She stood beside Martin Luther King, Jr. and sang “We shall overcome.” She was only 19 at the time. Recalling it today, Joan Baez states she really thought that it meant once, this overcoming…laughing, in the way that you do from exhaustion but an unwillingness to give up, she says at 83, “I didn’t realize we would have to overcome again and again…”

My mother loved her for a different anthem — the song Diamonds and Rust. She must have spun a hole in the record, with her own reasons and willingness to overcome. It’s gained popularity again today because of the recent movie about Bob Dylan (for whom she wrote this song). The world keeps beginning.

When I was a kid, watching the record spin, I thought I would just figure stuff out, you know, and become something, and that would be it…that would be my life. Thank God that isn’t the way, not for me anyway. I think that I, we, just have to keep becoming. We change and grow. We are molded by love and trips around the sun. It takes a long time to build a soul. We get older, maybe wiser, (even better, we gain a little grace) but we don’t finish – we don’t have to – we begin, and be, and begin again. I think that’s the gift of living…the joy of being alive! We shall overcome.