I am not a big fan of email chain letters. I’m just superstitious enough that the threat of something bad happening to me if I don’t forward the letter to my friends – which is frequently the last line of a chain letter – makes me delete the unsolicited offerings before I open them. Such was the case with the missive titled, “Phenomenal Woman” that I received several times in late 1998. I resisted opening it the first few times I saw it, but finally, curiosity got the better of me.
Upon opening it, I discovered it was the poem of the same name by Dr. Maya Angelou. I was immediately struck by the message of the work. I loved the way Maya expressed, simply and powerfully, that the true wellspring of a woman’s attractiveness has little to do with the size of her pants and everything to do with the size of her soul. When I read the lines:
It’s in the fire of my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet
It made me think of the women who I admire. And I realized that I don’t think of them in a frozen moment, like a photograph; I think of them in action – talking, laughing, communicating. I realized that when their features are lit with their intelligence and passion, it transforms their faces, their very beings. And if I’m interested in what they have to say, I’m not conscious of their various physical attributes. Their faces and figures are infused with the workings of their hearts. It’s their energy and vivaciousness that I recall when thinking of them.
And Maya not only captured this idea in her poem, she then goes on to say:
I’m a woman
Phenomenal woman
Baby that’s me
The nerve! The chutzpah! To enumerate all these effervescent qualities, and to acknowledge that she herself had them! But then I thought, of course – unless you’re able to tell yourself that you’re phenomenal, you won’t ever believe anyone else who says it to you. As women, we are so conditioned to be modest and unassuming, and to not toot our own horns. In the latter half of the twentieth century, we’ve also begun to hold ourselves to a nearly impossible standard of physical perfection. We’ve subjected ourselves to a tyranny of self-hatred, and with many young girls, the quest for unattainable beauty starts from a frighteningly early age. And as the mother of a daughter, I don’t want my daughter to fall into the trap of valuing herself primarily by her appearance.
I read and re-read the poem, and I thought, this would make an incredible song. It could be more than a song – it could be an anthem of self-love and self-empowerment. So I thought, all I have to do is get in touch with Maya and see if I can get her permission to set it to music.
Several months went by without her people responding to my person. I was aware that she was highly in demand as a speaker and teacher and writer, and that she probably traveled a lot and that it might take some time to make contact. As each passing month went by, I kept a copy of the poem in my purse, turning over in my mind how I would set it to music if I got her permission. As time dragged on, however, I was starting to get a little discouraged. But I somehow felt it was meant to be.
In September of 1999, I was booked to appear on the “Dini Petty Show”, to promote my then current CD, ”Burnt By The Sun”. As is customary before an appearance on a talk show, you do a pre-interview so that the host can prepare questions. The day before the show I was speaking with Morley Nirnberg, one of Dini’s producers. We had a lively discussion regarding the range of influences that had gone into making my new record. I was at the time, as usual, multi-tasking – combining the conversation with my daily hour-long walk.
As the conversation closed, I found myself on the stretch of Spadina just north of Casa Loma. And Morley wrapped up the conversation by saying, “Well, I think it’s going to be a great show. We have you, we have Sark (the wonderful author of the best-selling books Succulent Women and Wild Women Do), and we have Dr. Maya Angelou.
I literally stopped my hiking in my tracks. “Maya Angelou – you’re joking right?!” Morley said no; as long as her bus made it into town in time, she was coming on the show to promote her feature film directorial debut. I said, “Did you hear that I have been trying to contact her for months?”
“No,” said Morley. “I didn’t know that. Why?”
“I have been dying to get her permission to set her poem, Phenomenal Woman, to music. You have to get me two minutes with her backstage!”
Morley promised he would do what he could. The next day, I arrived at the show, and went into hair and makeup. I had recently cropped my hair very short and spiky and dyed it platinum blond in preparation for making a music video. After a lifetime of long, curly brown hair, it was quite a transition, but it suited the style of the music on the record. It also required quite a bit of makeup to make the hair color look credible with my skin tone. I was performing the current single, “Waterfall”, on the show, which was one of the most rock-influenced songs I had ever recorded, and I was dressed in the fairly sexy black leather pants, pale green sequined t-shirt and black hooded top that I had worn in the video. I thought the look was good for the video, but I still kind of missed my earth mother makeup and naturally curly mane of hair.
