Episode One: Voice as Birthright
July 12, 2024

Maura Conlon  00:06

Welcome, I’m putting on the tea, just like my grandmother did in County Clare Ireland more than a century ago.

Maura Conlon  00:21

You’re listening to Original Belonging. I am your host Maura Conlon, born and raised in Los Angeles. I am passionate about the primal nature of our creativity, which allows us to reconnect with ourselves and with a sacred web of life. I hold the doctorate in depth psychology, and I’m the author of FBI Girl, a best selling memoir about my first 14 years a coming of age saga also adapted for stage, whether unfolding upon the page or the stage of your childhood playground. We all have life defining moments from our first 14 years. Stories that often get buried in our adult lives. Yet, these early visceral sometimes mystical experiences remain a treasure trove incubating our original wisdom. When remembered, the stories offered timeless inspiration, and resilience through thread, or our lives. 

Maura Conlon  01:46

Original Belonging is a six part narrative podcast series featuring stories and conversations where we return to and explore the vital landscape of our early years. In each episode, I go back in time to share my story, a hologram if you like depicting the agony and the ecstasy, and the wisdom learned and these poignant coming of age years. Let’s not dismiss the places that made us come alive when we were young. They hold a key as to how we can open our hearts and evolve into our truest potential. Such primal memories are not long ago and far away. No, they live inside of you. They’re right here. Listen close.

Maura Conlon  02:47

Episode One. Voice as birthright. Today on the episode, you’ll hear how I found my authentic voice as a young girl. long suffering from shyness, discovering this life force inside of me at the age of 14, set my life in motion. You will also hear me in conversation with Chloë Goodchild, a vocalist singing philosopher, sound pioneer recording artist, and founder of the naked voice transforming lives through the power of sound.

Chloë Goodchild  03:24

There is no separation between speaking and singing. There’s no separation between this life and the next there’s no separation between silence speech, or some.

Maura Conlon  03:35

Perhaps our conversation will help you to connect in with your naked voice. Now let’s have a sip of tea dear listener, and take in one of my life defining stories, finding my voice for the first time.

Maura Conlon  03:59

So I grew up in Southern California, both of my parents were born in New York City. And my father joined the FBI and in the 1950s they were sent out to Los Angeles. I grew up one of five kids, the eldest daughter. Our household was pretty quiet. My mother was a thinker. And my father kept a lot of his stories to himself. I do you remember fairly quiet times around the dinner table. But at an early age, I had such an active imagination that I just thought that was normal. I mean, I didn’t go Oh, we’re so quiet here. But I think that we were real thinkers. Curiosity runs in our family.

Maura Conlon  04:55

In school, I always remember not being the kid to raise my hand with The teacher would ask for an answer to a question. Or if I was called on I remember my face turning beet red, just so embarrassed, you know, even if I knew the answer just the pressure of having to open my mouth and answer it. So I do have some real embodied memories of feeling that resistance to speaking, hanging out with the girls in the school yard. And I remember one day when girls is maybe sixth grade or something saying that what’s wrong with you more? You’re so quiet. Yes, you could say that was a bullying thing to say. I took it very personally. I mean, it was like one of those defining moments in my childhood is to hear somebody say or to ask me what’s wrong with me? Because I’m so quiet. Because well, now if I answer that question, I’d say, Well, I’m a dreamer. And I’m a thinker. And I’m an analyzer. And I’m a sleuth. And all of those things are going on in my head. 

Maura Conlon  05:57

So I was aware that I was quiet. I was one of those quiet people on the planet. But very imaginative walking around the neighborhood and looking at tree trunks as if they were torsos and dreaming that looking into the, you know, this clouds in summer afternoons. And it was a very rich imagination. There was some kind of how does one speak? How does one open one’s mouth and just feel so at ease as a child. And I think, you know, my father as an FBI agent, whether it was his personality or the demands of his job, we knew that he had secrets and he couldn’t talk. That’s what we thought growing up, Oh, Dad can’t talk because he’s in the FBI. So, you know, he’s got to keep everything to himself. He was a big smoker. And I had a brother who has Down syndrome. And my mother was very involved in advocating for, for him in the community. So there was a lot of things going on in my family, a lot of energy going not only to five kids, but to a special needs sibling. So there was a lot of analyzing and trying to connect the dots in my own mind. And back when you were a kid, I mean, we sit in classrooms, and we answer questions. 

Maura Conlon  07:25

We’re not really invited to share our souls. I mean, in sixth grade, I remember our teacher, Mrs. Douglas, who are these very cute, like, you know, miniskirts and colored hoes and all that. She drove an MGB a sports car, she invited us to write a poem. It got its gold star and made its way onto the bulletin board. And when I showed it to my mother, she sent it to her brother, who was working at the New York Post at the time. And he had it typeset with my name on the bottom. And so in sixth grade, I realized, Oh, I’m, I’m a poet. I might be quiet. But I can write a really good poem. I’ve got things to say. It seems that when I did speak, it was either on paper, like writing that poem. Or in the fifth grade, I happened to write a song. I don’t know where that inspiration came from. But it was published in the school newspaper. And my teacher asked me to get in front of the class, and she brought in a little piano and she asked me to play the song on the piano and sing it to the class. And I did. Which is hilarious because I never spoke, but I sang it. 

