Do you ever surprise yourself by sharing stuff you didn't think you didn't think you'd share for a long time? Well, this is that.
About a year ago I went through a breakup that rattled me to my core. It was the first time I had really fallen for someone and been crushed into a million pieces. And then, covid happened. When we feel pain, our first instinct is to move away from it, to distance ourselves from it. We use our general busy-ness, our friends, TV, alcohol, whatever to not fully feel what is inside us.
For whatever reason, I knew that I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t blame. I couldn’t judge. I could only cry and process and cry some more. I lost about 15 pounds. I lost friendships. I lost faith in myself. I thought, how can I be a spiritual, stable person if I’m this thrown off by a relationship? How can I understand this situation better? How can I know myself better?
I didn’t want to stop loving him — it didn’t feel right to me. I think that when we bond with someone on a soul level, that’s not something you can turn on and off. You can try to, maybe, but it never really goes away. I wanted to know what unconditional love truly felt like, and this was the perfect opportunity to try and find it.
Now, this is not for the faint of heart. I learned that very early on. It was excruciating. I would wake up in the middle of the night and cry. I would cry doing yoga, while running, in the shower, between bites of food. I watched spiritual videos daily trying to understand the nature of the soul and what we’re all doing here.
I noticed something interesting. When I was able to be with this pain, this yearning, this need for love that was not being filled, there was something exquisite about it. It was like holding a stretch in a yin yoga class. It was uncomfortable, but somewhere underneath that, it almost felt good. It felt expansive. It felt like I was deeply healing a wound that had been inaccessible before. I was able to channel it into words and music and make something beautiful. Something without blame or shame or regret. Just a depiction of what I was feeling, and then — where the true expansion happens — the acknowledgement that things will be okay. That all things have the potential to open us to the light if that’s what we choose.
So I believe that as artists and creatives, we are all alchemists in disguise. We have this incredible ability to take something that essentially sucks, and turn it into something divine. To create our own awakening. To let life and circumstances either push us around and make us build walls, or to be willing to part with our old restrictions and see what we can be without them. When we create, we elevate experiences. We create a vortex in time and space to take us from where we are to where we want to go. If we’re lucky, maybe we can provide that opportunity for our listeners too.
I do still love him. I don’t know if we will ever meet again, but I choose what he is to me. Instead of the guy who broke my heart, he’s a master teacher who expanded my heart a thousand times over. My love is not dependent on anything he says or does. It simply is. I feel this love for myself as well. For the planet, for my experience of life, for my music. Love is limitless. Our perception of it is limitless. And I believe anything can be a door to it if we are willing to open it.
[Fun fact: my song "You May Never Know" is specifically about this experience.]