Barbara McAfee's Page
http://fullvoicebook.wordpress.com/
Barbara McAfee is a musician, coach and consultant with over twelve years of experience in organizational change. She has brought her music to such clients as Best Buy, The Coca-Cola Company, the YMCA, Wells Fargo as well as to numerous wellness events, colleges, and private functions. She is the...
Do you want voice coaching that will help you express your true self & share your gifts with the world?
Do you want voice coaching that will help you express your true self & share your gifts with the world?
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Respectful Transitions – A Tale of Family, Trees, and Healing Beauty
We don’t have a choice about losing people and things we cherish. It’s a big part of being human. One of the most precious lessons I’ve learned from singing at the bedsides of people in hospice is this: beauty can offer solace in those painful times of loss and transition. My friend Tom Peter h...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Heart of a Warrior – A Song for This Moment
These past weeks have been deeply challenging for many of us. Friends of color are striving to say and do the right things to keep their children safe. A friend who is a school director called weeping about a third grade Muslim girl in her school being bullied by classmates. Friends involved in...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
During the summer months here in Minnesota, I am an avid lake swimmer. Come fall though, I transition to swimming laps at my local YWCA. I get into the pool three times a week and swim a mile each time – about 45 minutes of solid swimming. Generally I count laps. For years I have used the count...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
I will remember you. Will you remember me? Don’t let your life pass you by. Weep not for the memories…. – Sarah MacLachlan It is near the turning of a new year as I write this. This season is always a time of reflection for me – a time to count blessings and dre...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
One of my voice clients recently confessed to her habit of “scurrying” – which I interpret as meaning rushing when there is no need to rush, going fast out of habit, and bringing a sense of urgency to non-critical things. Oh boy. I’m a scurrier-hurrier, too. It’s a family trait that I witness i...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Laurence Cole: Singing Together to Nourish the Soul and Re-Enchant the World
First thing I notice is that voice: robust, deep, resonant. It reaches into every nook and cranny of the room, of the ear, of the heart – and fills it with life. I bless the day Laurence Cole came to my singing community to share his nourishing songs. He builds them like beautiful layer cakes, ...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
I Love to Swear: In Praise of “Spicy” Words
I am in the studio recording my fourth CD and I am swearing my head off. I apologize to my producer for all of the cursing. I cuss a lot in the recording studio. I love being there, but the intensity of recording calls forth an intensity in me, one that is most frequently expressed in exuberant...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Many of my songs emerge from a deep connection with another person. I’m inspired let them know what I see in them through the vehicle of song. Nearly twenty years ago, I created a song for my friend Molly in collaboration with pianist, Diane Benjamin. Molly was just turning sixteen and was grie...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Just about every week I hear myself saying the same phrase. When a voice client tells me how terrible he is at public speaking… When a friend complains about how out of shape she is…. Even when I’m giving myself a hard time about some perceived failing in my character…. What is this handy phras...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Several years ago my friend Lucy Mathews Heegaard invited me to collaborate on an intriguing project: a series of greeting cards each with a music CD inside. The CD would contain one of Lucy’s songs, an instrumental version of the song, and a meditation on its theme. Our mutual friend, nature p...
April 19, 2017
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
A song can be medicine. A song can fuel change. A song can weave in and out of a life, awakening deeper levels of meaning and knowing. I first got acquainted with the song “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” in The Great Songs of the Sixties songbook my brother Ross gave me for my 13th...
September 30, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
The Joy of….A Composite Partner?!
I’ve been single for nigh on twelve years. After two runs at marriage and a myriad of other romantic entanglements, I thought it might be a good idea to just sit the heck down and be on my own for a good while. And so I have – mostly happily. One of the great resources that arrived in my life...
September 9, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Years ago my business partner and I had a work engagement several hours away. As he picked me up in the freezing winter pre-dawn twilight, he handed me a hot café’ au lait and an almond croissant. When I rummaged in my purse to pay him back for the breakfast, he looked over with a smile and sai...
August 31, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
My Grandma Wanted to Be President: A Reflection on Women, Voice, and Leadership
As a voice coach I support many women leaders in finding their voices, speaking their truth with conviction, claiming their power, and fully expressing their gifts. Most of the women I coach are privileged. They have education, financial resources, political clout, and more choices than our gra...
August 15, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
New Sounds in the Neighborhood
I have two new neighbors who are changing the sonic texture of my neighborhood in beautiful and significant ways. As I type this, my neighbor two doors down is wailing away on his tenor saxophone. He moved into John and Paula’s duplex and has been using their front stoop and back yard as his pr...