Maura Conlon  08:49

So it’s interesting that early on, my way of expressing was through creativity this the lyrics were there is there will be a new world coming, full of hope, full of peace, full of love. So I’m writing this in the fifth grade. In sixth grade. My poem is about the divine in nature. Look at that tree the sacred lives within look at the flowers. This is the flower saying hello to the Divine hmm, you know, here’s this little quiet girl is one of the tallest in her class and awkward and way too muscley and pimples on her face. But this creativity is starting to leak out in those creative forms. But please do not ask me to speak. I think a part of my being quiet is that I felt different than other kids because I had a brother who had Down syndrome. And back then it was called Mongoloid ism and And I felt like I was that awkward sister of Joe. So that was one way where I didn’t feel different from other people. 

Maura Conlon  10:09

So in eighth grade, that was our graduating year in our school, we had contests the most beautiful, the neatest desk, most likely to succeed. And there was an award for most quiet girl. And it just never occurred to me that I could ever be a nominee for that. We, we all made our votes for this process. And we would find out who the winners were at a school congregation. All of our classes showed up, I think there are a couple 100 kids in the audience and everybody’s name was announced and award was announced. And then it came time to most quiet girl award. And no, to this day, I think I blocked it out. But I heard my name Maura Conlon, will you please come up to the stage? It was a moment where I felt so embarrassed and a sense of anger, because I felt that I have got so much to say me, don’t you see that. 

Maura Conlon  11:20

But no, on the outside was this quiet girl. I got up from the metal seat and went up the stairs to the stage and shook the principal’s hand and got my certificate with all these hundreds of eyes looking at me. And it felt very much like being called abnormal. There’s something wrong with you to get that award. I probably kept my emotions internalized. Really it just bottle that up. You know, it was like being called something I was not and yet not having a voice to defend myself. And I wondered what would it be like to have a voice to defend myself and to say who I really am. That didn’t happen in eighth grade.

Maura Conlon  12:19

So my father was really close to his brother, who was an activist priest in Queens, New York. And I was also really close to him to Father John Conlan. My uncle John. So I believe it was that very same month when I received the most quiet girl award, that I’m anticipating the arrival of my uncle. He is the storyteller and the family. And as much as my father was the quiet FBI agent, his brother was the storyteller and, you know, took us to Knott’s Berry Farm and, and when we visited New York took us to the Statue of Liberty and all of that. So I was very much anticipating his arrival to let him know, hey, I got this horrible award. That would be a matter of weeks before we would be driving to LAX to pick him up. But that trip to LAX never happened.

Maura Conlon  13:23

It was Monday, after Mother’s Day. And I was 13 years old, went to school, rode my bike home from school. And my mother was on the phone in the kitchen. And my sister Julie, who’s two and a half years younger than I drinking her milk and says to me, something, something’s happened. It’s going to make you sad. And all these years later, boy, I still feel it. This is what I’m saying. What happened at age 13 Is there for life. So my mother gets off the phone. I’m so freaked out. I’m thinking Something’s happened to dad at work with the FBI. He’s had some horrible thing happened. But she gets off the phone and she says very matter of factly but she’s got tears in her eyes. That somebody some intruder came into the rectory of Father John and queens and shot him in the heart. That is so many decades ago this memory but I’m I’m right there right now. And I asked my mother, did he die? Because I guess I needed to know that getting shot in the heart means that you’re killed. I think the feeling I had in my body was like a rocket exploding. 

Maura Conlon  14:57

All those years of being called quiet. and being silent. It’s like the reverse of that happened. I lost it. I went hysterical as a quiet person can get tearing out the tablecloth and kicking the table and trying to express agony, anger, something so raw. And I asked where his dad, and my mother said, he flew to New York on the red eye to deal with the situation. That was the beginning of my adulthood. I remember waiting for my father to come home and tell us what happened. So we could grieve. I mean, as a 13 year old, I didn’t have the word grief. I think I went straight to pen and paper. And I started writing with questions. How can a man just go and kill a good man like this? What is the meaning of being a good person that this can happen to you? What is my father feeling right now? What does this mean that somebody you love can just be taken from you without even a moment’s notice? 

Maura Conlon  16:15

So right away, I’m going to the page just asking questions. And my mother said to us, you know, we can’t love what this man did. But we must love the man. This lesson of forgiveness. That’s a big lesson for a 13 year old to learn. I think it’s one thing to have these ideals, like, we must forgive the murderer, and at the same time, just feel so much grief inside. Because I can’t run away from this feeling. We couldn’t be that quiet house anymore. I couldn’t be that quiet girl anymore. My father couldn’t be that quiet FBI agent anymore? And then what? How does face or how does meaning work? When these things happen? My father came home from New York. I waited day after day for him to talk to us to open up to cry to express his grief to help us understand because kids need their parents to help them understand tragedy. My mother had given us His pearls of wisdom. Well, we have to love the man who killed father John, that wasn’t going to quite cut it for me that needed to hear from my father. 

