Joan finds her voice

Todd helps Joan, a vocalist, make connections between the loss of her singing voice, three miscarriages, and her survival of a historic Amtrak train wreck. Along the way, we meet her daughters, learn how Indian ashrams and silent meditation retreats have been as important to Joan as her music, and discover the redeeming power of laughter. Todd's (three!) poems for Joan support her in her grief, affirm her choice to evolve her career as a composer, and present her with a surprising award. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even break out in song.

Chapters in this episode: 

1. Amtrak, Conrail, and Joan's fifth-car "wall"
2. Three boys lost in the second trimester
3. A dream choir and an expiration date
4. Daughters, mothers, and a lineage of strong women
5. Voice, meditation, and silence
6. The poem: "A Trophy"

Audio clip: 1987 Amtrak 20/20 Newsreel
Guest Joan Johnson Drewes website

Chapters

• 2:52 Amtrak, Conrail, and Joan's fifth-car "wall"
• 8:42 Three boys lost in the second trimester
• 13:12 A dream choir, and an expiration date
• 19:01 Daughters, mothers, and a lineage of strong women
• 20:41 Voice, meditation, and silence
• 26:01 The poem

Transcript

Todd  00:00

I know a woman who signed her name the same all her adult life through college and 20 years of marriage until the day she signed her divorce papers. On that day, instead of inking out the usual signature, she added a flower to it. The first letter of her name spontaneously sprouted a daisy. She told me that since that day, she’s never signed the same signature twice. Sometimes it features flowers. Sometimes hearts or a butterfly or two. Her signature isn't a thing of habit. It's not a static artifact of her identity, she says, but a living thing, ever changing. sprung free. Welcome. I'm Todd Boss. In this podcast, I help strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories. In this episode, Joan.

Joan  01:03

Hey, Todd, my name is Joan. And I think there's a poem in my life.

Todd  01:11

Joan left a voicemail on our listener line.

Joan  01:15

I'll start by saying that I was born in 1955. 

Todd  01:23

She had a lot to say. 

Joan  01:24

I sang my first solo when I was five years old, and I started playing piano by ear at age five. 

Todd  01:30 

She called back twice. 

Joan  01:35

Hi, this is Joan, part two. I feel a little ridiculous that I'm going on too long.

Todd  01:39

Mostly Joan was giving me her resume. She had gone to Berklee School of Music and worked with the prestigious Juilliard School. She had worked at Morgan Stanley, one of the world's biggest financial services firms, gone on multiple meditation retreats to ashrams in India. And it's all very impressive, but what made me want to talk to her, and I guess what impressed me the most, was the quaver I heard in her voice when she mentioned one particular detail.

Joan  02:08

In 1988, I became pregnant. And this is difficult, but in 1989 and 1990, I had three sons that were born prematurely in the second trimester. These devastating losses pretty much shifted my whole life focus.

Todd  02:33

Hearing Joan's voice, you get the sense that she's lived a lot of lives and gained a lot of perspective.

Joan  02:40

I've been through a lot. I've been a lot. I am a lot. I'm just a woman, traveling the path of life. If you're interested, my phone number is 631 [fade out]. 

Todd  02:53

I just wanted to hear more.  I called Joan at her home on Long Island. 

Joan  02:59

Hello?

Todd  03:02

Hi, Joan, how are you?

Joan  03:04

I'm good. I'm good.

Todd  03:05

Is this a good time? 

Joan 03:07

Yes.

Todd  03:05

Joan seems eager to be here. Joan, thanks for your detailed voice message in several parts.  I appreciate all that background.

Joan  03:23

Wait, did you think it was funny when I said, “This is Joan, part three?”

Todd  03:29

Yeah, it was great. You know that you're the one that taught me that my guest line is only five minutes long. I didn't know that before you came along. Joan has the slightly squirrely demeanor of a fourth grade girl with a sneaky secret. She listens intently. But when she speaks, she rocks back and forth a little bit and smiles almost conspiratorially, like a loner at a school dance who's grateful to have someone to talk to.

Joan  03:57

I couldn't believe that my life was interesting. I mean, you think, oh, I've had a life, and then for someone to say yeah, I actually think. And then I thought, well, everyone's life…there’s probably a poem in everyone's life. 

Todd  04:13

That's how I feel. 

Joan  04:14

Yeah, I'm sure you do.

Todd  04:18

Even though Joan had left me 15 minutes of voicemail, she wanted to start off by telling me about something she'd forgotten to mention.

