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A Blessing in Disguise

How being born prematurely created my passion for singing, and how my passion for singing helped me overcome my fear of life.

By Leanne TarrabPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 8 min read
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Me singing "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John in 12th grade.

I was born two months prematurely. I weighed three pounds, and I came out with jaundice, pneumonia, and a hole in my heart. You could say I was uncooked. I had dark coarse hair all over my pale body, and my parents constantly tell me I looked like a malnourished monkey.

My mother was concerned that I would have learning disabilities. She freaked out my grandfather, and he thought that placing a walkman in my incubator and playing music would somehow allow my brain to recuperate. So, for the first six weeks of my life, the most sound I heard was the classical music playing inside of my incubator.

If my grandpa hadn't made the decision to put a walkman in my incubator, I wouldn't be who I am today. His gift of music gave me my most cherished passion and my most valuable talent.

However, the dream was hard to grasp at first.

When I was four years old, I suffered a terrible bout of stage fright during a Purim Festival. I froze on stage, fell to the ground, and started crying. Unfortunately, there's plenty of video footage to prove it. For years following that experience, I avoided all public attention, hiding behind my mother’s legs wherever I went. I barely spoke, let alone sang. I felt like I was in an incubator again. Music made sense to me, but the vibrations of the outside world didn't. I hated talking to people, I hated going outside, and all I wanted to do was focus on the song in my head.

Eventually, while in elementary school, my mother and my friends pushed me to do music extracurriculars. I began by performing with other students. I was comfortable within a large group, but I could never imagine myself gaining the courage to be a soloist. Still, I would sing in my room and in the car, imagining myself on a big stage and fantasizing all of the things my classmates would say if they found out that Leanne, the most timid and awkward girl in the class, could actually sing.

In eighth grade, I finally sang a solo to an audience. My piano teacher and I were working toward a performance for the elderly, and I prepared the national anthem. When I arrived to the senior home, I felt at ease. To this day, I don't know what calmed me the most: the cute therapy dogs walking around, the nice nurses, the classical music flowing out of record players, or the fact that most of the elderly who were going to see the recital were already sleeping.

I had absolutely no experience performing with a microphone, so I struggled with projecting my voice, but I managed to stay on tune and sing the correct words. After my performance, one resident came up to me.

“Young lady,” she said.

“Yes?” I asked.

“When you started singing, I remembered the day my son graduated high school. I never knew I could remember something that occurred so long ago. Never stop singing,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling.

“No,” she said, “Thank you.”

I was touched. Until that moment, I had never realized that my voice could have a healing or uplifting effect on other people. I saw this as a monumental sign to continue.

As a freshman in high school, I joined the beginner's choir. Unfortunately, being at a new school with a new music teacher made me a nervous wreck again. The first time my choir teacher asked me to sing for him, I could not get a single word out of my mouth. I will never forget the day. I felt humiliated, like all my hard work and practice was for nothing and I was back to where I was at that dreary Purim festival.

This took a toll on my self-esteem and self-worth. I had spent my entire life singing to myself and dreaming of singing for others. Now that I was in high school and paralyzed by the only class I actually wanted to take, I felt like I had no value or purpose being there. My fear of singing somehow turned into a fear of everything. I didn't care about fighting the anxiety growing inside of me, as it had already destroyed the one thing I loved. So, I let it pervade every aspect of my life. I developed generalized anxiety disorder, health anxiety, and worst of all, social anxiety. I could not talk to anyone beyond my two best friends, and being in six different classrooms a day with over a hundred kids was debilitating.

I always felt like I was behind everyone else and I needed to catch up. Being born ten weeks early, I thought that maybe I was never fully prepared for life. In fact, at fifteen years old, I felt like I didn't know how to live at all.

At one point, it felt like a light-switch turned on. I was devastated that I wouldn’t be able to pursue my dream simply because I was terrified of people looking at me or hearing me. But in the end, my desire to sing was so strong that it managed to get past that social anxiety wall that I had inside of me — almost like it was a ghost and it could pass right through it. My passion for singing overcame my anxiety.

Through encouragement from my teacher and my classmates, I took a risk and auditioned for my first choir solo. I had my debut high school performance singing “The Times They Are A ’Changing" by Bob Dylan. Yes, it was terrifying, but from then on I found it easier and easier to let myself go and sing my heart out in front of other people.

My junior year, I finally got into my school's a cappella group. I had auditioned for three years to be in the group, and getting in was my most prized achievement at the time. The group taught me to feel even more secure in myself. My senior year, I became co-director of the group, and I knew exactly what I needed to do in order to make sure nobody felt the way I once felt as a timid underclassman. During rehearsals, I constantly encouraged people to step outside of their comfort zones so that they could become more confident in their talent. Above all, I wanted to help those struggling to overcome the barrier of fear so that they always associated music with happiness and not despair or hopelessness like I once did.

By the end of high school, I was singing almost every month in front of hundreds of people. I made my comfort zone bigger by constantly stepping outside of it, and since singing to me was once just as scary as talking or merely existing, life in general wasn’t so scary anymore.

Today, I am comfortable singing before thousands of people. I can hardly remember how terrified I used to feel being on stage. In fact, some of the most beautiful and carefree moments I've experienced in life thus far have occurred while singing in front of a big audience.

I attribute the incredible journey I've had to my premature birth, which I see as a blessing in disguise. I was born with pneumonia, jaundice, and a hole in my heart, but those issues went away with time. What stayed with me was my connection to music. Had I not arrived ten weeks early, perhaps my grandfather wouldn't have put a walkman in my incubator, and I would have never been blessed by the musical spell that has shaped me into the more creative and expressive person I am today.

Thanks to music, I have learned that it is okay to not feel confident all of the time, as confidence comes after the risk is taken. I've also learned that if you dive deep into something you love to do and take risks, your passion can equip you with the tools you need to cope with any obstacles or mental health problems that you might be going through. You just need to find your ghost that can pass through the impenetrable wall, and once the ghost is on the other side, it can reach the bulldozer and tear the wall down.

Now that my wall is down, I'm able to bring confidence to my other creative endeavors such as writing and acting. I've shared my screenplays with classmates, I've read my stories and poems to friends and family, and I've taken acting classes with complete strangers!

Of course, my journey isn't over. My next goal is to release an album of original songs I've been working on since I was fifteen. I'm terrified by the idea of sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings with the world, but I know that one day I will take the leap of faith, and when I do, my fear will turn into something beautiful once again.

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About the Creator

Leanne Tarrab

Hi! My name is Leanne. I'm from Los Angeles, California. I'm a singer, writer, and actress. I currently attend the University of California, Santa Barbara. I'm double-majoring in Sociology and Film & Media Studies.

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