Maura Conlon  17:41

And day after day, and week after week, nothing came from him. He just started smoking more, becoming more sarcastic at home. I could just see the grief just see the through his body. And I could just feel it bottling up inside of him. I was watching my father like a frightened animal myself. Like, come on, please connect with me, dad. And instead he was just going farther and farther away into his own pain, essentially. And I realized that he’s never going to say anything. He’s never going to express anything about this murder or this grief. We’re going to go back to the silence that always was I had my own little ambition of becoming the first female FBI agent. That was was my early ambition. When I was a 1112 year old I read all the Nancy Drew books and detective stories. And I thought that was my pathway to intrigue and living a really fascinating life was to become the first female agent after this murder happened, and feeling my feelings and my grief as seeing my father come back home from New York and witnessing that grief just strangling him essentially. I encountered him one afternoon in the backyard. 

Maura Conlon  19:12

And I said to him, Dad, I see you. And I’m so so sorry. It’s it’s as if I saw the agony in him. And I wanted to let him know that I was his witness. After this murder and seeing how my father just kept his grief bottled inside of him. And it was like incredulous at the time. But I realized that adults can have a broken heart, a grieving heart and function so successfully in their external lives, which my father was doing. That period of time I realized I’m going to be a writer, because I have to address the human heart and these stories that get buried, and what it does to us when we leave them there and we don’t express them. Supposedly Freud said once upon a time that he could psychoanalyze anybody except the Irish, because there was such a stoicism that not even his methodology could penetrate. And I felt that with my father just in penetrability, layers and layers and layers of emotion of trauma of his own, you know, childhood wounds, all of those layers. You know, they all circulate inside, and just to see that wait of silence. 

Maura Conlon  20:44

So at this point, I’ve just received this most quiet girl award. And within a month, I’m facing down my father who’s displaying the same quiet to me, that I embodied as the most quiet girl. And it was a grief field, all of it. And my mother finally just said, One day, we can’t do this anymore. No more quiet in this family. She had heard of a fantastic drama teacher at the local junior high. So she basically said to me, Maura, you’re going to Oak Junior High next year, and you’re signing up for drama class. So to the ears of a girl who’s just received most quiet girl award, you can imagine when I heard the word drama, oh. So our teacher is a man named Mr. Slaughter. And he speaks with a slightly high pitch voice. His clothes seem at least one size too small for him. Walking into that class is part of a huge change. For me, I had been wearing a school uniform for eight years. And now all of a sudden, I get to choose what I wear. Go into public school for the first time, the nuns had warned us of the horrible things that could happen to us, you know, when we set foot upon public school land. It all was quite fantastical for me, and then to walk into an actual drama class. 

Maura Conlon  22:13

You know, I sat in the very back, and I just remember I was started to sweat immediately. Like, what am I doing here? I don’t belong here. But I’m here. But there was something about the teacher, I just sense that he was probably a dreamer himself, you know, that he seemed outside of the status quo in terms of his dress and his, the way he spoke and his animation, he seemed really alive in a way that maybe a lot of adults didn’t. So I was intrigued by him. Like, I think there was some sort of initial trust, like, maybe this could be okay. Our first assignment was to recite a monologue. And he gave us different references, we could go to the library and check out a book. And I did that I looked at all the different things or plays that he had recommended, and nothing really spoke to me. So one night, I just decided to write my own monologue.

Maura Conlon  23:18

I think sometimes when you’re desperate to communicate what’s inside of you, you know, maybe you go outside the assignment. And I think that’s where I was, at that point, I was desperate to communicate something inside of me that was just aching. But there was like a wisdom insight and me that just said, It’s okay, just just write your own. And so I trusted that. So much at already happened, I had been humiliated with my shyness. My uncle had just been murdered. My father was really becoming unraveled with grief and anger. And so what did I have to lose? So I wrote a monologue about what is the meaning of life? And I’m pondering, well, why does heaven have to be way up there? Why can’t heaven just be where we are like here and now. So if we just learn to love one another, we can actually create heaven on earth.So that was basically the theme of my monologue. That was very nervous, you know, my knees were shaking. 

Maura Conlon  24:38

And I just remember walking up to the top of the classroom really slow as if I had weights on my ankles. And everything was quiet. I could hear the the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and smell the chalk and all these faces were the faces of my classmates. Were looking at me Know, the quiet girl. Of course, they didn’t know that because I was now at Oak Junior I I think I felt half terror and anguish. And I think the other half of me I was just out of my body. Like I was in such a place of desperation, I think I could have wailed, you know, and communicated what I was truly feeling in my body. Like what I am feeling in my body is not meant to stay inside my body. And so, whatever words come out of my mouth, they’re gonna have to carry my pain out to the world. And my questions Why can’t we live in a world of love? I realized I was in a public school, maybe I didn’t really think about it then. But you know, asking questions like, Why does it have to be way up there? Like who? Who made up that role? Can’t we just bring it down here and like, just create it here? 

Maura Conlon  26:06

I think I felt a sense of pain and desperation, but also wisdom. That inner wisdom, part of me was, had this dream, add a question that came out of that dream. So when I finished my piece, I just stood there and didn’t know what to do next. Mr. Schroeder got up from his seat and came up to me and look deep into my eyes and asked me, Where did you find that beautiful piece? And I looked up into his eyes. And I think I whispered, I wrote it. You know, he just started shaking his head. Why why you, you wrote this, you wrote this. I was in a state of shock when he’s asking me if I wrote it, because I just wrote what I was aching to say, so many years of this quiet, noticing, and feeling so much in my heart and never been able to open my mouth and let it out. And it was just here was this man looking at me this teacher, I felt seen. So Mr. Slaughter, contacted the principal and asked that I stay for all the subsequent drama classes and I perform that piece, I think three or four more times that day. I think at that age, I felt a sense of purpose. 

