Season 2 – Episode 7. Released on March 24.
Flying High (with Stowe Dailey)
INTRO
Sitting down with Stowe Dailey is like taking a coffee break with your girlfriend. A singer-songwriter, best selling author and recent cancer survivor Stowe helps us remember that life is fun, that no apologies is needed for being who you are and that fear doesn’t stop us from dying but it could stop us from living.
BUMPER
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.
This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.
This is “Waking Up In America.”
TAJCI
Hi
STOWE
Hello, it’s good to be here with you today.
TAJCI
Yea, I’m so glad we finally coordinated our schedules… which is really great because that means you’re out there sharing your message and I am just so grateful to you.
STOWE
It’s just a great time in life for me to be able to do that thing that I was born to do. One of the things.
TAJCI
Yes. So here, I wanna talk about it. There was a time in your life when you weren’t living this out. And so, take us there.
STOWE
Well, I… like many people, I allowed fear to keep me away from my dreams. I was afraid…
I think Marianne Williamson said it very well, she said: so many of us, we are not afraid so much of failing as we are of succeeding beyond our wildest dreams. And all the stuff that goes with that, a lot of responsibility. And I think maybe somewhere inside of me I was just afraid to really take the basket off my head and be myself and let that out.
TAJCI
Is it because you were afraid that you wouldn’t somehow be good enough because of the messaging?
STOWE
Yeah, I grew up with a lot of negative messages from my childhood and I took those on and they just became a mantra that I wasn’t good enough.
You know there’s always the comparison thing: I’m not as good of a singer as you, or I’m not as good of a singers as so-and-so, my songs aren’t that powerful… I had all these really negative messages in my head and I let them keep me from doing that thing.
And it wasn’t until I almost lost my life that I woke up, literally, and even with the song called “Wake Up” came to this realization that I can’t, I can’t sleep my life away.
I can’t not do what I am supposed to do and it doesn’t matter.
I really got a very clear message one day from within and it said: it’s not about you’re singing, it’s not about your voice, it is not about your songs, it’s not even about what you do on stage it’s about just showing up. All you have to do is show up and the magic happens. And I think it’s true for all of us.
TAJCI
Yeah no matter what we do.
STOWE
Yeah
TAJCI
Because we are so uniquely created. It’s true. We live in a society that we always compare. Even if we don’t compare ourselves to somebody else we compare ourselves with some sort of expectation, even when we bring God into it we, if we’re not really you know looking deep inside, we can have this wrong image, a “vision of what God expects me to do.”
STOWE
Right.
For many years of my life I was afraid to be myself that I would be judged harshly because I judged myself harshly. If I did… be my silly self or my slightly risque self, or my spiritual self whatever you know it’s like for way too long I let that keep me from just being bold and being who I was.
TAJCI
Being you.
STOWE
Yea, being who I am.
TAJCI
And you came to Nashville and you started, you had a successful publishing contract which is huge the huge.
STOWE
Yes, back in the early 90s I was very fortunate when I came here to meet some of the great writers of Nashville at the time. I got to write with them, I learned the craft you know. I had been writing since I was, 11.
But this was the first time that I really studied songwriting and I loved songwriting, you know? I write songs all the time in my head and I got to write with Garth Brooks and you know so many wonderful people anyway… yeah… and yet after I did that for a while I felt like I was trapped in a box. It’s like you have to write songs for radio.
So then, I learned this craft of writing and then I kind of like took my heart out it and I realized it wasn’t making me happy anymore because I wasn’t really expressing myself I was just you know giving them commercial things.
TAJCI
Exactly! So you left all of that success.
STOWE
Yeah
TAJCI
And what do you instead?
STOWE
I started all over in a whole different place. I put music down which made my heart very unhappy. I felt little bit… even though I had cuts and you know, been paid for and everything I still felt like I had failed somehow and I decided to become a mother. And that you know, I was also born to do that. I love my children. I’m so glad that I took time in my life to have that experience and… but I think all the years that I’ve spent raising them, I home-school them and everything, all the years I did that I wasn’t doing my music.
And so there was really this hole inside of me. This sadness.
TAJCI
And I heard you in one talk that, that I saw online where you say that by not being who you are, the sadness and this… the hole, right? we suppress who we are.
