When Whitney Houston died this past weekend, I was shocked by the amount of grief and the wave of emotions I experienced.  In disbelief, I watched myself undergo the five stages of grief for someone I had never met and did not know intimately.  You see, I am not the type who feels personally invested in celebrities.  In fact, I abhor our increasingly celebrity obsessed culture and often wish that we would lay off the blind adulation just a tidbit.

Still, I knew that Whitney Houston’s voice and songs had always touched me in a special way.  I can vividly recall the countless times when I used her voice to get me out of a funk, to inspire me, to soothe me or to just help me be still.  I have been in love with her voice since I was a teenager and have bought any music she put out.  I…