Growing up, I was told my vibrato was too fast. I attended a performing arts high school and I remember hearing my peers mimick my voice and laugh as I walked out of an audition. At first I didn’t get what they were making fun of, but in an interview with my teachers, I quickly put it all together. My confidence was already fragile relating to my voice, and after that, it was shot.

During this time, friends of mine compared my voice to Snow White. We look alike so I always owned it, but deep down, I hated sounding like a cartoon character.

Fast forward to today, I’ve been watching American Idol and one of the singers, Casey James, has a vibrato similar to my own. Who knows whether or not he was criticized growing up, but he’s doing well for himself, people love him and oddly, that brings me peace.

I gave up the dream to be a professional singer awhile back (which I don’t regret cause I know I didn’t want it badly enough) but I have other dreams and some of them feel impossible. Hindsight is 20/20 and a few years after my singing incident, I resolved to never let criticism (from myself or others) stop me from getting something I wanted. It’s a hard course to hold to but little things like seeing Casey James sing tonight and achieve what I thought was impossible, let me know I’m on the right track and put me to ease.

In case you’ve never heard Snow White sing, here’s a delightful clip of Snow White singing about her prince (of course :) )

One of what I imagine will be many, fabulous performances by Casey James: