Christmas Cookies & Steve Perry's Grace (again)
Holiday Weekly Special
Hi my dear beloved customers,
As Café 42 has slowed its pace for the Holidays, I decided to re-offer you a post I published last summer though very much related to Christmas spirit. Indeed, Steve Perry and Christmas are tightly linked in my heart, especially since he released a new deluxe version of his Christmas album “The Season 3”.
But also because Steve Perry has somehow become my magical happy place where I go and talk and sing and dance and basically have fun. He’s become my Santa. Indeed, when I go there, usually when I’m low or when I go for my daily walk, I would go to a very white bright room with white furniture and I would make music with him, sing songs or just have a discussion about life.
And that post is about how it all begun, how that weird - Weird is my middle name! - special bond was created in my mind and in my heart with that sweet graceful man…
Hi my dear beloved customers,
Would you like to try our Weekly Special Christmas Cookies? What do you mean it’s not Christmas? I’m sure it is always Christmas somewhere, if not, it should be!
It is always a little Christmas in my heart because of Steve Perry and please allow me to tell you why…
It is very strange the way Steve Perry landed in my life, figuratively speaking, a few months ago. I knew Journey, his former band, obviously with the “Don’t stop believing” song and the dream that went with it, but I didn’t know who Steve Perry was, had never seen his face and wasn’t really interested in him whatsoever.
I loved the song and my own private miracle that was attached to it but that was it. Nevertheless, the Universe, or rather one of my guides shall I say, decided to go to the trouble of introducing Steve to me, at least virtually.
At that time, I was working as a Press Relation for a french Festival and the promotors were struggling to find a last band to complete their line up. Journey popped in the equation and it did surpris me that that name showed up for it was just a couple of weeks after the “Don’t stop believing” episode. But, at that time, I thought that was the law of attraction on the move and it amused me.
So, one afternoon, as I was illustrating the Festival presenting page on my corporate website, I went and searched for a link to a “Don’t stop believing” live video and something very weird happened to me when I saw Steve Perry singing: I was hit by an energy so raw, so powerful, that it sent me wandering in my dark inner woods with a brain concussion for three whole days. No kidding! I felt as though I were in an emotional spinning washing machine and hadn’t a clue of what was going on.
On the second day, after my meditation, I asked what I was supposed to do with Steve Perry for I thought there must be a point to all that. And a very clear voice answered in my head “You should write a book about him”.
Wait! You have to picture the scene : I’m a fifty year old average woman, sitted on my bed in my home in the South of France and a voice in my head tells me very seriously that I should write a book about a former rock singer who currently lives in California and whom I have obviously no way to get in touch with for now. I remember laughing a lot after recovering from the shock of hearing a voice in my head which doesn’t happen so often. Good one, Universe!
Nevertheless, I went on the Internet to search for elements, interviews about Steve Perry to try and understand what was going on and how he could relate to me. I read and listened to him talking about his life, his parents’ divorce, his career, about how he had lost the love of his life from breast cancer two years after their encounter, my heart broken in the process as he spoke about his… Everything seemed very blurry to me, almost surreal, but I was eager to understand the link I seemed to have with him and, at that point, I couldn’t.
On the third day, still not knowing what to do with that energy that I ended up calling the “What the Fuck/WTF Energy” when it presents itself into my life, for it inhabits me regularly when I need a vibrational update, well, at least that’s what I understand of it, I wrote a letter to Steve Perry, telling him about the miracle his song had operated in my life, including the part with the book I should write about him and what was energetically happening to me at the moment. Of course, I never planned to actually send him that letter at any point – I wouldn’t even know where I would be supposed to send it in the first place! -, simply I needed to put words on what was happening to me and, somehow, make sense of it all.
The morning of the fourth day, I had come back to my old self, relieved and shaken. The most incredible part is that, a few days later, Journey’s coming to the festival was canceled. I couldn’t help thinking that the whole point of it had been to make me watch Steve singing. There is something going on when he sings, a certain light coming out of him, as though he were beaming, that triggers something inside of me, ignites it, a vibration that could not have been triggered otherwise.