STOWE
I felt like the sadness that was in me grew into cancer. And said: if you’re not gonna live your life, you’re gonna lose it. And I got that in such a big way. You know…
I’ve said this many times: fear doesn’t stop you from dying. It stops you from living. And I just had to let go of that and say you know what? It doesn’t matter. Just get out there and do it. You don’t know how long it gonna be here. Today is all you have so…
TAJCI
But you said it so beautifully… when I heard you say this I was in tears: some gifts come wrapped in bows, and some gifts come wrapped in not that such pretty bows…
STOWE
Yeah
TAJCI
But you seem to have conquered fear with it… and I know there are other women who say the same thing, but I want, if you can just tell me a little bit of… you conquered fear with this terrible wake-up call.
STOWE
I don’t know if conquered fear… you know I still experience fear. Not on a daily basis at least very often.
I keep setting things up for myself to do that seem fearful and then I show up. And I move into them. It’s like feel the fear and do it anyway. So, it’s like I just move through it.
I am sure you’ve seen it… there is this poster, it has a tiny little circle and it says: my comfort zone. And then it has this big circle and it says: where life happens and it’s like I’m aiming for where life happens. Every day I wake up I wanna go there because that’s where the good stuff is. And you know it’s not always pretty. Sometimes it’s messy
TAJCI
Yes and it’s okay.
STOWE
It’s okay! It’s like, yeah okay so today I might be crying about something that didn’t turn out the way I envisioned, but I’m living, I’m alive!
TAJCI
You’re alive
STOWE
I’m alive and tomorrow I can just as easily be dancing in victory, you know. And it can happen for all of us, you know?
Be yourself everyone else is taken.
TAJCI
I love that
STOWE
You know that saying?
I feel like something that’s very important for each of us to do is to ask questions and more importantly to ask the right questions.
So it’s like… you know, sometimes I say to someone what kind of question would you ask if you wanted to you know change your life in a positive and they go: Well, why am I being so stupid not to do such-and-such?
No, no, no. That’s not the right question. The question has to do with your gift.
And so, when I came out of this, when I came out of my operation which I call erectolectomy. I had to have colostomy, surgery and all of that… when I came out on this very major operation my question rose up and went in me that: who should I write with?
I wanted to get back and write. Connect with somebody because I’ve been writing by myself and that was fun but you know it’s more fun to do it with somebody so I started saying who should I write with?
And almost immediately I ran into Karen again. I hadn’t seen her in like in 20 years and we had written together back in the 90’s and we wrote, you know, when we got together she said: well surely you’ve written a song for your book “Flying High” And I said: no. And she said: okay, let’s do that. So that was the song one. The next one was Be Yourself Everyone Else Is Taken and we just went on and on and we’ve written almost 70 songs now.
TAJCI
And those are powerful songs
STOWE
They are very powerful songs. And they’re all because of all that stuff that she has been through and that I have been through. The gift of cancer has given me a lot.
It’s a big gift…
TAJCI
You travel, you’re living the life… now I’ve been reading “Flying High” and it’s beautifully written. I really love how you write. Do you have a blog that you write?
STOWE
No, I don’t.
TAJCI
There you go.
STOWE
I know, I need to get on that, don’t I?
TAJCI
You don’t have to. If you it’s part of you!
STOWE
You know what? I love when I’m in the process of writing a book or blogs or something like that. But I don’t wake up every day wanting to do that but not like songwriting.
TAJCI
The songwriting, you write all the time?
STOWE
Yeah pretty much.
TAJCI
That’s amazing!
STOWE
So, well I often set this song up by telling the audience… I say, you know when I finished this song I thought it was going to be played at my funeral I can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to be play it for you here today… live!
“A Second Chance”
Sitting in the backseat of my car
Strumming on my old guitar
Singing songs with my wooden friend
Thinkin’ back a year ago it was almost the end
I still feel the echoes of the day I got the news
When it dawned I had everything to lose
By prayers of strangers and love of family
Everyday I walk this world is all a gift to me (‘cause)
I got a second chance
To laugh and love
To sing and dance
And oh, I know it’s a sweet and precious gift
A second chance to live
Some stay awhile some say good-bye
Who knows when who knows why
But we all have a chance to try
Learning how to love
When it’s my time when all my work is done
He’ll call my name and I’ll be gone
And I’ll finally see my father’s face
And stand before the love of His amazing grace
And I’ll have a second chance
To laugh and love
To sing and dance
And oh, I know it’s a sweet and precious gift
A second chance to live
A second chance
TAJCI
So let’s not wait one more moment to wake up to laugh and love and sing and dance and live exactly who you are meant to be. Thank you so much.
STOWE
A second chance to live.
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