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Meet Aviva — The Girl Who Knows Jerusalem Only Through Songs
Over the next several days, I want to introduce you to the people who carry “Bring Us Home.” We’ll start with the one whose journey is the show: Aviva. Who is Aviva? Aviva is a young woman, born by the rivers of Babylon — seventy years into the exile. She has never seen Jerusalem. Never…
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The Real Enemy Was Never Babylon’s Cruelty — It Was Its Comfort
Yesterday I talked about the question at the heart of “Bring Us Home” — how do you ache for a home you’ve never seen? Today I want to dig into the idea that makes that question so dangerous: the real threat in this story was never the whip. It was the welcome. What we expect…
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How Do You Ache for a Home You’ve Never Seen?
This is the question at the very center of “Bring Us Home.” Everything else — every character, every song, every scene — grows out of this one idea. So today I want to sit in it with you for a minute, because I think it might be more personal than you’d expect. The question itself…
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Why I’m Calling It “Bring Us Home” — The Story Behind the Title
Titles matter to me. A title isn’t just a label — it’s a promise. It tells you what kind of story you’re walking into before you’ve heard a single note. So today I want to talk about why this musical is called “Bring Us Home,” and why that phrase ended up doing double duty in…
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Introducing “Bring Us Home” — My Original Biblical Musical About the Babylonian Exile
Posting Date: July 8 In 587 BCE, Solomon’s Temple was burned to the ground. The walls of Jerusalem were torn down. The king was captured, and thousands of people — priests, musicians, families — were marched hundreds of miles east into exile in Babylon. They wouldn’t see home again for seventy years. That’s not the…
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The Notebooks in the Closet:
How a $0.25 Target Find Cracked My Heart Wide Open I was digging through the closet in my office — past the safe, past a box of DVDs I still refuse to let go of (don’t judge me, we all have one) — and my hand landed on something spiral-bound. Then another. Then another. All…
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A Song for Every Quilting Circle
What Happens When Different People Sit Down Together If you’ve ever been part of a quilting guild, a sewing circle, or even just a small group of friends who gather to create together, you know there’s something special that happens. Different ages, different backgrounds, different life stories, all sitting around the same table, somehow becoming…
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Why Handmade Quilts Mean More
What I’m Really Giving When I Give a Quilt People give cards. People give candles. People give gift cards. I give hours. When I make someone a quilt, whether it’s for a new baby, a wedding, or a friend going through a hard season, I’m not just giving them fabric stitched together. I’m giving them…
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A Love Story (With a Quilting Ruler)
Every Quilter Remembers Their First Ruler Mine was a simple 6×24. Standing in that quilt shop, I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought I was buying a tool. What I was actually doing was starting a relationship that would, over time, take over an entire drawer. Then a second drawer. Then…
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Two Plus Two Equals Buy More Fabric
The Math That Only Makes Sense to Quilters Here’s a riddle for you: if a quilt pattern calls for two and a half yards of fabric, how much fabric should you buy? If you answered “two and a half yards,” I’m sorry to inform you that you are not yet a real quilter. The correct…
About
Singer-songwriter turning 10+ journals of songs into reality ✨ Classical soprano gone indie | Transparent about AI collaboration | “Through It All” album Feb 2026 | Mom of 2 | 5:30am fitness | Also quilts sewmelanie.com
