one month out from my sophomore album. that sentence doesn’t feel real. 

there were entire stretches over the past two years where i wasn’t sure if this record would ever exist. i had to fight for it in so many ways. fight the version of me that felt safest staying comfortable. fight the pressure to move faster than my healing. fight the voices around me that were scared of what would happen if i told the truth out loud. but the hardest fight was with the part of me that still didn’t want to be seen.

i listened to I HOPE THIS HELPS all the way through for the first time the other night. sprawled out on my couch, glass of red wine, candles lit, incense burning. and it hit me all at once…this is two years of my life…played back for me in order. everything i lived through, everything that changed me, all the in-between moments i didn’t even realize were shaping me at the time. it was heavy and relieving all at once. like exhaling a breath i’d been holding in for way too long.

this album didn’t just come from me, it held me. it gave me somewhere to put all of it…the questions, the memories, the anger, the softness, the realizations, the things i didn’t know how to talk about yet. and hearing it all back was eye opening.  because when you’re in the middle of pain or change, you don’t really understand what it’s for, you just feel it. this album let me step back far enough to see that there was something bigger guiding me through it all.

that’s why the last thing i say on the album is “more than anything i hope you know that you were never alone”

i feel proud. in a way i’ve never felt before. not because it’s perfect. but because it’s honest.

because i didn’t take the easy way out. because i chose myself… even when it was uncomfortable, and even when it cost me. because for maybe the first time i listened to my own voice over everyone else’s.

the other day, on the way to therapy i caught myself saying to a friend“i don’t wanna get comfortable now that the hard part feels like it’s over. i wanna keep digging. i wanna talk about something uncomfortable” she laughed “who are you right now? you would’ve never said that two years ago” and she’s right.

somewhere along the way, something shifted. i don’t run from depth anymore. i crave it. the hard conversations, the tension, the moments that ask more of me. if it leads to closeness…if it leads to truth…if it leads to growth…i’ll go there.

i used to be scared of the unknown. now i think i’m more scared of never knowing.