By the late 1990’s I was about as roughed up by life as any person could be. Multiple pregnancy losses were compounded by the early deaths of both my parents, within a few years of each other. I was literally reeling. The God of my childhood had let me down miserably, and having never really learned to deal with my emotions, I was anxious, depressed, and suffering more than I needed to be.

Why do I say ‘more than I needed to be’?

Because I got stuck in the ‘why me’ mentality. After all, I’d been promised that if I were a good girl, God would reward me with blessings. From the darkest of nights I began my search for meaning and purpose. And today those five small sparks of life that touched me so briefly are my greatest inspiration. As is, of course, the one final sprak that became my son and is father to a little girl!

Thankfully this inner searching coincided with the start of my training at the Psykosyntes Akademin in Stockholm. And here I could be held in my search for myself, from the deep cellars of resentment and grief, right through to the attic of spiritual connection. Slowly but surely I came into a new relationship with the core of my being.

This journey translated itself into a collection of songs and I called this collection of songs ‘Aviva’ - which means springtime. I was proud to be awarded the Margot Russel Stipendium for this work, and even more proud to perform it with colleagues from the Psychosynthesis training during the summer school in Sätra Brunn. Though there are no recordings of this event, I hope to be able to display some of the songs here as and when they are rerecorded.