since I was 2 years old but the day she died, I was a 20 minute cab ride away from her trying to reach her to see if she was up for a visit that afternoon.  No one answered the phone and 2 hours later, I got the call that she had transitioned.

Many times over the last 3 months, when friends or colleagues or a Delta ticket agent hears that my grandmother passed they give that sometimes sincere and sometimes obligatory, “Oh no, I’m sorry for your loss”, but I have had trouble accepting their condolences. I am learning to be more gracious and just say, “Thank you”, but when I hear those words my heart won’t accept them.

Yes, when the call came after she died I had moments where I had a visceral experience of loss; that feeling you have when you know you won’t see someone ever again and the knowing that anything left undone or unsaid is going to stay that way, but most of what I felt was pride and joy.

See my grandmother was less than 2 months away from her 98th birthday and she experienced more in her life than most people I know experience would if they lived to be 500. My clearest memory of the moments after I heard the news of her passing was saying to over and over again, “You did that, Grandma!!! You lived that life”, and a smile or chuckle would follow. I think I even clapped at one point. I was so happy and so proud to belong to a woman that had been so much for so long. I felt like I had been a witness to something magnificent and unique and in her passing I felt much more present to the feeling of the honor of having been a witness to her life than I did the feeling of losing her.

I have a picture of us, she and I when I was fresh out of the womb. We look amazing together. She’s looking at the camera full of maternal love and I have more hair than any newborn should ever have. As I got older and became aware of who this woman was, she confused me. I was learning from the world what it meant to be a grandmother and my grandma didn’t match what I was saw on TV in the commercials. There was no cooking, no baking, no knitting, crocheting or needlepoint, no talks where she imparted wisdom and life lessons, nothing like that.

Instead, there was me going to her college graduation when she was 60, spending the day with my grandmother at her office, hearing stories of her travels around the world after she retired, her tennis trophies, her stage performances and hearing my family joke about how you’d better schedule time with her way in advance because an attempt at a last minute visit will inevitably result in an, “I’m sorry, you should have let me know ahead of time. I have a very busy schedule”.

Most of my memories of my relationship with her are of me being in total awe of my grandmother’s life. Her stories and her millions of pictures of VHS and audio tapes of her adventures, her shows, her tournaments triumphs, her friends, and especially her travels left me dreaming of a world outside of my small life and a life bigger than I thought that my unusually shy demeanor would ever allow.

While there were many times that my grandmother was around and I was basking in her glow, most of the time, she wasn’t there. Most of the time she wasn’t in my living room telling stories and showing video of her singing on stage in a leotard and bow tie at the senior center. The truth is that most of the time, I felt like I had an absentee grandmother, like she wasn’t around as much as I would have like her to be. The truth is that there were many times when my admiration for her turned in feelings that she was selfish and too independent. For most of my childhood, I thought that I wanted her to be someone else. I wanted the baking cookies grandmother, the one who gifted me with hand knitted sweaters proving that even when we weren’t together she was thinking of me and working to keep me warm.

During the planning of her funeral, I was told I needed to prepare to address the congregation on behalf of my cousins and their families. In the days between her death and her service thought about her constantly. I was on tour at the time so I had many, many hours in hotels, in airports and backstage that I spent pouring over our life together and our life apart, willing the memories to teach me sum up her 97 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 6 days into 5 minutes in front of the church that my great-grandparents help found and where she was a member from her first day to her last.

After spending so much time with my memories of her I realized that of all of the people in my family, my life looks most like hers. I am SO much like her now. Her sense of adventure, her curiosity about the world, her love of music and the arts, her involvement in the music business, her absolute love of the community that she created with her friends and the commitment she had to always come back to us, her family, her courage to keep trying at life and even, some would say especially, her commitment to her own life, growth and joy over all others. That describes me to a tee.

I can see now that in those days as a child, when I thought I wanted more of her, what I really wanted was to be her. I was a very shy kid. Like, hide behind furniture  or your parents whichever is closer, shy. I was awkward and uncomfortable all the time. I was very sensitive, I cared about what everyone thought about me and the older I got the worse it was.

When my grandmother came around she was a bright shining glittery ball of no (insert expletive here) left to give and she did it not with edge or bitterness but with FULL love, joy and fantastic accessories. She offered me a glimpse of what it looked like to be free of everything except your own will and your own opinion of yourself.

When we were apart, and I longed for her, I thought I wanted homemade pies and scarves. But it wasn’t the things that she didn’t do that I really wanted it was the things the she did all the time.

I wanted was to see the world and get on stage and have close friends that I played, and shared my secrets with. I wanted to be open. I wanted to be unencumbered, uninhibited, I wanted to FEEL (my grandmother was notorious for crying tears of joy anywhere, anytime at the drop of a diem). I wanted to be free. I wanted joy. I waned to LIVE.

That’s the thing about my grandmother. When she was alive, she REALLY lived. She was one of those people that died with no regrets because she did everything she could when she had the chance and when life didn’t work or when life hurt her, she sat for a moment to feel the pain, then got up and kept going. So many of the odds were stacked against her and she kept going. So many stories that could have ended with her giving up and she kept going. So many times she could have stopped but she died having had a glorious life, full of love and accomplishment and adventure and tennis skirts and kisses and trophies and trips and songs and dances and friends and laughs and cries and yeses.

My grandmother, Edna Louise Johnson, lived a life of yes and her biggest, loudest yes was to herself. Yes her dreams. Yes her passions. Yes to her whims. Yes to her body. Yes to her tears. Yes to HER life. Yes. Yes. Yes, a thousand times yes.

This is what I got from Grandma.

I got yes.

Yes to my dreams, my passions, my tears, and my joys. YES TO ME.

I had to renew my passport a few years ago and I keep the expired one on my coffee table to remind me of what I have seen and encourage me to go and see more. My grandmother’s passport is now sitting on that coffee table, right next to mine. When I look at them, equally worn and stamped I feel that sense of awe and wonder creeping up in my heart from when I would listen to her stories about Japan and China and Zambia and Disney World and I am proud that I have learned to free myself and live the kind of life where I have mesmerizing stories of my own.

My grandmother gave that to me. She gave me the world, literally and figuratively. My grandmother taught me how to live my way by living her way. She gave me the yes that I give to myself every day.

I’ve decided to work on a few new yeses and I am so thankful that I now have my very own personal patron saint of YES to help guide and encourage me for as long as I need her, which I expect will be until the day the news comes that I too have passed.

Saint Edna, the patron saint of yes. She lives. She lives in me, in my every adventure, in my every song, in my every love in my every laugh and in my every joyful tear.

So when you hear about my Grandma Edna, instead of saying “Sorry for your loss”, say, “YES to her life!!!” May her life help you say yes to yours.

Author’s note: I have so much more to say about my grandmother’s life and death. I suspect that this will not be the last time she shows up here in this blog so stay tuned. Love you Grandma.