For all the years I have been in show business, I have rarely gotten down to the underweight size all female performers sadly aspire to – and the few times I have, I never maintained it for long. However, at the time of this TV show, I was ironically on the svelte side. But as anyone who has ridden the roller coaster of weight gain and loss knows, even if you look slim, inside you is always the knowledge of how it feels to be heavier. And sadly, I don’t think one ever feels as thin as they look. So I totally related to the first stanza of the poem with the lines:
Pretty women wonder
Where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit
A fashion model’s size.
Even though the weight I was at the time would be considered attractive for a normal person, it was still a few sizes too large for the industry standard for a performer. But on that day I worried, for the first time in my life, that I was actually too thin for the role I was about to play.
So there I was, scantily clad, overly primped and slim, waiting for Maya’s arrival, and thinking that I didn’t look at all like the person who would understand how to set a poem about valuing inner versus outer beauty to music. I actually thought I looked like an overly coiffed Hollywood version of a pop star. But I remembered the message of the poem, which emphasizes that it is what is going on inside you that draws people to you. And I knew my heart was in the right place.
So I was sitting outside the green room, to be able to see who was approaching, when I heard a commotion down the hall. I saw a cluster of people, with a very tall black woman in the center. She was striding purposefully and seemed to be issuing orders. I realized it was Maya, and she and her group were quickly ushered into a dressing room and the door closed.
I got up and tried to find Morley to make an introduction, but he was unavailable. I sat down in my chair, looked at my watch and realized we were awfully close to show time, and if I didn’t get to her now, I might miss my chance.
In spite of being a performer, I’m actually quite a shy person, especially when it comes to asking for things for myself. I was at that time only three years into my performing career, having spent the previous thirteen of my professional life behind the scenes, writing songs for other people. I hadn’t yet developed the confidence that comes from success, and I had a manager who usually represented my interests for me. So my heart was thumping loudly when I approached her dressing room door, feeling all of a sudden like an impostor on an impossible mission. I was a still emerging Canadian performer, not known in the States, so not known to Maya, and I was about to request of the American poet laureate, and the woman I had seen speaking on TV at President Clinton’s inauguration, permission to write music to an incredible poem. I didn’t even know at the time how well known the poem was, that it was already twenty-years-old, and that it was the poem Oprah Winfrey recited when she did her empowerment seminars. Good thing I didn’t, or I may well not have summoned the courage to knock on her door.
When I did, and was bade to enter, I saw Maya enduring an eye brow plucking from her own makeup artist that she was none too happy about, and was letting him know in no uncertain terms. She looked regal and fierce, and my mouth went dry. I apologized for intruding, I told her my name and that I was a Canadian singer and songwriter, also a guest on the show that day; that I loved her poem, Phenomenal Woman, and had been trying for quite some time to contact her about setting it to music.
She literally looked me up and down, and I cringed inwardly as she took in the makeup, hair and clothes. But as if she saw past the get up and into my heart, she said, “You know Amy, I have always said people are more alike than they are unalike.” She paused, looked at me some more, and thought. Then she said “I have other poems that people have set to music, but for twenty years I have wanted someone to set that poem to music, and no one has asked me.” Another pause. “So yes, you may do it.”
It is so hard to turn off our inner critic. All of us, at times struggle with low self-esteem. We obsess about the image we see in our bathroom mirrors – in the harsh light of day, magnifying all physical imperfections and showing us a face full of fear and judgment. We forget to look in the real mirror – the cosmic mirror that reflects our true selves – the eyes of the people who love us.
I felt my cheeks heat and my throat clog up. I was afraid I was about to babble something stupid that would make her change her mind; so before I could say something I would regret, I thanked her respectfully and excitedly, and asked her for a contact number. I had the foresight to bring a pad of paper and pencil, and she wrote down the name and number of her assistant. Then I made a quick exit, went into my own dressing room and jumped up and down in my three-inch high heeled boots!
I went into the green room, where Dini had come in to greet her guests before the show. I told her about what had just happened with Maya, and she said that the story fit in perfectly with her theme that day about actualizing your dreams. I had been on the show several times before, and was comfortable with Dini who always asked informed and well-articulated questions. So during my segment, we talked about the encounter with Maya, and Dini invited me to come back on the show and sing the song once it was done.
I learned three valuable lessons from this experience. Firstly, it was another manifestation of the little voice inside listening to your instinct. From the day I read the poem, I felt something click in me. I knew I was meant to help take Maya’s message to another level. It’s kind of like looking through the viewfinder of a camera – the image is fuzzy until you adjust the focus, and that moment when you do, the picture is clear. We often have those moments of instinct, but we don’t always follow them. Having felt that click with the poem, and acted on it until it came to fruition, – it has taught me to listen to the click more often in my life.
