Creating this video took about 20 takes – I did not write a script. And it got me thinking about my life – and for how long I’ve been at this thing called being an artist. 

I started drawing probably when I was two or three years old. I remember feeling like it was very important that I draw – and draw well. My two older sisters were talented with drawing and coloring, my biological father was a painter, and I later learned that had my mother not had children, she would have gone to art school, too. Mainly, I looked up to my sisters and I wanted to be like them.

My first paid job was painting an iron bulldog yard ornament for my Uncle Johnny. I got $20! That was a lot of money in the 70s. 

Musically, I followed in my eldest sister’s footsteps, and started playing flute when I was seven. I never practiced that much, but I was very good. I wanted to play saxophone, but sax was not permitted in the house. My mother hates the sax. 

I was in school band and choir probably starting in the first or second grade – up until I dropped out of high school at 16. By then, I was fronting my goth cow punk band – The Liquid Faction. Music stopped for a time when I was a squatter, but as soon as my life stabilized, I was fronting bands again. 

I always wrote. I love writing – it can be done anywhere. When I was living on the streets, I worked at The Antique Boutique. All day I wrote poetry that fit on the back of their business cards. I wish I had some of those cards now – I remember my writing was dark and dystopian – my experience of reality then.

After I graduated college in 2004, I immediately got married. I became a wife, and my career as an artist was shut down. My ex-husband was mentally abusive, planted seeds of self-doubt, and convinced me that everything I did was pointless. People watching me perform made him jealous and uncomfortable. He reasoned that for me to continue having fun and doing what I love was selfish and cruel. 

I tried to be a good wife. I married what I knew. I gave myself away, just like my mom did. I knew it was wrong, and I felt so trapped. 

As a child, I could not wait to grow up and be on my own. I figured I would be free. I knew when I was a kid I was being mistreated and didn’t belong in my family. I was the “weird” one – and was abused daily by two of my sisters, my mom was checked out, and the father figures were absent and/or sexually inappropriate.

When I met my ex-husband, he knew exactly how to manipulate me. 

We were married for less than three years. I got a job at an investment bank and was so unhappy both at work and home that my health began to fail. I developed diverticulitis. I was in constant debilitating pain. My doctors told me in my case the illness was from stress. One day I realized if I stayed in the marriage I was going to die of cancer – so I left. And I left the job, too. 

When I stopped making music, my other creative endeavors dried up as well. I became depressed and had no desire to paint or write. I forced myself to write for a while – and for a long time I tried to replace music with teaching yoga and mountain biking. Mountain biking was fun – and I did start writing and painting again. But when I began making music again in 2018 – everything opened up for me in a new way.

I didn’t realize how traumatized I was by my childhood until about 2018. (Astrologically that would be around the time of my chiron return – which lasted for a few years due to retrogrades. In my chart, Chiron is all about the wounding in the area of home and of my foundation).

Very recently, I released a lot of that trauma – not just intellectually, but emotionally and physically. It’s part of my history, but it’s not who I am. 

I took a long detour. I am so freakin’ grateful to be back.

Maybe I am a late bloomer, but blooming I am. I’m making music, making art, writing, teaching, practicing yoga, meditating . . . I am healthier than I have ever been in my adult life. 

I am so grateful to be alive, so grateful to be curious about life, and so grateful to dedicate my life to joy, creativity, love, Beauty with a capital B, and fun.

I want to inspire others to do whatever it is that brings them joy and life – and if the people in your life don’t support that, please get new people! If you can’t be yourself, what is the point in being?