When the Song Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself

There's a specific kind of silence that follows a really hard conversation. The kind where you've said too much or not nearly enough, and you walk to your car, close the door, and just... sit there. I've been in that silence more times than I can count. And almost every single time, I've reached for music before I've reached for anyone else.

That probably tells you a lot about who I am.

The First Time a Song Saved Me

I was nineteen, living in a tiny apartment in Chicago, splitting ramen with my roommate and trying to convince myself that leaving home to chase music was a brave choice and not a reckless one. I was lonely in a way I didn't have language for yet. Not sad, exactly — just untethered. Like a balloon that had floated too far up to come back down easily.

One night, I put on Joni Mitchell's Blue almost by accident. I'd heard it before, the way you hear things in the background of someone else's life. But that night, alone on the floor of my kitchen, it cracked me open. There's a line in "River" — I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad — and I remember thinking: she said it. She said the thing I couldn't. I wasn't broken. I was just going through something that had already been felt and sung and recorded and pressed into vinyl decades before I was born.

That moment taught me something I've carried ever since: music doesn't just describe emotion. It gives you permission to feel it.

Learning to Write From the Wound

When I started writing my own songs seriously — not just journaling with a guitar, but actually crafting something meant to be heard — I noticed I kept circling the same instinct. I wanted to write the song that would find someone in their car, in their silence, and make them feel less alone.

That's a terrifying goal, honestly. Because to do it right, you have to go somewhere real. You can't fake that kind of resonance. Listeners feel the difference between a song written from experience and one assembled from borrowed emotion. So I started using songwriting as a diagnostic tool for my own inner life — sitting down at the piano not knowing what I needed to say, and letting the melody lead me somewhere true.

Some of my most honest songs came out of times I thought I was fine. You start playing a chord progression, and something in your chest loosens, and suddenly you're writing about the friendship that quietly fell apart two years ago, or the version of yourself you abandoned to seem more palatable to someone who didn't deserve that sacrifice.

Music has this uncanny way of bypassing your defenses.

The Transitions That Changed Everything

There have been a handful of seasons in my life where music wasn't just a companion — it was a compass.

When my parents' marriage fell apart during my early twenties, I couldn't talk about it without shutting down. What I could do was listen to Brandi Carlile's The Story on repeat during every drive, every run, every sleepless stretch past midnight. Her voice held something I couldn't hold myself. Grief, pride, resilience — all tangled together in a way that felt honest and not tidy. That album didn't fix anything. But it kept me company through something unfixable, and sometimes that's the whole point.

When I went through a breakup that dismantled my sense of direction — the kind where you lose a person and a future all at once — I found myself writing compulsively. Pages of lyrics that went nowhere. But somewhere in that mess was the seed of a song I'm still proud of. The heartbreak didn't become the song. The searching did. That restless, 2 a.m. energy of trying to understand who you are when someone who defined you for years is suddenly gone.

I think that's what music does best: it holds the complexity. It doesn't demand that you be over something before you've processed it. It just sits with you.

What I Want for You

If you're someone who turns to music during hard times, I want you to know that instinct is valid and worth trusting. But I'd also encourage you to go one step further — pay attention to which songs you're reaching for and why.

Are you reaching for comfort, or are you reaching for truth? Sometimes we hide in music the same way we hide in anything else. We play the sad song to feel something without actually having to deal with it. And there's a place for that. But there's also a version of engaging with music that pushes you gently toward understanding.

When a lyric hits you harder than expected, sit with it. Ask yourself what it's touching. When a melody makes your throat tight, that's information. Your emotional body is trying to tell you something, and music is just the translator.

For me, songwriting is the most honest conversation I have with myself. And sharing those songs with you — with whoever is out there in their own car, in their own silence — is the closest I know how to get to saying: I've been there too. You're not alone in it.

That's the whole reason I do this.

Still Finding My Way

I don't have it figured out. I'm still mid-journey, still writing through things I don't fully understand yet, still occasionally surprised by what comes out when I sit down with a blank page and an open chord. But I trust the process now in a way I didn't when I was that nineteen-year-old on the kitchen floor.

Music found me before I found myself. And the best I can do is keep writing songs that might find you the same way.

If you want to hear what that sounds like, I'm right here. Come listen.