Meet Erin Carere

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erin Carere a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Erin, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
There was a time in my life when I thought my purpose was my identity-career. At the time, that particular identity was singer; more specifically, singer-songwriter; focus the lens even sharper and a gasp of “successful, label-signed, world-famous singer-songwriter” may have emerged from my lips, accompanied by the resonant chords of my guitar.

I was only partly lucky. After years of booking my own gigs, financing my own releases, and touring out of my very own tour bus (an ancient 1974 Rogue RV with a faint perfume of must that barely ran), I was signed to an indie music label!

If you’re now racking your brain to remember my Billboard Top 40 hits, you can stop. I did release an album and toured and even played a fun festival in Austin. But then it fell apart, and I got lost as to what to do with my singing life. And my identity suffered.

Who was I, if my dreams didn’t transpire?

Enter India.

About the time my music career and the reality of my relative success and failure was staring me in the face, I decided to go to India to work with spiritual teachers.

See, I was grieving a music career that fizzled out rather unceremoniously, adding insult to injury after a decade of incredibly hard work and optimism against all odds. I couldn’t celebrate how far I had come, or how blessed I was to have a talent and to find the freedom to pursue it.

I was lost.

And so when a teacher I admired suggested I go, since I had nothing to do but work a day job I disliked by day – despite having been diagnosed with walking pneumonia – and attempt to avoid the deep sorrow I felt about the bubbles of my dreams being burst at night, I went.

One day, along with my group, I entered a cave in the Himalayan Mountains alongside the Ganges River. Inside this dark place were candles surrounding an altar, and a monk in orange robes who had lived in this cave for years and years. He informed us that this cave had been tended to by a monk from his religious order for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years continuously. Then he invited us to sit and meditate.

As soon as I settled in and closed my eyes, despite the cool dark stone beneath me, I felt suddenly warm. Welcomed. At home.

I remember thinking, “this is my home. This is where I am meant to be, to live. I’m going to move here.”

And then I felt a great release, as if years of tension and strife were being lifted from my shoulders.

Next came a vision:

I felt as though I were in complete darkness, but I could smell wet earth. And I could feel something warm above me, and so I pushed and pushed up against the darkness to reach it, until I sprang through and realized that I was, in this vision, a sprout! And not just of any kind of plant, no. As I watched myself grow, I saw that I was a rose. A red, red rose. I reached for the sun, I danced in the rain, I bloomed, and then my petals fell, one by one and two by two. I never worried about what to do. or if I was doing it “right .” I didn’t need to. I was a rose, and I was meant to bloom, and nature guided me in all directions. I just needed to be the rosiest rose that I was.

“Ahem.” There came the sound of a man clearing his throat. Oh! It was then that I snapped out of my vision and remembered – I was not a rose, of course, but me, Erin, a young woman in a cave.

I opened my eyes to see that I was the only person left in the cave with the monk. I had no idea how much time had passed or where everyone else had gone.

Then I thought to myself, “oh, I cannot move here. This is THIS monk’s HOME. Right.” And you know, I didn’t want to stay there any longer. Because I wasn’t born a monk in India, destined to tend to this cave.

After expressing my gratitude for sharing his space to the monk, I emerged into the late afternoon sun. I was truly happy because I realized that, like the rose, I didn’t need to worry about what to do next.

Of course, I could choose to work on fame if it felt true to me, but I didn’t need to worry about being famous or successful or even about being an artist. I was already the last one, sometimes the first and second, but more importantly, that wasn’t the point of any of my gifts. My gifts were meant to be cultivated, that was all.

My purpose was clear. It was for me to be the most me I could be. The truest to myself, to the nature coded in my DNA. To adhere to my vision and my own integrity, shaped by my dreams as well as my compassion.

There’s a saying out there that I think sums it up beautifully:

The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m a Renaissance woman: I act, I sing, I write!

I recently launched a “character podcast” as the antagonist from a novel I have forthcoming. It’s called “Joan de la Fleur: The Podcast Experience.” The gist of it is, Joan was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1940s, but now, years and years after her death, her ghost is upset because no one remembers her. So she’s running her snarky late-night style podcast to give modern audiences a good taste of her hard-as-nails diva glamour.

I’m producing and screenwriting a few features at the moment with my husband, Carlo Carere. And we’re wrapping a year-and-a-half festival run with our independent comedy pilot, “Spy v Spia,” with two final festivals in September: one in Barcelona and one in Wallachia (home of Vlad the Impaler, the prototype for “Dracula.”)

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Curiosity! I don’t know everything. I don’t have to know everything. I get to learn new things every day and letting myself as questions has been an incredible gift to my progress.

2. Self-belief. I’ve won awards as a singer, singer-songwriter, actress, novelist, screenwriter and producer. These are all things many people along the way told me I’d never be able to do, that I’d never be good at, blah blah blah. They were wrong.

3. Kindness. I’m still into kindness, and giving people the benefit of the doubt. Myself included.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
At the moment, I’m facing a new learning curve: producing a feature film! We’ve attached incredible talent to the project, and we’ve won awards for the script. Right now I’m learning how to raise money and apply for grants and programs, and trust me, “sales” is something I’m not natural at doing. But I believe whole-heartedly in the value of our project and that when we make it, we will make a fun, entertaining movie with heart and soul, and some money back as well.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Stephanie Girard (main photo)

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