Maura Conlon  27:32

And it had something to do with inspiration. I’ll open my mouth, if I can talk about what inspires me or what inspires us or how the world can be a more loving place. Finally, using my voice, to say in real time, these messages, I think I was beginning to really sense that archetypal essence, that genius that I came into the world with, you know, genius in terms of what was unique unto me, my golden thread, so to speak. It was sort of being born, I was watching it be born in those moments, like, Oh, this is what I meant to do. It’s a feeling that is almost beyond words. It’s like a memory is being laid down. That this is how I belong to the world. Standing in this place, speaking these words, feeling this connection with other people. 

Maura Conlon  28:37

That’s my original belonging. And that’s what being seen does for someone that’s unshakable, and it lasts a lifetime. I mean, to this day, I can talk about an event that happened decades ago, and I’m right there. And I’m reminded, oh, yeah, that’s who I am. There were times I forgot. And I strayed, and you know, I just got busy with life’s distractions and duties and roles, but, you know, it’s like coming full circle talking about this now. It’s like, oh, yeah, that’s why I’m here. I’m here to remind people to, to unearth to excavate the buried stories of the heart that are all about embracing who we are and dreaming new possibilities for life that are about love.

Maura Conlon  29:41

I always loved humming along with my mother’s Broadway show tunes in the living room, so long as nobody else was around. Singing was for the talented, not for me. As I navigated big transitions in mid life, I sensed Wilder rah voice hiding inside, hungry to come out. If only I could reconnect to this yearning, powerful voice that I first discovered decades ago as a teenager what could I express now? I found a seminar called the naked voice taught by vocalists author and sound pioneer Chloë Goodchild. She gracefully guided us in song while playing her harmonium as we gathered in a circle under massive stained glass windows and the high ceilings of sharp Cathedral in France a sacred site I found out that holds an ancient connection to the divine feminine.

Chloë Goodchild  30:53

so first of all feel your feet connecting with the earth the middle of your feet take your awareness right down receive connection with the earth with Gaia bring that energy right up into your feet up into your legs in body or awareness in your whole self right up the torso every muscle every organ and be aware of sound in the Root Chakra Lum. In the pelvis the second chakra of Lum. In the solar plexus or from the sun in the belly, in the heart center yeah, yeah, in the throught hum Ha, said I own, the crown chakra back the head right up into the crown up into the cosmos receiving vitalizing energy from the cosmos and bring that back down so you’re, gonna share with you a little song called the singing fields which is based on a beautiful poem. You may be very familiar with this beyond idea of right and wait there is singing you.

Maura Conlon  34:58

You share that Your voice is as unique as your 12 stranded DNA. And you’ve shared how since childhood and throughout your life that your voice has been your, your conscience and your guide. That voice is a gateway to the deepest regions of the human soul. And that’s such a lovely thought to ponder. And I’m curious if you could say a little bit more about, about voice being a gateway to our soul? 

Chloë Goodchild  35:33

The way you’re asking the question itself, is just exuding soul to me. And as soon as I discovered that your background was Celtic, and Irish, I just felt immediately at home with you. Because, in fact, it was in Ireland, if you like, was one of the really key countries and cultures, where I found the voice of the soul, as experienced there. as experienced as what we call in musical terminology, the Aeolian mode. That mode, which is either like a minor mood, or it’s a mood of longing. And so it was just a hobby, so gorgeous for me to work there. Because it was like, just feeling like I’d come home, Ireland and India, basically the combination of the two and a little bit of Italy as well thrown in the three eyes, countries that begin with AI. And those cultures in very different ways, or complementary ways, transmitted to me this way of communicating that comes directly from the center of the chest, not from the head. 

Chloë Goodchild  36:51

And so immediately, you can feel that, can’t you, you know, like, I can feel that when I listen to your voice, you know, it’s just, it’s just innate to your lineage. And that’s really all that I was seeking out as a kid. And I was brought up in quite a kind of intellectual family. My dad was a priest, it was very Protestant, Episcopal. So even though my dad was actually a really, he was like a closet mystic. What well, he was a really beautiful speaker, but he was also really introspective guy. And so I had to just kind of feel, everything that he was feeling was really interesting, just before he died, actually, he said to me, it was so touching, he said, I don’t feel as if I have reached in my own spiritual discipline, the heights that you’ve reached in your voice, wow. Oh, my God, you know, for my dad, to be saying that. It was extraordinary. 

Chloë Goodchild  38:03

And then, while he was dying, I was actually singing with him. We were making sound together while he was dying. And he wanted me to sing the Lord’s Prayer. And it was one of those extraordinary moments where he’d had this genie strokes breathing. And then he was just throwing it, it was like, he looked as if he was throwing off all his kind of mortal clothes, and was diving back into some kind of invisible ocean. When we got to the last breath, and we were singing, but Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory and all of that, we got to the last breath. And he just his eyes were wide open. He was fully present in his body. And that was, for me to see that and for him to demonstrate to me, that there’s no separation between this world and the next, threw me back onto myself in terms of my own research with the voice, because it really demonstrated to me, there is no separation between speaking and singing. There’s no separation between this life and the next there’s no separation between silence speech, or song. But we’ve been brought up in a kind of conditioning that would have us believe that there’s this left brain voice or right brain voice rather than silence as a living language.

