It’s our 4th Birthday and we’re celebrating with this moving blog post by Claire Murphy…
This week is Sing Now Choir’s fourth birthday and I am sentimental.
When I found out that my friend Jack was opening a new community Choir it felt like a lifeline, and I took myself along for the first ever session. I’d sang and performed with Love Soul Choir so I knew Sing Now Choir was going to be special, but I had no idea just how special it would turn out to be.
It was one of the best decisions I ever made.
During the first two years at Sing Now Choir, I made some of the best friends I have ever known. I loved every single performance but my highlights were the electricity I felt in my body at the end of a rehearsal, the uncontrollable giggling, being a ‘Choir captain,’ the feeling of belonging inside when we nailed the harmonies for the first time, my friendship with Ashton, my friendships with everyone! When you go to Choir, it’s like putting the rest of your life on pause, the highlight of the week, a relief to sing your heart out with people that truly have become your family.
Behind closed doors, my life was wholly different to the one I presented to people, and it became increasingly difficult to manage. I wasn’t aware myself of what I was dealing with, and what impact it would have.
During the past two years, due to my circumstances, I lost my job, my home and the ability to open my mouth and let music come out, but the one thing I didn’t lose was Jack and Sing Now Choir.
Not only did Jack help me everyday as my friend, he also continued to include me at Choir, bringing me along so I was never alone, even though I couldn’t sing. As time went by he trusted me to support him with creative admin, choreography, guide tracks, performance management and other jobs for Sing Now Choir, giving me purpose and pleasure. He shared my diagnoses with the Choir and said he was proud, and Lesley told me that when he did that, everybody clapped.
Lesley is so important to me, she is someone I love very much. She connected me with The Red Lipstick Foundation, (my other lifeline) and it was special to be able to start the Marlands flash mob with Sing Now Choir, in order to raise money to give something back to them, for the support they are continuing to give me. I can’t imagine life without my friends at Sing Now Choir and The Red Lipstick Foundation, and I owe this to Jack and Lesley.
It is scary to think that, if it weren’t for Sing Now Choir, I would never have gotten to know all these amazing people! I would never have learned so much about the power of friendship, belonging and not giving up.
Now that it is Sing Now Choir’s fourth birthday, and my mind has been cast back over these years and what we have all been through as a family, I feel lucky and grateful to be a part of it, in my own way. I am not the most sociable of people, not the most forthcoming in conversation, but there is nothing I wouldn’t do for any member of my Choir family, and I will never forget the enormous impact it has had on my life over the past four years.
Blog written by Claire Murphy.