15. The dreams we long to forget
The rooms in your mind — where your English is kept — may appear to be locked. Dusty boxes and rusty memories fill the rooms, overflowing with all the English you ever knew and learned. Everything from every teacher, every song, and every trip — is stored there.
And it’s one big disorganized mess.
Sometimes it seems you can’t even access those rooms in your heart and mind. Or you can’t find the key to open the doors.
Other times — you find the key, get the courage to use it (by talking to the English-speaking stranger, or watching a movie in English)… and boom. It happens all over again.
You wish you had kept the door shut and locked, because all it does is remind you of what a mess it is in there.
Of all the English had and cannot use.
So you lock the door and remind yourself to stay away. You tell people that you “don’t speak English” or that “your English is bad.”
You do whatever you can — to protect yourself from the pain that comes when you open that door.
You may try to forget that those rooms exist. You may throw away the key.
I know this pain, for it was there for me, with music.
As a child, the piano and flute were instruments I had been good at playing. Playing music was something I truly loved. Then, at age 13, I locked the rooms connected to the part of me that “could have been a musician.”
For nearly three decades, just thinking about those rooms often caused me to cry.
Luckily, sometimes life doesn’t let you lose the key. And so it was — that I met Jeremias Fernández.
Between 2020 and 2023, this amazing music teacher and coach — helped me transform the emotional pain I was facing, USING the love I had for music.
Step by step, year after year, he helped me UNLOCK the doors where my music was kept, so I could play again.
In addition, during those four years, Jeremias became a mentor, as I began to offer a similar kind of teaching and coaching online.
The KEY we helped our students find was LOVE.
Yes, it takes time. Years. A lifetime. I’m still at it!
But working the way we do — doesn’t feel painful. It feels like healing. Like transformation. Like self-expression.
Yes, it can feel scary at times. But that’s what people like Jeremias and I are here for. It’s what we feel we were put on this earth to do.
To help you re-connect with the thing you used to love, whether it’s music or English. (Or both! :))
To start to use it again, so you can love it again. And so you can use it as the tool it is — to help you heal, transform, express yourself, and become who you truly are.