What Music Taught Me That Nothing Else Could

There are things you can learn from books. There are things you can learn from experience.

And then there are things that can only be taught by sitting alone in a room with an instrument and your own unfiltered feelings, with nowhere to hide and no one to perform for.

Music taught me those things.

It taught me that vulnerability is not weakness.

The first time I recorded a song that came from a genuinely painful place — something I had never spoken aloud to anyone — I was terrified.

Not of the recording process.

Of being heard.

Of someone listening and knowing, in that way that music makes people know things, exactly what I had been through.

But something extraordinary happened. The people who heard it didn't think less of me.

They said — me too. I felt that too. I didn't know anyone else felt that.

Vulnerability, I learned, is not the thing that distances you from people. It is the thing that reaches them. Every time. Without exception.

I have tried to remember that in everything I create since.

It taught me that not everything needs to be resolved to be released.

Some of my songs don't have answers. They just have feelings, honestly expressed, and then a kind of quiet at the end. No resolution. No lesson. Just — here is what this was like. Here is what it felt like to be me in this moment.

I used to think that was a flaw. Now I think it might be the whole point.

Life doesn't always resolve neatly either. Sometimes things just are what they are. And there is enormous relief in giving yourself permission to say so — in music, in writing, in conversation — without needing to wrap it up in a bow.

It taught me that creativity is not something you have or don't have.

It is something you do. Regularly. Even badly sometimes. Even when nothing comes. Even when what comes is not what you hoped for.

You sit down anyway. You show up for it. And slowly, over time, it shows up for you.

Fifteen albums taught me that. Not talent. Not inspiration. Showing up.

That lesson has followed me into everything else I have ever made.

I wonder sometimes what YOUR creative language is. The one you were born speaking — or the one you lost somewhere along the way and have been quietly missing ever since.

Maybe it is music. Maybe it is painting, or dancing, or cooking, or gardening, or writing in a notebook at midnight when everyone else is asleep.

Whatever it is — there is a room for it here.

@shestartsat50 There is always room for you here. 🌸