Maura Conlon  39:33

You know, this experience with your father just feels like you accompanied him into another vibrational landscape, and that you were sort of a witness to his soul.

Chloë Goodchild  39:46

It was amazing how powerful especially as a very traditional guy, and he was like, old enough to be my mother’s father. So he was like, old enough to be my grandfather really, to actually hear this really introspective, very shy in credibly passionate guy, you know, just like, but all kinds of withheld to know that he really he really fulfilled what he came here to do. The whole experience of living and dying is, for me more fascinating than anything. We have this idea there is this thing called death, right? And that also was always a question for me

Maura Conlon  40:30

I have a sense that you were a deep thinker as a child, tell me if I’m wrong.

Chloë Goodchild  40:35

I was really annoying. I was labeled precocious, you know, all that stuff? Because I just wanted to know what was going on? And why am I here, the deafness, that I had this traumatic surgery on my ears around about the age of four, when you know, that kind of really archaic approach to having your tonsils out, which which happened, and then my mother found me at fast asleep in my bed was literally hemorrhaging to death. So I think that really assisted in this inquiry, I think I did actually die for a few seconds. And then it was like, I remember just being in this hospital bed, and just seeing a lot of very old people staring at me. I think it did assist me to really get what my what this life’s work was about, which is really to collapse the dimensions between thinking and feeling

Maura Conlon  41:37

and how the voice can be that messenger. Exactly. I was really inspired, in your book about your time in nature. And that must have been after this experience with the partial deafness, I could feel how attuned you became to the rhythms of nature. And I’m wondering, you know, in the sense of original belonging, and how we belong to the world, and how we belong inside of ourselves, could you share some of those memories of as a child going out into nature, and what that felt like,

Chloë Goodchild  42:10

Oh, I love all those things you just said, and particularly how we belong inside ourselves, that took a little bit longer to work that one up. Sex helped with that as be clear. But to come back to the deafness. It really did introduce me, I suppose directly non conceptually, to the elements when sun heat, and particularly being in nature, as you say, just really feeling seeing, communicating with birds. Very vivid memory of connecting with with their eyes. Presumably, I was just very relaxed, because it’s like, I just assumed this is what happens in childhood, that you lose your outer ears for a while. And then you learn to commune with what’s around you first. 

Chloë Goodchild  43:05

The first house we lived in, in Horsham in Sussex, we had there was like a garden round the entire house, you know, so it’s completely nature driven reality. The only thing about me was that I wanted to kind of know what was on the other side of the garden gate. So my mother tells me that she had to end up placing one of these chicken wire fences actually around the entire house. And she saw me I think it was around about age of four or five, just unpicking this, getting the other side and doing it up again. And then moving off. There was a river, the other side of the church, because we always live by churches because it was my dad’s job. And so the river was That was another really powerful element to be present to that, to be watching the flow of that.

Maura Conlon  44:02

Like we’re at the river right now I can, can hear it, the water going over the rocks and the birds singing. And this is the real world is what it feels like.

Chloë Goodchild  44:12

This is it. This is it. This is all there is. Yeah. And water obviously is such a potent you know, it’s the source of life.

Maura Conlon  44:33

And then we go into school, and then we go into the classroom. That can be a completely different world. And so I’m curious how you navigated that to being so attuned to these beautiful natural elements, the force of nature. So how did you negotiate those worlds?

Chloë Goodchild  44:50

I was very misbehaving. Guest is in fact my mother took me out of school for a few years. because she could see this wasn’t gonna work. Thank God, no, I remember I just remember saying to me, I don’t know where you’ve come from. But wherever it is, I’m glad you came was so sweet. As she just passed my mother see, I’m sort of very sort of connected with her at the moment. But she had the good sense to give me space to re locate myself within a much more social reality, which involves a lot of self consciousness and vulnerability, for which music became like a sort of refuge if you like. Because somehow hearing the sound of music and connecting with choral fields, that really assisted me to feel myself as I felt myself in silence on the outside in so that all the vibration and the frequency and the energy of the silence was suddenly Ah, okay, this makes sense. And so then I just dove into the whole western sacred repertoire of sacred music.

Maura Conlon  46:08

I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s recent passing. That is a big moment. Yeah,

Chloë Goodchild  46:15

yeah. She’s She was like a little baby bird. When she she was 95. Her last message to me was one of the nurses in the care home where she was said, I rang up the care home, and one of the nurses bizarrely had the phone in her room. At that moment, just said, Oh, here’s your mother right now, here she is. She was so in these other planes of awareness, and so on. But the last thing she said to me was, because I said, Mom, I’m on my way back, I’m going to be with you very soon. And she just all I heard her say was, the sooner the better saw. And that was it. That was her final. It was extraordinary. I was with her very much for the last six years of her life, especially. And she also was really instrumental in assisting me with writing my book, we connected in a very deep way, before she passed.