July 27, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
On Being A Carrot in God’s Garden
My older brother Rolfe is a poet among other things. He’s also a dancer, traveler, husband, seeker, dad, grandpa, purchasing manager, and a self-described “old hippie.” Many years ago he invited me to a poetry slam at a pub in downtown Minneapolis. I hadn’t been to a slam before. The theme that...
July 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
I wouldn’t be who I am without Dr. Seuss. When I was a little girl, I would walk into the hushed temple of my small town Carnegie Library and make a beeline straight to the Dr. Seuss shelf. I lived in hope that there would be a new Dr. Seuss book every single time I went to the library. There w...
July 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
The Cruel Stare – A Posthumous Reblogging by Karly Wahlin
I am featuring a blog post written by my departed friend, Karly Wahlin. I wrote about her in a previous post. Karly lived 27 years with a difficult condition called Rett Syndrome that affects mostly girls. It made it impossible for her to speak, to walk, and even control her own breathing. Desp...
July 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Raccoons – A Summer Meditation
Running through a light drizzle and wafts of green-smell today, I thought about raccoons. I ran by the place on the bluff-top trail where I once turned my head to see an entire family of them arrayed along the length of a tree trunk. The smallest one scrambled up as I watched: a redhead! Everyt...
July 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
You know the story by now: An innocent African-American man – Philando Castile – was shot by a police officer at close range a few miles from my home. His gruesome and unnecessary death was witnessed by his beloved and her 4-year-old daughter. Four! (I know well what four looks like .My twin gr...
July 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
A Short Treatise on Training the Muse
Anyone who does anything creative will likely admit that there seems to be something beyond the daily, everyday self that collaborates with us in the making of things. Many people call that something the muse. The ancient Greeks called that mysterious force the “muse;” the Romans called it the ...
May 20, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
I am walking along the Mississippi River near my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After dithering around in my house in full procrastination mode for several hours, I am finally outside and moving in the chill November afternoon. Suddenly I hear a woman sobbing… loudly…and see her walking right ...
April 22, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
A Blessing for Entering Hospice
My beloved friend Jim is nearly 92 years old. His mind is sharp and keen though his vision, hearing, and mobility are weaker every day. Jim doesn’t have a major illness. He’s just losing energy and appetite. A few weeks ago, he decided to enter hospice and forego any further medical interventio...
April 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Oh For Goodness Sake – Stand At My Grave and Weep Already!
Death has been visiting my life a lot in this past year. During those times, I have frequently heard Mary Elizabeth Frye’s well-known poem, “Do No Stand At My Grave and Weep.” This morning as I was lolling abed, I began naming my departed-beloveds in my mind, calling their sweet faces to mind a...
April 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
I just love to go out dancing. And yet there are so many things that interfere with a great dance experience. For one thing, I’m a musician. So that makes me particularly sensitive to the quality of the music. Is the groove right? Are the musicians having a good time together? Is the sound mixe...
April 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
York Peppermint Patties and the Art of Kindness
My mother is nearly 92 years old. We spend a lot of time together out in the world now that she has stopped driving. Once a statuesque 5’10-1/2” tall, gravity and arthritis have left her bent over. She uses a walker to help keep her steady. Her hair is snowy white and her blue-blue eyes twinkle...
April 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Singing in the Light – The Tale of a Long and Shining Collaboration
For over ten years, my monthly community song circle has supported the work of Fifty Lanterns International, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that brings solar power to people in the developing world. We call the gatherings “Singing in the Light” for that very purpose. (And we like the double ente...
April 12, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
Children between 2 and 5 spend an average of 32 hours per week looking at a television. For children 6 to 11 that number is 28 hours per week. Adults average five hours of TV per day. Five hours. Average. I’ve come to think of television as a kind of colonization of our minds. How can we even k...
January 29, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
It IS All About the Bass — Reflections of a Baby Elder
Sometime during the last year, young friends began asking me if we could get together and “talk.” Not just talk. “Talk.” They came to me with big questions. They asked me for stories about my experience. It slowly began to dawn on me that they were coming to me for….wisdom. Holy cow. My immedia...
January 15, 2016
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Barbara McAfee posted a blog post
“Sacred Words” the song everyone requests whenever I lead a community song circle these days. Created by a California artist who goes by the name Sophia, it is a chant weaves sacred words from five of the great religions of the world into a harmonious whole. The first part consists of one repea...
December 26, 2015
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Barbara McAfee is now a member of Berrett-Koehler Community
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