Secondly, it was a graphic example of the power of positive thinking. What were the chances that Maya and I would end up on the same TV show together, months after I had started to seek her out? But I felt like that poem that I carried in my purse was a magnet, always in my consciousness, somehow drawing her into my life. They say be careful what you wish for. Well, in this case, I wished for the right thing and it did come true. It helped me to realize that anything is possible, if you believe in it even against all odds and for the right reasons. If you have a dream that you are seeking, keep it in your purse!
And finally, by writing the song and performing it time and again, the greatest gift of this experience has been that I have learned to truly understand it’s message, and honestly internalize it. Being a middle-aged woman in a youth-obsessed culture is hard. But being a middle-aged woman in the youth-driven music business borders on the masochistic. Maya’s message, however, has helped me to understand what fundamentally makes a person attractive. It is living your life with humour, respect, compassion and above all, self-love that creates the energy that draws people to you.
It is so hard to turn off our inner critic. All of us, at times struggle with low self-esteem. We obsess about the image we see in our bathroom mirrors – in the harsh light of day, magnifying all physical imperfections and showing us a face full of fear and judgment. We forget to look in the real mirror – the cosmic mirror that reflects our true selves – the eyes of the people who love us.
In the years that followed the recording of “Phenomenal Woman”, I performed the song countless times across the country. I was gratified by the tears and cheers of women who took the message to heart. One of the most touching comments came from a fan who waited to speak to me after a show. She said to me, “Before I came to the show tonight, I thought that I had never done or been anything that wasn’t ordinary. Now I realize that I am phenomenal too!”
My favorite performance of the song happened in September of 2003. Maya came to Toronto to speak to a crowd of 5,000 people, mostly women. I was asked to open the show by singing the song. I knew that the majority of the crowd would be familiar with the poem, and certainly familiar with the message. Maya’s fans come to hear her speak to be inspired, and she never lets them down. So, I felt the rush of recognition, not just of the song, but of the message of the evening – that we are all phenomenal, right now, in this moment, for being exactly who we are. Singing the song to 5,000 expectant and enlightened faces was very powerful and moving.
When I came down off the stage, Maya was waiting backstage to go on. She embraced me and said, “You were born to sing that song!” And she is right. I am – and so are we all.
I am not a big fan of email chain letters. I’m just superstitious enough that the threat of something bad happening to me if I don’t forward the letter to my friends – which is frequently the last line of a chain letter – makes me delete the unsolicited offerings before I open them. Such was the case with the missive titled, “Phenomenal Woman” that I received several times in late 1998. I resisted opening it the first few times I saw it, but finally, curiosity got the better of me.
Upon opening it, I discovered it was the poem of the same name by Dr. Maya Angelou. I was immediately struck by the message of the work. I loved the way Maya expressed, simply and powerfully, that the true wellspring of a woman’s attractiveness has little to do with the size of her pants and everything to do with the size of her soul. When I read the lines:
It’s in the fire of my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet
It made me think of the women who I admire. And I realized that I don’t think of them in a frozen moment, like a photograph; I think of them in action – talking, laughing, communicating. I realized that when their features are lit with their intelligence and passion, it transforms their faces, their very beings. And if I’m interested in what they have to say, I’m not conscious of their various physical attributes. Their faces and figures are infused with the workings of their hearts. It’s their energy and vivaciousness that I recall when thinking of them.
And Maya not only captured this idea in her poem, she then goes on to say:
I’m a woman
Phenomenal woman
Baby that’s me
The nerve! The chutzpah! To enumerate all these effervescent qualities, and to acknowledge that she herself had them! But then I thought, of course – unless you’re able to tell yourself that you’re phenomenal, you won’t ever believe anyone else who says it to you. As women, we are so conditioned to be modest and unassuming, and to not toot our own horns. In the latter half of the twentieth century, we’ve also begun to hold ourselves to a nearly impossible standard of physical perfection. We’ve subjected ourselves to a tyranny of self-hatred, and with many young girls, the quest for unattainable beauty starts from a frighteningly early age. And as the mother of a daughter, I don’t want my daughter to fall into the trap of valuing herself primarily by her appearance.
I read and re-read the poem, and I thought, this would make an incredible song. It could be more than a song – it could be an anthem of self-love and self-empowerment. So I thought, all I have to do is get in touch with Maya and see if I can get her permission to set it to music.
