Sharing our stories is important because it helps each of us to believe we have innate value just by virtue of existing. We live in a time where sharing vulnerability and authentic truth is not encouraged. It is better to avoid pain or suffering and to keep it inside in a hidden place. Many of the individuals…
Category: music
Music is the way forward
It’s been almost a year since my husband and I moved from France back to the small town in central Arizona where we had been living before moving to Belgium five years earlier. Sound confusing? Welcome to my life. I have been moving every two months to two years since I left my parents’ house…
Mondays On the Move: Give me a chance
This week’s “Mondays On the Move” song is called “Give me a chance.” We wrote this song with a young man from Yemen, who told us he was so grateful to Belgium for welcoming him. All he wanted was to be given a chance to give something back in return. This year has been a…
Mondays On the Move: Let me be free
It’s Monday and time for another “Mondays On the Move!” This week, Sarah and I quite literally on the move in different corners of the same country. Sarah is on holiday in the south of France with her family. I have been driving around the northern Nord-Pas-de-Calais region with my husband and our big white…
Mondays On the Move: I am the change
For our fourth installment of our new “Mondays On the Move” project to promote freedom of movement for all people, Sarah and I share a song we wrote with an asylum seeker from Gaza, who we met at the Fedasil Arrival Centre in 2017. With him, we wrote many songs. This song is called “I…
Mondays On the Move: I am a word
It’s Monday, and we are “On the move” again! If you are just tuning in, Sarah and I recently created a new project we are calling “Mondays On the Move” to promote freedom of movement. Each Monday, we choose a different place to perform one of the migration songs we have written with refugees and…
Mondays On the Move
It seems that since the beginning of human time, movement has been a natural element of the life cycle. Humans are moving beings. It’s an innate quality of the experience and essence of what it means to be human. We walk. We dance. We express ourselves through our hands (some of us more than…
Pandemic Publishing
The last time I shared an update on all things songwriting in my life was January 23, 2020. At the time, I had no idea the larger world and my own circle within it would literally come to a halt in the middle of March. At the start of 2020, I was feeling inspired…
Life is long
This Monday at Petit-Chateau was grey, rainy, dark, and dismal. The previous Friday evening, I had visited the center for the volunteer appreciation dinner and joined staff and volunteers on a tour of the arrival portion of the center. We walked from one station to the next, learning about the process whereby those seeking asylum…
Free like a smile
Every Monday I visit the Fedasil Petit-Château Klein Kasteeljte is an opportunity to capture a moment in time in both poetry and song. My co-volunteer Sarah and I often take a bit of a pause in the summer months. It has been increasingly hot in Brussels, and it is important to allow for some downtime…
Marieke is Guiding Song 