Joan  04:25

I was in an Amtrak train wreck. 

Todd  04:27

Oh my goodness. 

Joan  04:29

In 1987. 

Todd 4:31

Wow. 

Joan  04:33

My husband was doing a show in Baltimore, and I went down for the weekend to visit him. On the way back, my husband said go to the front of the train. There's always seats in the front of the train. So I got on the train. And I started to go up towards the front and it was like, this wall came down. And I…I just stopped and I looked down, and there was a seat right there. So I took that seat, I didn't go further. And we were just outside of Baltimore. We didn't make it very far north. And all of a sudden, like out the window, there was…the train was shaking, and there was all this fire. And at first, I thought, Where am I like, am I at a movie? Like, what is this?

Todd  05:30

It was the biggest disaster in Amtrak history.

Newscaster  05:32

The final death toll was 16, including the Amtrak engineering.  More than 170 others were injured, many of them trapped in the wreckage until rescue workers could reach them. It was a non stop effort… [fade out]

Joan  05:45

The car had sort of slightly tilted, so we couldn't really get out these windows. And so we had to climb up and then out of the train, and then over…

Newscaster  05:54

The accident site was a scene of confusion, carnage, destruction…

Joan  05:59

And basically, just hundreds of people coming out of the train, standing in other people's back yard, you know, and they were coming out from their houses.

Newscaster 06:10

When the wreckage was cleared away, and the facts began to emerge, the engineer of the Conrail locomotive faced serious criminal charge. 

Joan  06:17

So what had happened, and how the accident happened was, my train was northbound, and there was a southbound train Conrail train coming.

Todd  06:27

The Conrail locomotive crew failed to stop at the signals before gunpow interlocking about 18 miles northeast of Baltimore.

Joan  06:34

And the engineer on the Conrail train was high.

Todd  06:39

He was supposed to pull his engines onto a siding and wait, but he just kept going.  

Joan  06:43

He smashed right into us at, like, 120 miles an hour. And the first four cars of the Amtrak train were totaled. And I was in the fifth car. I wasn't injured, though. I mean, I remember smashing into the seat and my glasses kind of went into my…I had some bruising here just from that. That was it.

Todd  07:08

Joan had called it a wall, something telling her not to go any further forward on the train. Did you? Did you feel any sense of foreboding around it? Or was it just a mandate?

Joan  07:22

It was like divine intervention. I was really being told, “you’re not going any further.” It was…it was a mandate. You're sitting here. Forget that your husband told you to go to the front of the train. And that was his first thought when he heard about the accident. Oh my god. I told her to go to the front of the train. I hope, as usual, she doesn't listen to me.

Todd  07:53

Wow.  Joan laughs a lot. And it's a whole body thing. She kind of seizes up, she goes breathless. She reels back like she's gasping, but she's not gasping. She's just kind of caught. It's silent, like a still frame. And then she comes popping forward, wiping tears away into a series of squeaks, like a mouse, just totally out of control. Totally infectious. And then she'll say, Oh, God,

Joan  08:23

Oh, God, yeah, I didn't listen to him. Thank God.

Todd  08:28

It’s great.  I mean, this was 1987. It was a long time ago now. But it's still great to hear you laugh about it. I wonder how soon afterwards you were able to take that light hearted approach.

Joan  08:42

You know, it's interesting, because that preceded my three miscarriages. So it was four years in a row really, that I had this significant trauma. And it woke me up to the reality of childbearing. And I never had a clue that, that that could even happen. I thought you just got pregnant then nine months later, you had a baby. And see the thing about my those losses was that it was second trimester. Which, it's a lot different than a first trimester. Not emotionally, or psychologically, but physically, it’s very different. I had to deliver the baby; it's fully formed. It's a miniature baby. And I just had a thought about that: at the very same timeframe, my husband's brother and his wife were having babies. Guess what they had, guess what they had? Three boys. Yeah. Well, that's why I say resilience?  Like, I could have killed somebody.

Todd  10:03

Well, adding insult to injury and it's not their fault, is it?

Joan  10:11

No.  But you know, instead of railing against the universe, I went to India to go further inside. You know, there's a thing called, um, joyful acceptance. Am I there? Did I ever really get that? I don't know. But that was the..um…I have to be getting something out of this. This is not just happening for no reason.

Todd  10:36

After all this, it wasn't until Joan's fourth pregnancy that doctors figured out what was going on: something called cervical insufficiency.

