Where Your Heart & Voice Meet

Finding Authenticity... where your truth lies

As I was making my start of the year plans, I reflected on the date.
2024.
10 years.
January 2014, Julie Dean Voice Studio, was born.
I started my own business 10 years ago!!

I was a different person then. It’s when I started seeking. Seeking a sense of home, in myself, and in my relationships, and in my professional life.

Starting my business was the beginning of a transformative life. I was scared and unsure of many personal things, but the one thing I knew for sure, is that I wanted to meet my clients where they were on their voice journey, and help them get the sounds they desired. Creating JDVS was the easiest step on this journey.

My business and beautiful clients have sustained me this last decade through a lot of personal growth, a successful divorce, a budding songwriting and performing career, a pandemic and the grief that comes with too much love and loss. The more I grew and changed, and followed my heart, the more authenticity I brought to the studio. 

In these 10 years of private practice teaching and coaching singers, I’ve changed my focus a little here or there. As my knowledge and expertise grew in focusing on popular singing styles and songwriting, my clientele shifted, our formats for performance did too. 

I was not prepared for (who was?!) the shifts that came 4 years ago. And, I’m grateful for them too.

Ride the Tides that come…

I think back to summer 2020 and how I felt a bit like I was drowning from all sides of life. Some people took to baking bread or crocheting. I started writing. A lot. It felt like breathing again.

I started reading The Artist’s Way in an online book club April 2020, as a way to be in community in a very isolated time, and a way to connect to other creative people as I was overwhelmed and feeling a bit lost. One of book’s directives is to write daily “morning pages”; although I often wrote in the afternoon. 

I had a regular songwriting practice for about 5 years, but as I needed to move my business online, figure out care for my mother’s progressing Alzheimer’s, and all round distracted by pandemic fear, my creative juices for songs came to an empty squeeze.

Joining the Artist’s Way book club was my way of staying connected to creative roots. It ended up being a healing tool that I didn’t expect. 

I’ve been a singer my whole life; my identity was tied into it; it has more or less shaped my career, and in this scary time, the last thing I wanted to do was sing. I wanted to write! 

By the end of the summer, I was writing on the beach until my hand hurt. I took a walk and came back to my chair and wrote another couple of hours. I couldn’t write fast enough. 

Wasn’t sure what I was writing; like my journal practice went rogue! I just knew it felt good. Funny enough, the writing started as a revelation about how singing once saved me; and discovering it was a lifeline, and maybe I didn’t need it anymore, would I still want to sing. Because writing was now my air. I’ve always breathed easier by the sea too.

2020 was the time to go with the flow; fingers crossed and see what washed up. So much was out of our control; so much uncertain.

Grief - the next path…

As uncertain and chaotic as 2020 was, I had no idea the definitive grief that was in store the next year. Good grief! Literally! 

I bought a house. It was broken into 2 months after I moved in. My mom was committed to memory care. My dad died. And, those are just the hills in a very curvy mountainous year.

When summer 2021 came around, I sought the refuge of the ocean’s tides again to find what new self was emerging.

When the unexpectedness of 2020 came, I shifted my focus on my current clients’ needs outside of singing songs. People needed community, connection, confidence, assurance. I created new online classes in addition to the private lessons that moved to Zoom.

As I was doing more personal work healing from trauma in 2021, I started to see the connection between understanding and expressing my emotions, and more ease and confidence with my voice. So, once again, I wrote beside the water. The more I wrote, the more confident and definitive my internal voice became: Follow your heart; they will come.

JDVS 2.0 would purposefully 

- explore emotional processing, understanding and expression (in life and in song) 

- explore songwriting, and incorporate journaling practices to access creativity

- redefine Performance - started noticing the difference of needing confidence versus needing self worth 

As I was in deep nervous system regulation recovery, I was bringing a new energy into the studio; and I became more conscious about creating a safe container. 

My harmony class started to meet in person again late in 2021 and someone asked if we could gather and commune and sing together on a retreat. That’s when I dreamed up…

Heart Centered Voice Beach Retreats.  

I asked my students if they’d like to do more purposeful work around emotional expression, artistic and personal growth with singing and writing being our creative vehicles. Indeed, many were interested!

I’ve held 5 retreats with 25 beautiful souls since the spring of 2022. 

Perhaps because I spent more time at the beach with my clients, I didn’t feel a call to go sequester and write that summer. I was in a zone. Found a niche I was happy with, until…

Another personal shift occurred, summer of 2023.

I was feeling a deep insecurity around this new person I’d become. It felt good to me, but I felt unknown. I would gather with people I’d known over the years, and felt different. I had new priorities; new interests. Relationships shifted. I felt the need to explain myself (kind of like what I’m writing here today!). We all have a need to be seen and heard; to be known.

My big shift was that I started seeing myself. And, have been trying to let that be enough. It’s powerful. Maybe everyone doesn’t have that insecurity where we yearn for attention and approval, but it was strong in me. I needed to be that witness for myself. Of all the work that I do in the world, is it enough that I do it because it’s meaningful? Or, do I need people to recognize it...me? Something clicked.

A new knowing, a settling. Maybe I’m enough.

Seems like when I became more able to find regulation (being able to deal with the stresses of life more easily), I found a new kind of grounding and lightness in spirit. This practice of toggling between “stress” and “you’re ok” opened up another path of connection between my heart and my voice… a security and confidence, in my words, and in my songs.

I amped up more intense nervous system therapeutic learning/training in the fall, so that I could mindfully bring more grounding and regulating exercises into the studio.

Here we are at the start of 2024, and as I celebrate a decade of training/coaching singers, I allow my personal evolution to find meaningful professional purpose too. 

Introducing JDVS 3.0 

voice exploration with Julie…

• Find where your heart and voice connect.

• Find acceptance of self and find more space for loving your voice. 

• Practice more self-compassion and allow the emotions to show up in your voice.

• Practice less judgment and sing more freely.

• Understand how your nervous system works, and practice voice work within the realms of regulation and dysregulation

• Practice different breath and vocal patterns and allowing your voice to show up differently every day

• Practicing Authenticity and Finding yourself within your voice, and your voice within you.

Finding that magic intersection where peoples’ desires connect with what is meaningful for me has been working so far. 

Every time I have made a shift, either they’ve come along with me, or the new ones have found me.

So far, Field of Dreams has been right: “Build it and they will come!”

This shift feels like the most authentic version of me. Authentic? the most right; truest form, original.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, says, “The accurate mapping out of our own creative interests that invites the term Original. We are the origin of our art… originality is the process of remaining true to ourselves

In this spirit of finding what is true for you, right now, how can you connect with your most authentic voice? This is where your heart and voice meet. There lies contentment.

If you knew they would come, what would you build?

Please let me know what resonates! If there is a nugget you liked and would like to share, you can highlight, copy and Substack will create a lovely shareable image.

💙 Julie