Meditation Spotlight: Liz Calandra
By ERIN HAN, JUNE KOH, FIONA LIU, and SOPHIE LOW
Every Wednesday at 9:50 a.m., as students pour out of their early morning classes, some choose to make their way into Phillips Church, joined by faculty, to form a quietly chattering audience. They fall silent when a member of the Exeter community walks forward to the podium to deliver their personal story and message for Exonians, that is, their “meditation,” while illuminated by the warm glow of the sconces on the wall.
On Wednesday, Oct. 2, the spotlight fell on Liz Calandra, a second-year teaching intern in the Department of Theater and Dance, who shared the story of her, her grandmother, and their shared valor to dream.
Calandra began with a personal rendition of one of her grandmother’s favorite songs. “I wanted to make sure that music and theater were incorporated into my meditation because it was so important to my nana,” Calandra shared. “This is why I sang one of her favorite songs at the start of my meditation and ended it with a musical theater song she and I used to sing together.”
In the spoken portion of her meditation, Calandra spoke about how her nana encouraged her to pursue her dreams in music and theater, despite her parents’ initial disapproval. Growing up, her nana sang with her often, teaching her the lyrics to “Show Business” at only five years old — the song she performed at the end of her meditation. Calandra also recalled that, to account for their birthdays being one day apart, her nana reminded her, regularly, that it was because “stars don’t share birthdays.”
“She always pushed me to follow my dreams no matter what stood in my way,” said Calandra. The major obstacle for a high-school-aged Calandra was a lack of support from her parents. In her meditation, she recalled that in her senior year of high school, while she was performing a musical that she had been rehearsing months for, she noticed her dad was watching her brother’s baseball game on his phone. Afterward, however, she also recalled her nana pulling her aside and telling her “if that’s the last time I see you on stage, I’ll die a proud nana.”
After the pandemic and after majoring in theater in college, a decision that her parents felt was a “waste of her potential,” because of her stellar high school grades, Calandra finally grasped an opportunity to perform again. However, around the same time, she received a call from home that her nana had passed away. At that time, though she expected her mother to tell her to return for her funeral, she instead encouraged her to perform instead, since that was what her nana would have wanted. As she performed the show more times, theater began to heal her broken heart.
Calandra remarked that she wished to share this story with Exonians because such a talk would have been a source of much encouragement for her high school self. “I was inspired to share my meditation by the students at this school,” she said. “I put myself in their shoes and imagined what it would’ve been like for me to have someone talk about following their dreams within an artistic field when I was in high school. I wanted to provide that to the students at PEA.” Her nana’s legacy lives on in her heart, in her continued pursuit in the field of theater and music, and now as the inspiration for her meditation, which touched many Exonians in the audience on Wednesday morning.
“When writing my meditation, my nana was the sole inspiration,” described Calandra. “She always told me to do what I love, and I think it’s important for people to know that even if your parents aren’t supportive of your potential career path, someone is in your corner rooting for you.”
By 10:20 a.m., on Wednesday, Oct. 2, Liz Calandra had taught students and faculty alike a valuable and transformative lesson: not just how to pursue one’s dreams and aspirations, but to deal with grief and loss during unfavorable times, and reflect upon it to gain strength.