Several months went by without her people responding to my person. I was aware that she was highly in demand as a speaker and teacher and writer, and that she probably traveled a lot and that it might take some time to make contact. As each passing month went by, I kept a copy of the poem in my purse, turning over in my mind how I would set it to music if I got her permission. As time dragged on, however, I was starting to get a little discouraged. But I somehow felt it was meant to be.
In September of 1999, I was booked to appear on the “Dini Petty Show”, to promote my then current CD, ”Burnt By The Sun”. As is customary before an appearance on a talk show, you do a pre-interview so that the host can prepare questions. The day before the show I was speaking with Morley Nirnberg, one of Dini’s producers. We had a lively discussion regarding the range of influences that had gone into making my new record. I was at the time, as usual, multi-tasking – combining the conversation with my daily hour-long walk.
As the conversation closed, I found myself on the stretch of Spadina just north of Casa Loma. And Morley wrapped up the conversation by saying, “Well, I think it’s going to be a great show. We have you, we have Sark (the wonderful author of the best-selling books Succulent Women and Wild Women Do), and we have Dr. Maya Angelou.
I literally stopped my hiking in my tracks. “Maya Angelou – you’re joking right?!” Morley said no; as long as her bus made it into town in time, she was coming on the show to promote her feature film directorial debut. I said, “Did you hear that I have been trying to contact her for months?”
“No,” said Morley. “I didn’t know that. Why?”
“I have been dying to get her permission to set her poem, Phenomenal Woman, to music. You have to get me two minutes with her backstage!”
Morley promised he would do what he could. The next day, I arrived at the show, and went into hair and makeup. I had recently cropped my hair very short and spiky and dyed it platinum blond in preparation for making a music video. After a lifetime of long, curly brown hair, it was quite a transition, but it suited the style of the music on the record. It also required quite a bit of makeup to make the hair color look credible with my skin tone. I was performing the current single, “Waterfall”, on the show, which was one of the most rock-influenced songs I had ever recorded, and I was dressed in the fairly sexy black leather pants, pale green sequined t-shirt and black hooded top that I had worn in the video. I thought the look was good for the video, but I still kind of missed my earth mother makeup and naturally curly mane of hair.
For all the years I have been in show business, I have rarely gotten down to the underweight size all female performers sadly aspire to – and the few times I have, I never maintained it for long. However, at the time of this TV show, I was ironically on the svelte side. But as anyone who has ridden the roller coaster of weight gain and loss knows, even if you look slim, inside you is always the knowledge of how it feels to be heavier. And sadly, I don’t think one ever feels as thin as they look. So I totally related to the first stanza of the poem with the lines:
Pretty women wonder
Where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit
A fashion model’s size.
Even though the weight I was at the time would be considered attractive for a normal person, it was still a few sizes too large for the industry standard for a performer. But on that day I worried, for the first time in my life, that I was actually too thin for the role I was about to play.
So there I was, scantily clad, overly primped and slim, waiting for Maya’s arrival, and thinking that I didn’t look at all like the person who would understand how to set a poem about valuing inner versus outer beauty to music. I actually thought I looked like an overly coiffed Hollywood version of a pop star. But I remembered the message of the poem, which emphasizes that it is what is going on inside you that draws people to you. And I knew my heart was in the right place.
So I was sitting outside the green room, to be able to see who was approaching, when I heard a commotion down the hall. I saw a cluster of people, with a very tall black woman in the center. She was striding purposefully and seemed to be issuing orders. I realized it was Maya, and she and her group were quickly ushered into a dressing room and the door closed.
I got up and tried to find Morley to make an introduction, but he was unavailable. I sat down in my chair, looked at my watch and realized we were awfully close to show time, and if I didn’t get to her now, I might miss my chance.
In spite of being a performer, I’m actually quite a shy person, especially when it comes to asking for things for myself. I was at that time only three years into my performing career, having spent the previous thirteen of my professional life behind the scenes, writing songs for other people. I hadn’t yet developed the confidence that comes from success, and I had a manager who usually represented my interests for me. So my heart was thumping loudly when I approached her dressing room door, feeling all of a sudden like an impostor on an impossible mission. I was a still emerging Canadian performer, not known in the States, so not known to Maya, and I was about to request of the American poet laureate, and the woman I had seen speaking on TV at President Clinton’s inauguration, permission to write music to an incredible poem. I didn’t even know at the time how well known the poem was, that it was already twenty-years-old, and that it was the poem Oprah Winfrey recited when she did her empowerment seminars. Good thing I didn’t, or I may well not have summoned the courage to knock on her door.
