14 DAY TRIAL // Susan Boyle, one of the greatest voices ever to be discovered on a pop star competition, Britain’s Got Talent, details her incredible journey from obscurity to stardom in her book, “The Woman I Was Born to Be.”
From being born to a 45-year-old mother who was told by doctors she shouldn’t have more children to being oxygen deprived at birth and finally mustering the courage to present herself at BGT auditions, Susan’s story is as inspirational as it is heart-warming.
“It’s probably best to accept Susan will never be anything. Susan will never come to anything so don’t expect too much of her,” doctors told her parents shortly after she was born.
Susan, though, has always rejected the word “disability” even if she spent most of her life trying, out of natural impulse, to shut out the world and seek refuge in music.
She does things slower than other people her age and, sadly, she’s also hardened against ridicule, having been exposed to it so many times.
Yet Susan also believes she has a gift and knows that, when she sings, not only her, but the entire world transforms into something better. For her, singing means communicating and bonding with the world, there where words fail her.
The same happened the first time she discovered she could share this bond with the world: when she was 23 and went to a local pub for a sing-along competition.
“The room was silent and then somebody cheered, another person whistled and the place was rocking with applause. I had discovered a way of communicating. It was like finding the key to a box of jewels, lifting the lid and feeling the sparkling reflection lighting up my face,” Susan writes in the book.
It took many years though for her to decide to make money off her singing – and quite some time to get the courage to present herself in front of the BGT audience and judges.
When she finally did – magic happened.
“As my voice went out to the audience, their energy came back to me. At the top of the crescendo, I was suddenly aware that the buzz I could hear was applause. I was going down well! I didn’t hear the final few notes of my CD backing track because of all the stamping and applause,” the singer writes.
Her journey to fame wasn’t always smooth, though, no matter how hard she tried to just go with the flow and not cause problems.
Her temper would often get the best of her and, most importantly, the media soon grew tired of praising her – and turned on her and viciously attacked.
Now, Susan Boyle is an established singer – and that’s all she ever wanted, to sing. She’s also the biggest, best selling and most loved artist of the moment, while also standing as living proof that dreams are literally the last thing we as humans lose.
“In my dictionary there’s no such word as ‘disability.’ You should always focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do – and remember, there’s no rush. One of the things that is most different about my life now is that I never know what is going to happen next,” she writes.
“If my life was fairly monochrome before, now it is a rainbow of color and contrast. I’ve learned to embrace and relish that uncertainty instead of fearing it. I have no idea what the next chapter is going to be but I do know that I’m looking forward to whatever the future holds,” Susan also says.
For more excerpts from Susan Boyle’s upcoming book “The Woman I Was Born to Be,” please refer here.