Maura Conlon  47:17

You have a great sense of trust in yourself, this fierce will to get beyond that chicken wire fence and go to where you were being called. And I wonder if your mother modeled that sense of trust, and she trusted she saw something in you? Is that about look, or was that part of that journey?

Chloë Goodchild  47:43

Well, I think it was really because once she said she, I remember her looking at me when I was in my teenage years and saying, You, it’s taken three generations for you to be yourself. It was so profound, saying so much about herself in that moment, you knew. And at the same time, my grandmother, who was her mother, I completely was at one with she was this crazed mystic who had a Tibetan, invisible master that spoke to her and she knew about the birds and she was an extraordinary gardener. And she was, she was wild. She was really shamanic, actually, but in a very kind of English form, if that’s possible. So my mother really had this very strong, primal connection with my dad, which was great to be aware of. 

Chloë Goodchild  48:39

Because on the surface of it, they were trying to busy being Christian, well behaved Christian Protestants. You know, it was a real blessing. And yet she was incredibly private in that English, just going to keep it or to oneself. But at the same time, she was painting all the time. You know, it’s like watercolors, oils, but she didn’t need anybody to see it. Right? tapestry and she was up holstering she was embroidering ravers extraordinary is incredible output. My brother described it as like a pure artist in a way because she didn’t need to be seen there was some kind of very deep stillness and confidence within herself.

Maura Conlon  49:25

Yes, the fact that you were able to to witness and her this deep scene that she had what she said she was so profound this a three generations. What a connection to the mother lines. I think that this whole thing that women do kind of negotiate these worlds where, you know, they’re honoring their their husbands and their and their husbands jobs, you know, in that generation, while being having their fingers in the cosmic socket and somehow wanting to pass down some light to their daughters or protect the light. And then if you’re connected to your voice, poetic voice, a vocal voice, it’s a very precious feeling. 

Chloë Goodchild  50:11

And there’s the challenge of not knowing what to do with it, it can go underground. So I think this is why this is so important right now with this whole conversation about original belonging. Because like, as you so beautifully share, you arrived with this, you know, you arrived with this connection to something voiced in the world and voiced in you. That’s your original belonging. And I think so many of us are aching to get back to something that we can’t always even name. You

Chloë Goodchild  50:44

just described it so beautifully. I can sense we’re in the same we’re walking the same path. Yes, it astounds me that 40 years later, I’m still finding myself in the company on regular basis of people saying, when you ask the question, how do you feel about your voice? They will say, I haven’t got one.

Maura Conlon  51:13

I just love this exercise or this question that you share in your book. And I’ll read from the pages. If you were to write a vocal self portrait, the story of your voice, what would your voice have to say? So could you share because I think this is a really wonderful exploration. How, you know, the sense of original belonging just that is a framework, but then to say, well, let’s hear about your vocal self portrait. Tell us more about that.

Chloë Goodchild  51:45

Well, that came to me because I started realizing, when I came back from India, and I’d had this transformative kind of no mind experience. That is what really revolutionized my relationship with the voice. Because as a child right through, I just seem to be born with a joyous disposition. It seemed like there was nothing I could do about that. My mother’s saying things like you were born laughing, and it’s like, oh, God, that was a kind of innate healing system within myself that he actually would use laughter The clown archetype a lot. As I was growing up, it was kind of way of navigating the really serious academic, intellectual, precisely identified relationship with the voice with reality. And so because my sisters, my oldest, my eyes, they were all more attuned to the academic, if you like. I had that capacity. Or you know, but I just wasn’t really wedded to it in the same way. Because I could feel there was something else going on that was pushing the boundaries have that intellectual blinkered Ness. 

Chloë Goodchild  53:03

Yes, that has its own depth and wisdom and beauty and precision. But I kept pushing, pushing pushing had to go through so Ireland really saved me because the Irish just like this speak the song, the Bardic everything, you know, it’s like, Oh, thank God. So when I went to Africa, that helped, because that really brought me down into the earth and all of that, India, completely. It was the connection with sound in India, and with the voice that completely revolutionized my life, because that I have a harmonium here. And so they would use this kind of instrument, all you would do is you would sit in a room, so I was visiting non dual masters on one side of the street, and then having these classical vocal Indian lessons on the other side. And then so you’d sit for two weeks. And the first question they ask is, what is your note? What is my note? I said, Well, I love a and they said, Oh, is that? That’s your note. Okay. So we’ll, we’ll start with that. And literally, if, if you’re a vocalist in India, you and working in this classical tradition, you will spend two hours a day at least more probably. And they will just ask you to sing that note. So

Chloë Goodchild  54:36

You just do that for two weeks, this extraordinary sort of acceleration of psychotherapeutic analysis, quantum. So that just brought me home to my original place within myself. And it was that that I brought back from India. It was that that helped me to hear people in a whole new way. And to ask the question, How real is the life you’ve lived? How real is this narrative that you have lived that has lived you? And the most amazing people that like, I just thought that there must be training for this, there was no big new training. So I thought, right, well, let’s just put up a notice and just see if anybody wants to find their voice. Because the classical way, wasn’t it, you know, because that was all identified with performance and entertainment. And so I just started asking people, how do you feel? How does that sound? I’m coming back to the self portrait? Because what I realized, was that the capacity to actually engage with that question, how do you feel? And how does that sound? What quality of silence does your voice leave behind. So that’s what took me away from the whole western performative entertainment game. So that started to help people to deepen into the body and listen to themselves in that way. 