When I did, and was bade to enter, I saw Maya enduring an eye brow plucking from her own makeup artist that she was none too happy about, and was letting him know in no uncertain terms. She looked regal and fierce, and my mouth went dry. I apologized for intruding, I told her my name and that I was a Canadian singer and songwriter, also a guest on the show that day; that I loved her poem, Phenomenal Woman, and had been trying for quite some time to contact her about setting it to music.
She literally looked me up and down, and I cringed inwardly as she took in the makeup, hair and clothes. But as if she saw past the get up and into my heart, she said, “You know Amy, I have always said people are more alike than they are unalike.” She paused, looked at me some more, and thought. Then she said “I have other poems that people have set to music, but for twenty years I have wanted someone to set that poem to music, and no one has asked me.” Another pause. “So yes, you may do it.”
It is so hard to turn off our inner critic. All of us, at times struggle with low self-esteem. We obsess about the image we see in our bathroom mirrors – in the harsh light of day, magnifying all physical imperfections and showing us a face full of fear and judgment. We forget to look in the real mirror – the cosmic mirror that reflects our true selves – the eyes of the people who love us.
I felt my cheeks heat and my throat clog up. I was afraid I was about to babble something stupid that would make her change her mind; so before I could say something I would regret, I thanked her respectfully and excitedly, and asked her for a contact number. I had the foresight to bring a pad of paper and pencil, and she wrote down the name and number of her assistant. Then I made a quick exit, went into my own dressing room and jumped up and down in my three-inch high heeled boots!
I went into the green room, where Dini had come in to greet her guests before the show. I told her about what had just happened with Maya, and she said that the story fit in perfectly with her theme that day about actualizing your dreams. I had been on the show several times before, and was comfortable with Dini who always asked informed and well-articulated questions. So during my segment, we talked about the encounter with Maya, and Dini invited me to come back on the show and sing the song once it was done.
I learned three valuable lessons from this experience. Firstly, it was another manifestation of the little voice inside listening to your instinct. From the day I read the poem, I felt something click in me. I knew I was meant to help take Maya’s message to another level. It’s kind of like looking through the viewfinder of a camera – the image is fuzzy until you adjust the focus, and that moment when you do, the picture is clear. We often have those moments of instinct, but we don’t always follow them. Having felt that click with the poem, and acted on it until it came to fruition, – it has taught me to listen to the click more often in my life.
Secondly, it was a graphic example of the power of positive thinking. What were the chances that Maya and I would end up on the same TV show together, months after I had started to seek her out? But I felt like that poem that I carried in my purse was a magnet, always in my consciousness, somehow drawing her into my life. They say be careful what you wish for. Well, in this case, I wished for the right thing and it did come true. It helped me to realize that anything is possible, if you believe in it even against all odds and for the right reasons. If you have a dream that you are seeking, keep it in your purse!
And finally, by writing the song and performing it time and again, the greatest gift of this experience has been that I have learned to truly understand it’s message, and honestly internalize it. Being a middle-aged woman in a youth-obsessed culture is hard. But being a middle-aged woman in the youth-driven music business borders on the masochistic. Maya’s message, however, has helped me to understand what fundamentally makes a person attractive. It is living your life with humour, respect, compassion and above all, self-love that creates the energy that draws people to you.
It is so hard to turn off our inner critic. All of us, at times struggle with low self-esteem. We obsess about the image we see in our bathroom mirrors – in the harsh light of day, magnifying all physical imperfections and showing us a face full of fear and judgment. We forget to look in the real mirror – the cosmic mirror that reflects our true selves – the eyes of the people who love us.
In the years that followed the recording of “Phenomenal Woman”, I performed the song countless times across the country. I was gratified by the tears and cheers of women who took the message to heart. One of the most touching comments came from a fan who waited to speak to me after a show. She said to me, “Before I came to the show tonight, I thought that I had never done or been anything that wasn’t ordinary. Now I realize that I am phenomenal too!”
My favorite performance of the song happened in September of 2003. Maya came to Toronto to speak to a crowd of 5,000 people, mostly women. I was asked to open the show by singing the song. I knew that the majority of the crowd would be familiar with the poem, and certainly familiar with the message. Maya’s fans come to hear her speak to be inspired, and she never lets them down. So, I felt the rush of recognition, not just of the song, but of the message of the evening – that we are all phenomenal, right now, in this moment, for being exactly who we are. Singing the song to 5,000 expectant and enlightened faces was very powerful and moving.
When I came down off the stage, Maya was waiting backstage to go on. She embraced me and said, “You were born to sing that song!” And she is right. I am – and so are we all.