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I was a child who looked for magic doors. I knew, of course, that you can’t just go looking until you find one. The call will come to you, the story goes–but that means you must always be listening. So I tried to be ready as I spent my days dreaming of talking animals, of worthy quests. And of, I suppose, being special.

Children can find magic almost anywhere. As dreamers grow into the world, we learn to make our own magic–to muddle through until we are old enough for fairy tales again. We make it through acts of creation, trying to get as close as we can to the worlds we see in dreams. We do our best to make it through deeds of kindness and courage, trying to make those worlds real. 

You can sing a thousand songs to try to summon them, but the only times I’ve really touched them have come in the presence of other people who were reaching too. I can glimpse the worlds they want to conjure when we share our creations, and for a little while, we can inhabit them together. So I’ve never stopped looking for the magic doors. I’ve been lucky to find a few. Those moments of shared dreams have been the Realest of my life. 

I found so many others that were just painted onto brick walls. We all do. Too often we run at them on sight, only to end up bruised and betrayed. But every time I turned away from one, I was turning toward something else.

I started writing songs twenty-five years ago. I played them in bardic circles, in living rooms and around campfires. It wasn’t long before I undertook my first efforts to record and share those songs with a larger audience. Each time, something got in the way. I could tell you stories–it became almost comical. Though each failure was a disappointment, I kept my eyes forward, looking for the right doors.

Down the years from where I’ve been
To where and when I still don’t know

I’ve lived a little since I wrote my first songs. The album I would have made twenty or ten or even five years ago would be very different from the one I’m making now. I have some living room recordings of myself at seventeen. One song I wrote at twenty will take its place with those I’ve written in as many years since. It’s wistful in the way of a girl who has tasted heartbreak. Now there are songs that have drunk the whole bottle. 

I’ve come apart and back together. Nearly lost my voice and found it. Spent years in shadow and had my life restored to me.

When the time is right, the call will come.

It isn’t just the songs that are different, and it isn’t just me. In a way, I am the smallest part of it. What makes this moment special–what makes it *possible*–is that other people can see the dream, and they have reached out so we can all step through the door together. 

When you find your people, you know it. Everything falls into place. There aren’t enough words in the world to describe that magic. Whatever comes next, it is within this circle that I’ll always be reminded where it begins. In small dreams we shape into songs, then hold out to each other–around a fire, or on the beach, or in someone’s living room.

The key that opens the portal is connection. Friendship. Love.

And after all these years, I am stepping through the door that was meant for me.