The Bonus Years

Olympia is magical ✨

Because we’re human, we need. Food, water, sleep, each other.

Having needs is a gift, because we get to learn what helps us feel safe and cared for. Having needs often means we can get those needs met by ourselves or those who care about us.

Needs don’t make you needy in the typical clingy, whiny, unable to cope stereotypical sort of way.

Expressing our needs creates vulnerability in relationships and allows us to be cared for. Folks have a tangible way to show us support and love and be present for us.

This is something I’m working on.

Sometimes people come into your life and then they move in to your heart. Ali and I met through our lovely Instagram community of transplant survivors. I adore the way she tells a story, especially her own, with such beauty, wisdom, and candor. She wields a pen like a sword that cuts through the bu****it of our societal norms, health stories we tell ourselves, and lies we’ve believed. Ali helped set my mind free.

Since we met, we’ve done podcasts together, worked together at , moderated support groups, and run from wildfires. 🔥 , we are changing the world with our authenticity, boundaries, and storytelling about who we are. You inspire me—and not in the toxic positivity kinda way. Thanks for being my

Happy golden birthday and here’s to another bonus year that we never thought we’d get. 🥂

Got any pro tips?

After 18 years, it’s still a struggle.

This is how I feel when I’m making music. Like I’m ripping my chest open with my bare hands so that the gift I have within me can spill out.

All the practice, the time spent alone wrestling with lyrics and melodies to find the emotion I wanna convey.

The discipline of daily work. To get my best sound, to work through tension, to try new things and sound “bad.”

It’s all because I want to lay myself bare when I perform. I want to give you my best gift. The most polished, most extravagant, and the most costly gift I can give- myself.

Today I worked on a specific goal, and when I listened back to it after I was done, I heard zero progress. And that is the work I do. With clients, with vocal students, as a mom. I hold space for potential and know the ingredients needed to fulfill it. I know that one rehearsal doesn’t make or break you. It’s the consistent, tedious, daily work that no one sees that gives me the growth I want.

If you want to have some support in your personal growth, that’s what I do! DM me for details.

Jenny and I had such a wonderful conversation on The Bonus Years podcast this week. Jenny had biliary atresia and then a liver transplant as an infant. She’s had setbacks and adventures—a life with a full range of emotions and experiences. Listen to this episode and hear all the places she’s been traveling, how she navigates tricky family dynamics around chronic illness, and how heartbreak leads to new opportunities.

This weekend was extraordinary and more than I even imagined. The opportunity to sing Mozart with new friends in Masterworks Choral Ensemble and with an orchestra full of folks I love sent me over the moon. 🌙 Today I’m grateful that I had the energy, stamina, and voice to participate in this performance, and I’m not in bed from exhaustion after. If you know me, you know this is huge! What’s changed? Honestly, so many things. I attribute most of my current wellness to coming back home to myself, honouring my body and what’s it’s telling me, and removing guilt, shame, and comparison—particularly to able-bodies folks who get to operate at a different pace than those of us who are chronically ill.

If you want the support and tools to help you come home to yourself, fully integrated and fully whole, message me. I’ve been doing the work so that I can guide you on your journey!

xoxo, brooke

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It's my honor to sing Mozart's Requiem as the Soprano Soloist with Masterworks Choral Ensemble. I auditioned for these solos when I was 19 and wasn't selected. At that time in my life, it felt devastating. So much of my self-worth was tied to the outcome of those auditions. I wanted the validation that comes with being the best, winning a solo, and getting to perform.

After that concert in 2005, I went into acute liver failure, which led to a sudden need for a liver transplant to save my life. The 20-year-old me, alive because of a transplant, was also secretly struggling. My abdominal wall had been cut. I'd been in bed for 6 weeks and lost most of my muscle mass. My young adult life now consisted of managing medications, learning a "new" normal, and figuring out what to do with my life now that my dreams of performing seemed unattainable. Though I wouldn't realize it until many years later, I felt deep, unresolved grief that the voice I'd always had and loved now sounded very different.

Now, firmly planted in 2023, a year that I've deemed the year of Brooke, I auditioned for these same solos. This time, there was nothing to prove. My identity, value, and worthiness weren't tied up in the outcome of the auditions. I was chosen to perform the soprano solos and am healthy enough to do them!

I sing because it's life-giving for me, and I want to help audiences feel that joy. I'd love an audience full of faces I adore, enjoying music and celebrating with me that I can sing 18 years post-liver transplant. It's such a gift to get to do what I love!

*throwback headshot from early 2005*

Link to tickets in the comments.

38 years ago on March 3, I was born. My mom initially thought that I was indigestion, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been a pain ever since 😂

I’ve been thinking about getting older and being alive and what that means for me. The amount of anti-aging ads, products, and health plans promise that while living is good, we don’t need to show it. Hide the grey hairs, the wrinkles, the sunspots, the varicose veins.

When I look in the mirror, I see a lot of things. Remnants of body dysmorphia. Scars from facing death. Stretch marks, bruises, wrinkles and freckles. A chin hair that won’t seem to die even when I pluck him (and yes it’s a him because who else would be that annoying).

As the number of years I’ve been alive goes up, I have to be intentional about how I manage the feels around aging.

I’m getting old becomes “I’ve survived another year.”

Look at those wrinkles/stretch marks/grey hairs changes to “look at the proof you’re still living.”

When I smile—I mean, a really big, earnest, giddy smile—I want people to feel it. When I see me in the mirror, I wanna smile like that. And most days I do.

So here’s to you self. You beautiful body. You brilliant mind. You depth of soul.

You’re a whole person. Fully embodied. Embracing this one fragile, painful, gorgeous and full life.

Aging in the best way. With lots of gratitude for every bonus year.

Yesterday was Rare Disease Day. In a way that I’m getting more comfortable with, I didn’t post on time. I chose to take care of myself rather than meeting an arbitrary deadline.

In 2005, I got a sudden diagnosis of Autoimmune Hepatitis and very shortly after went into acute liver failure.

Early in the journey I used to pray that God would take my scars away as proof of my healing. Almost 18 years later, that feels naive and mildly ridiculous.

Folks who carry humanity in their wombs aren’t meant to have bodies that look like they did before pregnancy. They’ve held life. Their bodies evolved and expanded and made space for growth. Likewise, evidence of my healing isn’t in having the same body I did before my transplant or returning to the normal rhythms I lived with for 20 years.

Y’all, grief doesn’t have a timeline, and healing isn’t linear. There is for us nothing to achieve or strive for other than embracing our existence and taking up the space that only we can.

The audacity of ableist culture to think we need to look a certain way for our wholeness to be acknowledged.

The desire of a capitalistic culture to put us back into the box of 8 to 5 jobs and jumping through the proper hoops.

The well-intentioned self development culture that wants to prescribe a 3-step path to emotional and mental health.

We’ve broken open and spilled out. We can’t fit into the same container we came from. We know too much. We have things to say, ideas to contribute, stories to share. We walk tall and take up space when we enter a room. Why? Because we’ve ventured into the deep waters and been pulled under until the breath left our lungs. Yet we didn’t drown. We rose.

This day after rare disease day, I celebrate what I couldn’t yet when I got my diagnosis: I am meant for more. I can have it all. And I will never be contained again. I will take up space in this world until I breathe my last breath.

Universe—show me how good it gets. 💕
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