Joan  10:45

So he said, I know what the problem is. You can have a baby, recover from this, get pregnant, come back. And we did. 

Todd  10:56

Wow.  I can't imagine that headspace must have been a lot to overcome to trust that, that your body could be managed differently.

Joan  11:05

Yeah. Sometimes, I think that I didn't fully bond with my daughter when I was pregnant with her. Because I was afraid to lose that again. I may have never said that out loud, actually. But sometimes I wonder. Did I allow…I don't think I allowed myself to fully bond with that pregnancy. 

Todd  11:32

Who could blame me? 

Joan  11:36

Exactly. I don't blame myself. I just that was what was happening.

Todd  11:38

How many kids have you got now?

Joan  11:39

I have two daughters. Grace was born in 91. And Amalia was born in 93.

Todd  11:47

What do they know about all of this? Everything? 

Joan  11:50

Yeah, I old them. Yeah. I have a little remember box that has some memorabilia of the sonogram of he boys, not all of them. Because they didn't really do all of that back then. I even have a footprint of one of them from the delivery. I have a blanket that they were brought home in. And I realized that there's a couple of pictures of me and my husband from that time, and I'm standing just slightly behind him in both of them. And my body's not faced. It's kinda like this. And that's when I started to lose my self confidence, self esteem, believing in myself, because of that inability to control what had happened to my body.

Todd  12:50

Joan and her husband moved to Long Island in 1992.

Joan  12:54

I didn't plan on being a teacher. I was a performer. I was a vocalist. But by this time, we had had our first daughter and I had to do something for benefits and stability financial. So I did that.

Todd  13:12

As her daughters grew up, Joan realized how much she missed performing. She decided to get back in the game and auditioned for her dream choir.

Joan  13:34

I auditioned. I got in. I was so happy. This is going to be it for me. I'm going to retire, and I can..they only do two concerts a year. It's a limited commitment but oh so satisfying, gratifying.

Joan  13:56

I got my head into the music. I practiced every day. And then my voice gave out.

Todd  14:03

Joan noticed her voice changing and about 2016

Joan  14:08

Next thing I know, I'm leaving rehearsals. I told the conductor, I don't think I can, I’ll see you next week, something’s wrong.

Todd  14:16

She went to voice therapy to figure out what that something was.

Joan  14:20

I was told my vocal cords were flattening. They’re, they're like atrophied because they're still there, but they're not functioning properly.

Todd  14:30

Joan uses the word atrophy, which calls to mind something that's fallen out of use. It means to waste away, from Greek roots for undernourished. And it's a confusing word choice because Joan nourished her voice. She used it, used it plenty. It's almost like by using that word. she's blaming herself or blaming her body for a loss that simply couldn't be helped.

Joan  15:02

I mean, really, since, since 2017, I've been, I tried voice therapy, homeopathy, acupuncture, anything. 

Todd  15:12

She even had surgery on her vocal cords. Nothing worked. Her singing voice was just dead.

Joan  15:19

And I still have hope, I still think that the next thing I try is going to fix my voice. And then some days I don't care.

Todd  15:33

Everyone’s body, everyone’s voice, has an expiration date, to some extent. Time cracks all voices; you can't sing the high notes all your life. I asked Joan if she understood that.

Joan  15:47

That… that thought never entered my awareness: that there would be an expiration date. And there was so many plans for when I retired, like the music that I write, I could record it myself. But now I can't do that. So it just lives in my head or on paper or waits for someone to perform it. And if I try to sing it…I just I don't even try. It’s horrible.  

Todd  16:19

I wonder if you're hearing it like I did: the connection between Jan's loss of her boys and the loss of her voice?

Joan  16:29

I have to say: in a lot of ways, it's a worse loss than my three boys.

Todd  16:37

Joan bites her lip, as if she caught herself saying something wrong or shameful.

Joan  16:42

Yeah. Because with my voice, that's more of a loss of an identity. And because I owned it, I had that, that was my thing. My self-identity has always been:  I’m a vocalist, I'm a singer.  I sang my first solo when I was five. That was me.

Todd  17:05

Yeah. Your voice gave you a lifetime of joy. And then you had to say goodbye.

Joan  17:13

And not by my choice. It wasn't like, you know what? I'm just gonna focus on composing, and I'm not gonna sing anymore. I feel like the whole thing to write this music and get out there was like desperation. I have to identify with something. Because that's not available to me.

