Wonder Woman of the Week: Kina Grannis

I finally have a second published book, a job, and (almost) a place to call home after a long Odyssey of a Summer. While I’m sure you want to read all about that (and you should!) my story is not unique. I’ve wanted to write about one woman for a long time who recently had a similar, but much more extreme case of what I had been through for my passions. This woman is not only a successful singer, songwriter, and guitarist, she also endured trials on foreign soil that put her life and her career to the test for eight months. The Wonder Woman of the Week is Kina Grannis.

Kina Grannis was born in California and at age four began performing music in front of her stuffed animals. In 2001, she performed in public as a way of trying to overcome crippling shyness. Nine years later, she released her first full-length album Stairwells with heralded success. [1] Stairwells’ success came after a college career of music making that came after Grannis began recording covers of songs on youtube. In 2007, Grannis won a contest that allowed her to write and perform a song during the 2008 Superbowl. Her song “Message From Your Heart” carried her into low-key stardom giving her a jumping-off point from which to enter the larger world of the music industry. [2]

The self-published Stairwells took Kina Grannis into the Billboard 200, and led her on tour for two years after (which included two concerts this writer attended in New Orleans and Chicago). She toured on three continents and was able to take her earnings and experiences and create a new album in 2014 called Elements. [3] When touring in Southeast Asia for her second tour, Grannis was brought in for questioning in Jakarta over complications with her and her band’s visas. Evidently, the person who scheduled the tour for Grannis told the band they had all the right visas in order when in fact they did not. Grannis and her band mates faced $35,000 in fines and five years in prison in Indonesia, but the judge decided on one hundred days of “probation” instead. Grannis and the band were forced to remain in Indonesia and banned from returning home for more than three months in the middle of an international tour- which was of course cut short. [4]

I usually end these things with a summary of what a person can learn from the women I write about, but it would be impossible for me to write something better than Kina Grannis’ own words of wisdom collected after returning home from her tedious journey. After returning to friends and family in California, Grannis’ maxims seemed a bit more relevant to my own experiences after this past Summer, so here they are.

25 Things I Learned From Being Trapped in Jakarta for 100 Days

1. If you’re still breathing, you have something to be grateful for. Gratitude is the key to everything.

2. Stop resisting what is. Acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance.

3. You can find joy in the most unexpected places. Like homemade chia seed pudding every day forever.

4. Activated charcoal tablets can be your best friend. (Or — foreign bacteria will crush your spirit as well as your digestive well-being.)

5. Spend 30 minutes a day on Duolingo studying Spanish for 3 months straight and hot damn you can really learn a lot of Spanish. (Spend a month back at home struggling with mild PTSD and reveling in your newfound freedom and you can forget absolutely everything you learned.)

6. Sop Buntut. Mie Dok Dok Jawa. Ayam Goreng. (Let’s hear it for Indonesian food.)

7. You really do burst into tears when a judge slams a gavel and you find out you’re not going to jail.

8. Cakalang Bakar is a fun phrase to work into your everyday conversation. (Who cares that it means Skipjack Tuna.)

9. The perfect time to grow out your pixie cut so no one in the world can see all the awkward stages is when you’re held against your will for 100 days and aren’t allowed to post videos on YouTube and also have nothing better to do.

10. Your friends and family and health is all that matters. Never take these things for granted.

11. Getting to exist at all is something to be grateful for, and being alive is the greatest adventure.

12. Mash a banana with a tablespoon of peanut butter and then die a million deaths because tell me that isn’t the best thing you’ve ever tasted.

13. You don’t know traffic until you’ve sat in a cab in Jakarta for 3 hours to travel all of 5 miles.

14. Do one thing that makes you proud each day and you’re setting yourself up to feel pretty darn ok with yourself.

15. Meditation can do a lot for a heavy heart.

16. The first granny square you ever crochet looks a lot different from what a granny square is supposed to look like.

17. There are real life angels in the world.

18. Start every day with an hour-long walk and you’ve already won.

19. When your whole world exists within the walls of a hotel room, reading can be a beautiful escape.

20. A healthy body begets a healthy mind begets a healthy body begets… you get it. It’s all connected. You need to take care of yourself.

21. Appreciate every second with the people you love because you never know when or how they could be taken from you.

22. Water is life. Drink it all.

23. If you live in a hotel with a buffet, at some point you have to stop treating meal-time like you’ll never eat again or you might die. Or gain a bazillion pounds. (Or both.)

24. Never mind the threat of being imprisoned in a foreign land, if you put a bird in my hand, I’m good. (I’m talking about an actual bird, not the expression — shout out to the bird park at Mini Indonesia!)

25. You have to choose happiness. Every day. Over and over again. Don’t wait for it to find you.

26. (I know I said 25 things, but this is one takeaway I can’t risk not being hammered in.) If you are a touring performer, please, I beg of you, check, double check, triple check that you have a proper work visa in your passport before you step foot on stage.

(Photo Credit: All Music)

“Biography.” last.fm. CBS Interactive; nd. Web. 10 August 2016.

“About Kina Grannis.” MTV Artists. Viacom; nd. Web. 10 August 2016.

Fulton, Katherine. “Kina Grannis.” All Music. Complex; nd. Web. 10 August 2016.

Grannis, Kina. “100 Days in Jakarta.” Kinagrannis.com. np; 2016. Web. 10 August 2016.