Chloë Goodchild  56:13

But nevertheless, I realized that everybody was still so driven by the selfconscious, driven by the endless obsession with the storyline, the only way that I could imagine could just help to befriend the storyline at the same time as really start building an awareness of the witnessing mind. So the mind that is not judging that comes from the middle of the forehead, can actually just watch everything that’s going on, without judging it. And so that took quite a long time to develop that awareness. Because otherwise, it would have been, it was mainly left brain. Let me tell you about my suffering. And let’s just blame somebody else for this. What advice might you give to your child’s self, if you were to meet your child’s self now, so that would be one way in? Because the unmet needs of the child, of course, are running the vehicle for so many of us? And so then you get what would it be like to imagine that your voice has been on this journey of its own making, and that even the most radical acts of abuse were exactly what was needed for you to find your voice this lifetime. You’re literally returned, retracing your whole life, through the lens, or through the ears of your voice, the voice that had to navigate every situation every high, every low.

Maura Conlon  57:56

When you ask that question, my rational brain just sort of dissolves. It’s like asking a question to leave time. Because I think that’s the music and expression takes me out of out of time. I mean, it connects me to the timeless, I live very close to the ocean. And, you know, the ocean is like a symphony connection to, to eternity. And, you know, I recall going to church, you know, it was the 1030 mouse, it was the mass with the choir. And I would sit there in the pew and just listen to the dogma. And, you know, it’d be just your average kid being quite bored. But then every Sunday at this 1030, maths, Mrs. Maravillas would sing Ave Maria. Oh, my gosh, is saying her name and that song now. I am 10 years old, and I’m back in that church, and I can hear her most beautiful voice. And maybe you could say it was performative. But I don’t think so. Because it felt like it came from such a sacred place. Because I had gooseflesh 

Chloë Goodchild  59:13

Awesome. 

Maura Conlon  59:17

And I think I might have had tears in my eyes. And, you know, when we feel this deep emotion, what do we do with it? And I remember feeling that as a kid, like, is everybody feeling this? Or is it just me? Because we don’t really talk about it, you know, it just kind of gets parked somewhere inside. And so I think from a young age, I was just aware that Oh, I can feel so much emotion through song

Chloë Goodchild  59:45

said that is that how all your your imaginal your storytelling, the whole journey began for

Maura Conlon  59:51

you? It’s such a great question because, you know, we talk about these dichotomies between school and church and on these institutions and how they put us in our brain, and then to be in these experiences were in nature, like you say, and connected to music in ways that were not being taught in school. Another example for me is, I have a brother with Down syndrome. And Joe cannot speak the way you and I speak. But he can sing words to song lyrics. Oh, yeah. So as a kid, I would put him to bed at night and sing Silent Night to him. Oh, the night? And then he would say the last word night. Oh, Liz.

Chloë Goodchild  1:00:51

Do you know what they are such special beings, aren’t they? It’s interesting. It’s called Down syndrome. I don’t know why that is. But I remember when I came back from India, have this vivid memory of seeing a child who has this multifaceted awareness is what I would describe as Yes. And I just remember, I totally get you we totally get each other, don’t we? You know, and I wasn’t finding that anywhere else in the more left brain world. Yeah,

Maura Conlon  1:01:19

I’d say Joe was my teacher. And I think it really was through sound. Right. And through singing. That was our only way. Yeah, so. And I think we all have this, you know, Oh, yeah. And I feel like that’s this strength of your message. And I’m sure in your teaching over the years, you’ve heard so many people say, Oh, I was told I can’t sing. I was told I have a, I mean, I was told I had a small mouth, you know what I’m like, Oh, I can’t sing. I have a small mouth. I never knew I was Haitian. And I’m missing this whole universe inside of us. Right, that’s connected to healing. And I just wonder, because we are living in difficult times right now. Right? And so how can this whole depth exploration into connection to soul and voice and silence and singing create some sort of weave? That is medicine for these times?

Chloë Goodchild  1:02:29

Right? Beautiful question, goodness. For me, it’s the field, I call it the singing field. And that we are creating fields of awareness. quantum science is reminding us we are not separate, we’re not reductionist, you know, we’re not mechanical. We are unified, interconnected, vibrating energy, bundles of frequency. And really how that has actually woken up what I call the third. So you’ve got the left brain, you’ve got the right brain, and you’ve got the third brain, which is the pioneer. What this These times are, are forcing us to wake up to, is this. Because you can be this you can be this but if you don’t join these two domains, in this convent, new conversations we’re having about what is true health. You know, what is the sovereign voice? What is the ethical way forward? How am I to express my truth now, given that democracy Democratic Party doesn’t mean anything? Republican doesn’t mean anything. You know, it’s like, what you were just all this LEFT, RIGHT THING IS Ill certainly in England, out of the window, it’s brilliant.

Maura Conlon  1:03:59

We’re stuck in the binary. 

