When the right song comes into your life

May 12th had been one of the hardest days of my life. I was falling apart mentally, but I had made it through the day. Almost.

My daughter wanted me to play our bedtime playlist, but it was too late in the evening to listen to all the songs before bedtime so I suggested maybe we listen to just one song. I chose, we listened and before it was over she was asleep. But my music app had created a related playlist from that song, and a song came on afterwards. So I decided to remain seated, cross legged, in the dark on my kids’ bedroom floor as it played.

I was already emotional, almost rapturous from the previous song, and I found myself drawn in by the backing music, but I knew the words were about me, that the song was about being my own “one”. That is to say, I knew I was both subject and object of the song and it was about loving myself, and being there for myself.

I felt a shift inside me, something settling in the pit of my stomach, like the opposite of that dull ache of homesickness. The words had triggered a tectonic shift of the plates of my heart.

What ensued was a form of ugly crying I can only describe as being waterboarded by my psyche.

Sometimes music just comes into our lives at the right time. It comes to us in a way that helps us see more clearly who we are and where we are going, and I wanted to share this story because I want to share how beautiful art fits into our lives and how it shapes and changes them, and I want to hear more of these stories in the world too.