Almost a year later, I was reading Jack Canfield’s “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and one of the first stories I read related a similar experience a woman had lived with an author at a conference; she called it a grace encounter and it hit me that that was exactly what had happened to me virtually, I was struck by Steve Perry’s grace and, believe me, after listening to his songs and the few interviews he gave when he released his album “Traces”, this man is kind, humble, witty and definitely filled with grace.
Of course, after that first incident, I promised myself I would stay as far as I could from any video featuring Steve Perry, ever. But life has its ways… A few months later, I felt nudges from the Universe, or rather one of my guides, to go and watch the video again, meanwhile compelled to reading what I had journaled during the incident. At that time, I was wondering if I had what it took to write my first novel, not totally agreeing with what my “partner in writing” expected of me. So, very very cautiously, I opened Youtube and went to watch Journey’s live video again.
At that moment, I felt my heart, and entire body as a matter of fact, filled with a tremendous and expanding love. It was incredibly strong and it swept away any doubts I had about my ability to write the novel the Universe had miraculously sent for me to write. In fact, the video connected me directly back to my imagination and opened it widely for me to tap in.
Curious, I thus took a look at what I had wrote in my journal and saw, incredulously, what I had written during those four days : “During my morning meditation, I was told not to be afraid of that energy, that nothing was expected from me, that I wasn’t supposed to do anything with it and everything was okay. I felt soothed and I was told that I would be able to master this energy later, to transform it into a freeing positive energy.”
And I somehow did. As soon as I began to work on my novel while listening to Steve Perry’s music, I entered an interrupted bliss period of three weeks; I felt out of the world and bathed in an unfathomable constant feeling of love and joy. It tremendously helped me to write my novel and the beautiful romance story that was part of it.
At the same time, I began a period of automatic writing to try and communicate with my guide, who ended up being two as far as communication was concerned. Adam talked to me with words and Michael with music. He was the one sending me all the meaningful songs that help me find my path and it’s not exaggerated to say that he loves Journey, not to mention Steve Perry, of course. The day before he introduced himself to me, he sent me another Journey’s song: “Anyway you want it” and I can tell you I immediately recognized Michael’s strong energy in it. So, through automatic writing, I asked him why he had sent me Steve Perry and he answered that Steve and I shared the same beaming strong energy, assumption that I didn’t share at that point for I didn’t feel my inner energy that way, though it could be quite intense sometimes.
But the energy kept on expanding inside of me in the following months. I wrote my novel listening to Steve Perry’s Christmas album “The Season” for we were heading to December at that time and “Traces”, which he had written and composed after his love had past away, was too sad to listen to for me. I love it but three songs before the end I feel so heart broken and sad that I feel the urge to go and fetch Steve to hug him and tell him that everything is going to be alright.
As months went by, my heart, my own grace, kept on expanding slowly but steadily until I live all my days filled with a tremendous unconditional love, pushing sorrows and fears away, letting them fade into remote memories of a past era. When I feel down or in need of inspiration, I listen to Steve Perry’s voice and I feel myself again, alive with dreams and blessed with joy.
Steve even accompanied me to the hospital after one of my surgeries. The night following my operation, I was in a lot of pain that pain killers couldn’t overcome. As I was lying in my hospital bed, I heard one of my favorite Steve’s Christmas songs “Winter Wonderland” in my head and I knew my guides had sent it to me to relieve the pain. At that moment, I remembered one of Napoleon Hill’s book in which he had to have eight tooth pulled out and his technique to use imagination to remove himself from the pain. So I retreated inside my head, imagining myself in a beautiful white living room talking with an imaginary Steve for a few hours. And it worked! While I was chatting away from my body, I didn’t feel the pain anymore. I had summoned the bliss and it had come to me in Steve’s form, as usual.
Of course, I hope that, one day, - deep down I know I will - I will be able to chat with Steve Perry in real life, first of all to thank him for what his songs, voice and light have brought into my life, second to see if an actual connection exists between us or if it is just in my own heart - I am very curious about that for I have my own theory about it - and last, to write a book about him since that was what was suggested to me in the first place!
I wish you all a very special and magical merry Christmas!
Lots of love,
Geay
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This is a beautiful story Geraldine! I’ve always been a Journey fan and I was wearing my Journey T-shirt just yesterday! Don’t stop believing has always been one of my favourite songs 😊🌻