Chloë Goodchild  1:04:03

Yeah, well, but so many people are getting because we are wired for this third capacity to see beyond the left right brain to understand that we’ve got to listen to ourselves each other and attend to our full health in ways that we maybe never thought of. And so now you do you have like, sound medicine coming in, that’s been taken very seriously, where I’m living here. People are actually understanding that the sound that is coming out of the mouth is literally taking you to the source of your DNA and it has the capacity to heal every single strand of that DNA. It can be either received in that way it can be given in that way. I it’s both and what that does, of course, is it restores our original state of oneness. 

Maura Conlon  1:04:56

You’re speaking to a resurrection of an ancient technology. within us that we have just forgotten about for however long it’s been 1000 2000 however many years, and when you speak to the pineal gland, and for people who maybe have not heard of that, is there a connection to the heart is that a direct connection to go way of looking at the world through heart consciousness?

Chloë Goodchild  1:05:22

Totally, totally. I mean, there’s so much more to share, the body immediately responds. So for example, if you just start massaging your the base of your, your ear lobes, you activate the vagus nerve, and that gets the entire body activated, that connects up into the pineal and the pineal is then charging up the whole system. So it’s like the higher heart. So they are directly connected. In our work. Of course, the three power centers of which the pineal is the wisdom is sound wisdom, the heart center we refer to as sound intelligence. 

Chloë Goodchild  1:06:00

And then the belly is what we refer to the power center of sound awareness. So once you connect the belly, and the heart, and the pineal as one living reality, through the domains of all the chakras, and on and down into Gaia, we start to wake up, we start to become our own medicine, we start to feel ourselves as whole, whole human beings full of unconditional, loving presence. And that’s it. And it’s just a fact, you know, and now I’ve got my beautiful SIMATIC scientists, you know, John Stuart Reed, who just lives up in Cumbria, who’s doing all this wonderful work of how you can see the health of your sound made visible. somatically and then you see the truth of who you are. Yes, it’s not a right left thing anymore. Yeah, I think once

Maura Conlon  1:07:03

We start to feel into this, then there’s no going back to an old way of thinking that that voice that has been with us for such a long time, you know, since such an early age, as you say, what would you say to your child? What resonance do you feel when I say the word, the naked voice? Infusing leadership in our world? Yes.

Chloë Goodchild  1:07:36

So the attachment to our need, for a leader, our collective need to project our own undealt with authority onto an outer form of leadership, is what’s brought us to this place. Yes. And so not long ago, I went to London to see this beautiful Japanese Butoh dancers, you know how they move very slowly, there was just one chair on the stage. That was it. And the whole purpose of the theater piece was who could get to that chair first. So it became this really competitive going to get there, I’ve got to, I’ve got to be that one. And, of course, we’ve all been through our own versions of Guru Geum, masters, mentors, which which all has its own time and place. But all of that is over to, for me, it’s how we find that within ourselves talking to myself, and it’s a lifetime practice is to connect the three wills. So the solar plexus, the heart center, and the pineal, so everything is 33333 all the time. 

Chloë Goodchild  1:09:01

The body has given us the entire book, I was remote Indian teacher saying, Glory in the West, you say ouch. In the east, we say, um, and that sound carries so much medicine within it. It doesn’t have to be a religious reality. It can be just the sounds God gave us. Because when you say that, the upper acupuncture wires, the upper and lower lips, join up with lines of energy that go all the way around the body and come back. It’s absolutely mind blowing and it’s not a religious thing anymore. It’s a vibrational frequency energy. And so are learning our willingness, willingness to really turn within and to find that leadership within and to embody that that in every one of the 50 trillion cells in the body, makes all the cells in the body very happy.

Maura Conlon  1:10:10

I love that so much. It just feels very, it feels very true. And there’s that saying, Be the change you want to see in the world, be the light you want to see in the world. It’s like be the sound, sing the change, sing the change. I think that’s it right there. I think that’s the bumper sticker.

Chloë Goodchild  1:10:37

There is one story I’ll just leave you with, which is the if you haven’t seen it, there is this extraordinary movie, which you can now get, I think you can just get it on line, a documentary that was made called the singing revolution. In Estonia, it’s quite a harrowing, but incredibly powerful, inspiring story, how the Estonians non violently sang their oppressors out of their country. And it is a really astonishing movie, really revealing the nonviolent power, the leadership, true leadership. So that’s the field that’s when you’ve got a lot of people who suddenly understand they’re in this quantum understanding together. And all you got to do is hold hands, the sheer act of holding hands. So it’s not like we’ve got to do this on our own.

Maura Conlon  1:11:30

That sense of community, right? It’s what we’re all looking for. We’re in it. This is it. That was Chloë, good child vocalist, singing philosopher, sound pioneer and recording artist. Chloë is founder of the naked voice, transforming lives through the power of sound. She also hosts the podcast series, book che dialogues, voices of conscious emergence.

Maura Conlon  1:12:11

Thank you so much for listening to Original Belonging. I’m your host, Maura Conlon. Please subscribe rate and recommend with love wherever you listen to podcasts. And to find out more about each episode, please delve into the show notes. To learn more about how you can engage with the world of stories within you. Please find me online at originalbelonging.com and on Instagram @originalbelonging. This production was co created by award winning media midwife, Ahri Golden. You can find a link to her work in the show notes and on her website, ahrigolden.com That’s ahrigolden.com.

Maura Conlon  1:13:23

Join us next time as Original Belonging continues.