In October 2021, I found myself packing up all of my belongings, standing on the cusp of a new and unknown life.
I was scared.
I had complicated feelings.
Leaving a 20-year marriage, I was moving to a place I'd never lived before, starting a new job, a new everything.
Something happens to a person who is made to believe that her voice doesn't matter. That the feelings of others are more important than hers.
Over time my voice became very small. Careful.
Under the constant worry of offending an offender.
When the catalyst for my divorce happened, I remember wondering:
Do my feelings matter?
Do I matter?
I'm a pretty spiritual person, so I turned to prayer, and to an incredible therapist who helped me begin to untangle years of silence.
I had buried my emotions for so long that allowing them to come to the surface felt terrifying.
I didn't know who I was.
I had been told in various ways throughout my life that my body was not my own, and somehow still not enough.
Not good enough.
Not smart enough.
Not emotionally enough.
So I began a course of self-discovery.
I started a journal, writing down everything I could about myself - what I like to do and what I was good at, and questions I didn't have answers to yet.
I wrote down the answers I learned.
Saved articles.
Chased understanding.
And slowly, something softened.
Something opened.
I began to feel worth.
I began to see myself.
I began to believe that my feelings mattered.
That I mattered.
That I was worthy of dignity and respect, of being heard.
Just as the light was starting to fill me up, I was told that I was cold, dark, and unfeeling. That I was broken.
But it was too late.
The light already there and those words felt out of place against who I was learning I was.
I felt strong, and I felt my voice quietly and slowly starting to return.
On the night I packed up my life, I got my voice back.
In the middle of the boxes I sat on the floor, picked up my guitar and began to play.
A couple hours later I had Someday In Norway. It felt very vulnerable, but I recorded myself then and there, hoping to hold on to what I was feeling.
To me, this song was a daydream.
A story of hope.
Of how things could be and feel.
For months, I had been wondering what healthy love could look like.
I wanted to feel loved and cherished.
I wanted to feel confident in someone.
I wanted so desperately to be seen. Understood. Respected.
And somewhere along the way I realized something important:
I was willing to risk being alone for the rest of my life
just for the chance at a love that felt whole.
Every Time You Breathe came from the same place.
Not about a person, but about a longing.
A feeling I hadn't lived yet but believed had to exist.
As I recorded this song this year, it was interesting and cathartic to view it under the lens of 5 years later, and everything that has happened since.
“I can't imagine a world without you here.”
In that line was the hope.
There had to be someone who could love me like that.
There had to be the possibility of reciprocity and safety.
Even though experiences in my life could have convinced me that this world was harsh and relationships were painful, that was not the world I believed in.
I look back now at the girl I was five years ago and I'm so proud of her.
She was brave in ways no one else could see.
And at great risk, she opened the door to a life that is beautiful in ways she couldn't have imagined.