By: Dorian Hale
When Anne Abel walked into her first rock concert at the age of 59, she wasn’t just stepping into a crowded arena. She was stepping into a new chapter of her life. For decades, music — the very heartbeat of joy for so many — was absent from her world. Raised in a restrictive household where even the family car came without a radio, Abel was cut off from the rhythms and lyrics that shaped her generation. Fun, as she explains bluntly, “was not something my parents did. And so it wasn’t something I did either.”
Her memoir, High Hopes, chronicles the remarkable transformation that unfolded when she finally encountered live music. It was Labor Day weekend, 2012, and Bruce Springsteen was performing in Philadelphia. Abel, deep in depression and still recovering from electroconvulsive shock treatments, reluctantly agreed to attend with her son and daughter-in-law. What happened next would alter her perspective forever.
As the lights dimmed and the crowd rose, Abel looked up to see Springsteen’s broad, generous smile on the arena’s big screen. For the next three hours, his energy and humanity lifted her. “He made me feel alive,” she recalls. For someone who had spent so much of her life surviving rather than living, that night became a catalyst.
Music as Permission to Feel
Over the course of eight concerts in the U.S. and Australia, Abel discovered something she had been denied since childhood: fun. One lyric in particular, “It’s okay to have a good time,” hit her with surprising force. “It meant a lot to me to be told it was okay to have fun by someone I respected,” she writes.
But Springsteen gave her more than joy. He gave her validation. His willingness to sing about struggle and resilience resonated deeply with her own lifelong battle with depression. “It was validating to me to know I was not the only one struggling,” Abel says. In his raw honesty, she recognized a truth she had always intuited but never heard voiced so publicly: that to struggle is human, and to keep moving forward is a form of grace.
Learning to Dream
Perhaps the most transformative moment came during a concert in Australia, when Springsteen closed with an acoustic performance of “Dream Baby Dream.” Abel recalls floating out of the arena, realizing for the first time what it felt like to want to dream. Her upbringing had been a cycle of doing what was required — to please her parents, to fulfill expectations, to endure. Dreaming, she admits, had never occurred to her. “But once you have experienced something,” she writes, “it is a little easier to conjure it again.”
The seeds of dreaming planted that night began to take root. Abel found herself measuring her life through lyrics, using songs as a compass for her emotions. Whether in the embrace of her husband after a long trip (“Human Touch”) or in the quiet resilience of her marriage during illness (“If I Should Fall Behind”), Springsteen’s words became touchstones for her own story.
Dancing with Ryan
Not all of Abel’s epiphanies took place in packed arenas. One morning, overwhelmed by depression and paralyzed at her kitchen table, she reached for her phone and played “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.” As the upbeat melody filled the room, she scooped up her chihuahua, Ryan, and began to dance. What started as a desperate attempt to break the spell of despair became a daily ritual. “Listening to that song and dancing with Ryan was like getting a shot of happy, emerging sunshine,” she recalls. It became both coping mechanism and celebration, a personal act of reclaiming joy.
High Hopes and Healing
The memoir’s title comes from Springsteen’s song “High Hopes,” a meditation on strength, family, and survival. For Abel, the lyrics crystallized her deepest wish: that her children would “stand a chance” in the world, armed with the resilience and confidence that had taken her a lifetime to begin cultivating.
By weaving her own struggles with depression, recovery, and self-discovery alongside the soundtrack of Springsteen’s music, Abel creates a narrative that is both deeply personal and universally relatable. Her memoir is not simply about concerts; it is about learning to live after decades of repression, finding joy where she once knew only obligation, and discovering that dreams are not the privilege of the young but the lifeline of the human spirit.
A Memoir of Courage
Abel’s High Hopes is ultimately about courage: the courage to confront painful truths about family, the courage to speak openly about mental health, and the courage to embrace joy — even when it arrives late in life. Her story reminds readers that transformation doesn’t always come in youth or in moments of triumph. Sometimes it comes when the lights go down, the music swells, and a voice reminds you that it’s okay to hope, to dream, and to dance.
In sharing her journey, Abel extends a hand to anyone who has ever felt silenced, stifled, or simply stuck. Her concerts with Springsteen may have ended after a handful of shows, but the echoes — of resilience, hope, and joy — continue to reverberate through her life and her pages.
As Abel herself writes, quoting the very songs that guided her: even in the hardest times, together we are “waitin’ on a sunny day.”
Discover High Hopes: A Memoir by Anne Abel — a powerful and moving story of resilience, self-discovery, and hope.
Available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major retailers.