Todd  17:34

Did you ever lose a faculty that was central to your livelihood or your sense of identity? Like Beethoven famously losing his hearing, or like a chef losing her sense of taste, it's hard to imagine the depth of grief that would accompany such a loss. A loss that's directly related to your deepest passion.  How long would it take you to recover from losing the asset you hold most dear?

Joan  18:06

Some days, you know, I just tried to say, well, it's okay. You know, find something else. You have many gifts. And then some days, it's like, I just don't want to get out of there. But I never give into that. I never spend the day in bed.

Todd  18:22

Something gets you…something keeps you going. What are the things Joan, that keep you going?

Joan  18:28

I think my meditation, that's the first thing I do every morning. So I find that space. And that…that’s bigger than identifying with my voice. That…the identifying with my voice is, you know, I'm kind of evolving with the whole thing. It's a process. It's a huge loss. It's just a giant, giant hole. 

Todd  19:02

Joan says she derives a lot of strength from her mother.

Joan  19:06

My mother got divorced when I was, like, 13. And she was a single parent to four girls. And she was a nurse. So she worked the night shift in the intensive care unit. So mentally, she had to be brilliant. Emotionally, she had to be strong. And her mother was like that. I tell you, just the lineage of women in my family has been unbelievably strong. It's just strong.

Todd  19:40

She sees this strength in her daughters, too.

Joan  19:44

So I never wanted them to think that they were lesser than, like, I remember I took off for on a trip to India and I was like, I have to teach them that you have to do what you have to do. As a woman. You can't just say no, I have to stay home and stay spread. So yeah, a lot of really strong women.  And my oldest daughter, she works for Google. And she, in four years, got herself from an entry level position to a management position. And my other daughter, Amalya, is more artistic, more like walk barefoot in the woods. And they're completely opposite in many ways. But this part of following your inner call is there. And I see myself in both of them. It's pretty fulfilling.

Todd  20:36

Seeing herself in her daughter's has given Joan some perspective on her losses.

Joan  20:41

What we do doesn't define us, ultimately.  Like, people used to say, Oh, what do you do? I'm a teacher. Well, that doesn't really define me. I mean, that tells you something I do. So it's a process.

Todd  20:56

Yeah, yeah, that's a major shift.

Joan  21:01

And there's also that someone might need me. What if my daughter needs me that day? What if my friends need me that day, and I'm in bed feeling sorry for myself, you know?  I need to be vulnerable. I'm at a place where this protecting myself from vulnerability is not serving me well. But it's hard to be vulnerable. I think, especially when you're protecting yourself all the time. I love what Joan said next. I don't think everything's gonna come back. Even if my voice comes back. It's now, it's not then. And I'm willing, okay, I'm gonna say this out loud. I'm willing to accept that the future is going to be different than the past. Even if I'm still, you know, holding on, I'm willing, in this moment to say that.

Todd  22:04

This word willing, you're willing to say that you're actually willing yourself to say that.  What does it take for from you to will yourself to say that?

Joan  22:14

Complete honesty with myself?

Todd  22:18

And then haven't you been honest with yourself until about that until now?

Joan  22:23

I fight that a lot. No, I want it back the way it was. I want to sing with that choir and I want to do all those things, you know, but I don't think that's possible. Yeah. Like, what, what if I was willing to accept that? I am willing to accept that? Yeah, I came to that place. You know, that's actually not possible.

Todd  22:48

Was that scary? Was it heartbreaking? Where were you emotionally in that?

Joan  22:54

The willingness came at the end. And it's an exhausted place. Like, I'm exhausted from the emotion. And that's clear. Now it's clear that we're willing to sort of, like, clear the smoke, clear the gunk, clear the trigger, and see that. I don't know if humbling is the right word, but it's acceptance, at least, like that much…not that much, that much…surrender in a way, okay. I'm willing to surrender that dream or the path or what I thought, what I think should come back.

Todd  23:42

I have a lot of respect for the way you're approaching this and your resilience and your hard work. And all that you have to say about it.

Joan  23:53

Thank you.

Todd  23:57

I find it uniquely easy to share a silence with Joan. She's comfortable in silence. And that's a gift she shares with me when a silence comes into our conversation.

Joan  24:16

I firmly believe and experience that silence is the language of God. And in that expanse is the music I haven't written yet. It's there. And I feel like you have to know that space. 

Todd  24:40

Me? 

