Courage to Sing

A tribute to Maya Angelou

When I was a teen, shortly after I finally spoke out about what happened to me as a child, a friend of mine bought me a book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings“. It was the last thing I wanted: a book about someone else’s abuse when all I wanted to do was heal from my own and be normal again. Maybe one day I would talk louder than a whisper. Maybe I’d sing again.

I never sang well. Music was for the other members of my family. But when I was a very young child, before anything happened to me, I loved to sing: loved it as much as playing.

Then my world fell apart and I wouldn’t sing any more. I would hardly talk. Darkness hovered over me like one of those biblical plagues.

My one place of refuge was poetry. When words danced in silence across the page, I could sing in my heart where no one would hear, no one would judge, no one would ask questions about the place inside my soul that burned with a constant pain.

When my friend told me that Maya Angelou was a poet, I finally cracked open the first page of her book. The words sang to me. They danced before me. They echoed not only the pain I felt, not only the circumstances, but the confusion, the yearnings, the grasping to be heard even when I was silent.

After I finished the book, I sat quietly for several days. I think I even told my mom I had a migraine just so I could stay home from school and think through what I had just experienced. It was something akin to camaraderie. I encountered someone who knew and had the courage to tell. I knew it’d give me the courage to tell. And it had given me the courage to sing.

I am thankful for Maya Angelou, and for a life lived courageously, fearlessly, full of forgiveness. Although I was sad to hear of her passing, I couldn’t cry, for I know she won’t just be singing. She’s a caged bird no longer, not in any way, shape or form. She’s soaring. Here’s to a poet among poets!