When Susie Joyce learned to talk, it pretty much came out in song. Her first great aspiration, around age 4, was to become a Mouseketeer, a child performer on television’s “Mickey Mouse Club,” which premiered in 1955. When that opportunity didn’t arise, she went from house to house throughout her West Covina neighborhood, singing Christmas carols until residents opened their door to listen. In Girl Scouts, she served as song leader. At Boy Scout jamborees, she led the patriotic songs. In high school, she sang folksongs in the park.

It wasn’t that Susie Joyce taught herself to sing. It was that she arrived, knowing how.

“I was singing without concern about whether or not I was singing correctly,” she said. “My pursuit was much higher than that; I was singing for joy.”

Joyce didn’t actually take her first formal singing lesson until she was in her 30s. But, by then, she was already keenly aware of the power of song to uplift, inspire, soothe.

While living in Sonoma County, Joyce was devoted to singing and writing songs until she became afflicted with vocal cord paralysis, a condition where she could no longer manage the muscles that controlled her voice. Vocal cord paralysis can make it difficult to speak, to breathe, to sing.

“For a year,” said Joyce, “I couldn’t sing at all. It was like not being able to laugh. It took three years to fully come out of it and regain my singing voice; at first, I couldn’t sustain a note. Then, I could sing only for a short time.”

In 2005, Joyce attended a singing retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where she met Kate Munger who, in 2000, had founded the Threshold Choir. This women’s choir, of which there are now hundreds across the country, honors the ancient tradition of singing at the bedside of those who are struggling, some with living and others with the process of dying. As the women sing, they offer a soothing vehicle to provide comfort and compassion at life’s thresholds.

“This work spoke to me on many levels,” said Joyce. “I found that the lullaby-like singing Kate taught me, that singing quietly, was something I could do. Before, I’d had a really big voice that could fill an auditorium. Now, I was using a soft voice for a more powerful purpose.”

Herein lies the impetus for Joyce’s book, “The Songs We Sing, A 33,000-Mile Celebration of Threshold Singers, Community Singing Circles, and Natural Wonders” (Park Place Publications 2023).

“In my life,” said Joyce, “I found myself in a quandary, struggling with a rent increase and a job change. In the summer of 2017, I attended a singing retreat and, a month later, a Threshold Choir gathering where I experienced, among 350 singers, such a beautiful connection. I was so bonded with this group; I didn’t want it to end.”

Right then and there, it occurred to Joyce that she wanted to retire, abandon her apartment, let go of all her stuff, buy an RV, and travel the country, visiting Threshold Choirs. A year later, she did.

“I bought a 20-year-old, 19-foot van,” she said, “and budgeted $300 a month for camping, which included a lot of rest stops, not too many Walmart parking lots, but a bunch of Cracker Barrel lots. I drove all across the country and into Canada. As I got in touch with local Threshold Choirs, I did a lot of driveway camping, as well.”

Singing songs & telling tales

“The Songs We Sing” is not merely a “van life” memoir, where minimalism meets adventure, resulting in a reevaluation of what matters in life; although all of that happened for the author. Joyce’s story runs both deeper and higher as she traveled 33,000 miles to visit 70 Threshold Choirs and honor the sacrament of singing to those who are dying.

“The magical thing about Threshold Choir singing,” said Joyce, “is that singers blend our voices, listening to each other. It’s known as listening louder than you sing. That kind of singing is without any ego. No one voice stands out. We create something together. I love that it’s not performing, it’s more like prayer.”

Founder Kate Munger introduced the idea of offering a moment of silence after a song has been sung, to sustain the sacred feeling and give the song time to resonate. The songs are compassionate, supportive, and very short, sung in repetition known to be a healing modality. More than a song, it sounds like a soft chant.

“The big theme [of Susie’s book] is the remarkable way that kind people who love to sing and to whom much has been given,” said Munger, “have started to find each other, to visit each other, and to sing together. The lyrical thread that weaves purpose and gratitude, that binds kindness with a knowing joy, is the star of this choir, even as Susie Joyce is the graceful needle that has stitched it all together.”

Joyce drove weekly to sing with Threshold Choirs in Aromas or Santa Cruz until she felt ready to establish her own choir through the Center for Spiritual Awakening in Pacific Grove.

“It takes time to study the songs and to learn how to sing to the dying,” she said. “When you’re at the bedside, you don’t want to draw attention to yourself; you are there for the person. It also is a learning process to deal with the emotions that well up when in the presence of the dying and the family, holding vigil.”

Joyce remembers, on more than one occasion, when the family, as the choir sang, became very emotional. Yet, afterward, a family member said, “Thank you for saying the words we couldn’t say.”

“Our singing can free up emotions,” she said. “We sing songs for support, for uplifting, and for letting go. But we never introduce songs for letting go until we have permission from the family, who need to feel ready for that.”

Susie Joyce is now anchored in Monterey, where she spent 10 years managing affordable housing units for people with mental illness, through Interim, Inc. Yet, having spent years living in Pacific Grove, where she currently manages the Monarch Pines mobile home park, she still considers herself a “Pagrovian.” This also is where she ran a poetry salon, which met at the legendary “Little House” across from the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. And, it is where she met and worked with author and poet laureate Barbara Mossberg, with whom she spent five years planning and putting on poetry events.

“Susie Joyce is, herself, a threshold of kindness that is holy and majestic and wholly transporting,” Mossberg said. “Learning about her journey to the hearts of human kindness is a portal to hope.”

The work of Threshold Choirs, she says, is astonishing enough. Yet, to leave your life, jettison all you have garnered and, as a single, aging woman, set forth to discover and engage people who sing to those in their dying moments, and return to weave this story, is itself such a gift to us, a portal to the heights of hope in human goodness.

Saturday at 7 p.m., The Pacific Grove Art Center will host an evening of songs and signings, readings, and refreshments to celebrate the release of “The Songs We Sing” and the intentions and experiences that inspired it. Participants will be welcomed as guests of the author, who will sign books purchased that evening for $15 or in advance via Amazon, for $17.95. Space is limited, so Susie Joyce requests that guests RSVP to soosea@sbcglobal.net.