Joan  24:44

Yes, in your own writing. You have to know that you're a channel.  Those words are there. And suddenly, I don't know what your process is, but it's there. Where was it before?

Todd  25:00

Where was it before?

Joan  25:02

In this nothing that’s everything. Because you listen.

Todd  25:07

Yeah, I guess I haven't thought of it quite that way. I see Joan's point. But I also don't. Silence, for me, is not a source. It's just a place where I go to let the noises of the world subside. In the silence, those noises are sorting themselves out and the resonant bits are rising to the surface. Where was it before? I am, right now, locating the words that I'm listening to in you, Joan.  You’re the source, not the silence. This dialogue between us is the is the source. It's right there.

Joan  25:49

Right? Oh, that's great. I got chills. When you said 

Todd  25:55

Did you did you get chills?

Todd 26:01

You weren't aware of it. But when you tell a story, you employ all kinds of metaphors. Some of them are hidden in the very structure of the language. Others are more obvious. You aren't conscious of it. But you're making poetry of your daily life all the time. Joan's story is so loaded with metaphors, all I have to do is pick a few of the sturdiest ones and lean into those. There's a poem in that.  I’m Todd Boss. The first poem I wrote for Joan felt narrow; it only touched on a couple of aspects of her life. I felt like writing her a companion poem to go with it. So I did that. And that poem also seemed narrow. And then it occurred to me, I could write three.

Joan  26:50

You have three? 

Todd  26:52

I have one for each of the boys that you lost.

Joan  26:55

Oh, wow. Did you plan that?

Todd  26:59

It just sort of happened. I wrote one, and then another one started occurring to me. And then I thought, wow, I might have a third. And that felt right.

Joan 27:08

Wow.

Todd  27:11

I love it when some serendipitous bit of conversation sparks a poem. In this case, it was that moment when Joan opened one of our conversations by saying that she'd been triggered by my use of the word failure, that she'd reconsidered her use of the word atrophy, to describe the loss of her voice. Atrophy looks on the page, like “a trophy.” I wrote that down. What would I give Joan a trophy for? So Joan, I'm gonna send you this. It's called “A Trophy.” So let me know when you have it. 

Joan  27:52

I got it. 

Todd  27:54

Got that. I'll read it aloud. Is that okay? Okay. A trophy—Grammy sleek—sings it's glimmer into the limelight behind the podium where you lift it to your bosom as applause enfolds you like a mink—and in that pause, you think of your mother, how still she buoys you here past worry, past all fear of failure—and your speech is good, and there's a wild party after—but not til you’re home will you finger what's graved there:  your name, and then, Winner, Best Laughter

Joan  28:56

My God. I mean, I'm crying because I won the Best Laughter award.

Todd  29:11

Congratulations.

Joan  29:13

Wow.

Todd  29:19

I love your laughter Joan. I think I've said that before. It really is the best. And you know, it's amazing to me that you can laugh after all you've been through and that is a real source of strength, I think, and worthy of recognition. That's me behind the podium handing you that trophy.

Joan  29:43

Oh, I'm kind of speechless really. Will you read it again?

Todd  29:52

A trophy—Grammy sleek—sings it's glimmer into the limelight behind the podium where you lift it to your bosom as applause enfolds you like a mink—and in that pause, you think of your mother, how still she buoys you here past worry, past all fear of failure—and your speech is good, and there's a wild party after—but not til you’re home will you finger what's graved there:  your name, and then, Winner, Best Laughter.

Joan  30:39

This meant so much to me, I don't think you have any ideas.

Todd  30:43

If you think there's a poem in your story, leave me a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii listener line 808-300-0449 That's 808-300-0449.

Joan  30:57

It’s been life transforming and affirming and fun and serious and the whole gamut.

Todd  31:05

You can see photos of Joan, her daughters, her performances, plus read all three poems I wrote for her, and her responses to them, on our website, poeminthat.com.

Joan  31:16

I think you're an extraordinary human being.

Todd  31:19

I think you're an extraordinary human being Joan. There's A Poem in That is written and produced by me, Todd Boss, and co-producer Bronwen Clark. With support from executive producer Hila Plitmann and executive assistant Mallory Capri Henson. Audio support from Ben O'Brien. Original Music by Esh Whitacre. Special thanks to associate producers Susan and Ralph Duncan, Joan Johnson Drewes, Rena Wells, Uzi and Este Plitmann, and the 51 other Kickstarter backers who made this launch episode possible.

Joan  31:53

I have a trophy!