Music has always been my everything.
Even when I tried to hide from it.
As a child, I loved music, but confidence was another story. Being a foreigner in school meant I was bullied a lot. Standing out never felt safe.
When my guitar teacher wanted me to perform at a Christmas play, ten-year-old me solved the problem rather dramatically — I handed him the guitar and quit.
No thank you.
In high school things became better. I found friends. I joined choir and performed songs from musicals. Chess was one of my favourites, closely followed by Hello Dolly. But still, I preferred harmony over solos. Blend in. Stay safe. Don’t claim the spotlight.
Then came one strange, unforgettable night when I was seventeen, nearly eighteen.
A travelling band was playing at a hotel near where we lived on the West Coast of Norway. My mother and I went along. I stood below the stage singing and dancing, completely lost in the music.
Apparently, the band noticed.
At some point, while I had gone to the toilet, the band leader sat down with my mother at our table. When I returned, there he was, casually sitting there as though this was perfectly normal.
My mother — in her earlier days before alcohol became something darker — had already been enthusiastically telling him all about me.
The band wanted me to sing with them.
The song they loved hearing me sing was Heaven is a place on earth by Belinda Carlisle. In their words, I sang it “better than Belinda.”
Their words, not mine.
And somehow, the evening became one of those memories that still feels slightly unreal.
And then?
The band drove us home.
At one point, we helped them pack up their tour bus. My grandparents lived downstairs, thankfully away on holiday — otherwise, I imagine there may have been questions.
We sang until the early morning hours.
The next morning my mother remembered most of it… though some details were a little blurry.
“How exactly did we get home again?”
Looking back, I sometimes smile at the irony.
The girl who hid from solos. The girl terrified of standing out. The girl who turned down opportunities because confidence had already been bruised.
And yet…
Music still found me.
It always did.
Maybe that is the funny thing about what we truly love.
Even when we step back from it, somehow, it waits.
Patiently.
Until we are ready to let it back in again.
And perhaps, in some strange way, The Afterlove Voice is simply music finding me again.
Just softer.
Just differently.
But still… mine.
With love
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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