Worthy

It is said music can heal a broken heart, restore a fragmented soul and regenerate the body. Me, being the skeptic gal, did not want to give credit to the mumbo jumbo of “music is universal” and “music helps to reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure and cortisol in the body”. If that was true, how come when I listen to Metallica, I just want to be in the middle of a boxing ring beating the hell out of something? No, sir. No ma’am. Music has a purpose and that is to entertain the masses or be a temporary band-aid for unwanted feelings. The universe, knowing how shallow I can be for my limited beliefs on occasion, decides to throw a curveball and show me, once and for all, the power in music when it comes to my self-esteem.

It came in the form of the one and only, India.Arie.

To understand this, let’s go back to 2019, more specifically, to the spring of 2019. Five months prior, I left everything in the Caribbean and moved to the US. Adjusting was somehow difficult in the beginning, but I was doing my best to cope. 2018 was not kind to me. I came out of a very difficult situation that left me full of doubts. “You are broken”. “You are a sinner”. “You will never be worthy of the love of God”. “You have disobeyed, and therefore, you will never write again”. I began a blog, and sure enough, I stopped writing after a couple of months. I started a YouTube channel, and after three videos, I stopped. I even put up a photography page on Instagram, and every picture I took was not good enough. I started to believe I was broken to the point of not going back to creating. Until one morning, when I was getting ready to mount my bicycle to go to work, a lady passed by in her car listening to this song:

I know your life, I felt your pain

I know your joys and your shames

Sometimes it feels like life walks over you, oh

Like you're a penny on the ground

But either on the ground or in your purse

The smallest piece still holds its worth

Every one of us is worthy

Baby girl, worthy woman

Every one of us is worthy

-Worthy, India.Arie

I recognized the voice. India.Arie was not unknown to me. Before Destiny’s Child became famous for singing about being an independent woman, India.Arie came to tell us to love our brown skins and that we were not our hair, but the soul that lives within. She was not new to the industry. To the world, India.Arie was Grammy Award-winning African American singer-songwriter and record producer. She has sold over 3.3 million records in the US and 10 million worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards from her 21 nominations, including Best R&B Album. To me, she was something else. She was not your conventional singer. She wore head wraps, intricate bangles, and rings. She played the guitar like a goddess. The songs she wrote and sang came from her sensitivity to understanding the human soul. “If I don’t love it, I don’t sing it”, she has said again and again. Contrary to other neo-soul singers that stayed in the mainstream and faded away, she had survived the tides of time and had become a force to be reckoned with. In her voice, honesty became the song that healed the broken heart, restored a fragmented soul, and regenerated the body. And yes, the skeptic in me became a believer. That day, I downloaded the whole album on my phone and listened to it all day in my office. I admit that I had to go to the ladies’ room a couple of times to fix my face because I was crying buckets. Her lyrics soothed my soul and little by little, the words came back to me. It became a songversation from her spirit to mine.

I hope, when this pandemic is over and we have some kind of normalcy (if we ever come back to that), that I have the chance to see India.Arie singing in person. She doesn’t know who I am, but I know who she is. And if God wills it, I just want to have the chance to say to her, “Thank you, Ms. Arie, for the music. You were the vessel that the Almighty used to heal me”.