Be provoked to dream again – Elizabeth Borez

I had the privilege to chat with a woman with the voice of an angel. She held position with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Carmen McRae and powerful vocalists pioneering the stage in a male dominated world.

Her rendition of “Fever” by Peggy Lee put you in an era of sultry moods and wispy dreams… and that brings me to today’s chat – dreams. Many people say that life is “made up of dreams that have been fulfilled” and if your dream has not been fulfilled, you have not lived yet. This is a scary thought…

This dear woman, Tracy, and I chatted about her life: where she came from, her highs and lows, where she is going. It turns out that she has this huge dream inside of her: to sing on a stage. She saw herself perform in front of massive audiences. She experienced, in her dreams, the butterflies before the performance, how the audience gasped when she hit her first notes and how they gave her a standing ovation her afterwards.

She grew up, got married, had kids, started a business and she shelved her dream by putting it in a gilded jewellery box and in her cupboard…high up… and closed the door. Then at 40 her kids did not “need her” anymore and she hit a crisis that literally brought her cart to a standstill… Then her dream started stirring inside of her, it whispered in her spiritual ear and there was an awakening within her. But with that came the other voices, the voices of reason and the negative voices. Still, she took that dream, dusted it off, and started living it; tentative and cautious at first, but soon it gained momentum. At 42 she came alive again, more so than ever because now she is living her dream… the dream in her since she gave her first breath. Her dream is still in its infancy, but she is nurturing it and feeding it and growing it because in the future her dream will connect with the reality of that standing ovation.