Reintroduce Myself
A wistful confession and a brave permission.
The house is empty and quiet, and in a rare moment of impulse, I tiptoe down to the corner of my basement and pull an old friend from the recesses of her darkened room. My guitar creaks at me in question as I open it latch by weathered latch, but within an hour, lyrics and melodies stare back at me like a looking glass to a lifetime ago. I used to write music daily, but years have passed since a song poured forth, and I confess that to you now with a wistful ache. This piece of me that was once my dearest confidant now feels much more like a stranger.
The familiar strings groan under my unpracticed fingers, free of the callouses they once carried.
The maple curvature where my arms rested for decades struggles to settle against my body as I pull melodies from both of our cores.
The rich alto tones that once warmed my vocal cords now seem timid and unassuming, completely unlike the confident choruses I called forth in my youth.
Nevertheless, the words come like a close companion. Like someone from my childhood who grew up alongside me, bearing witness to all the things that shaped my soul.
Music—and words—have long been a bystander to every broken and beautiful bit.
When my world felt fractured, writing helped me pick up the pieces. And when joy burst forth, lyrics told of goodness given and hope ever lingering on the horizon. In all my in-betweens, music made a way for me to tell my story.
And over the winding course of the last several years, I left much of that behind. For many complex reasons I don’t have the time, space, or emotional bandwidth to dive into right now, I put that beloved Gibson into its velvet case and stored it safely away for another season.
But the short version of my leaving is this—I was grieving.
I’ve only come to this realization through lots of therapy, grappling with identity, faith, and failure. Walking away was the mercy of God extended to me in a messy, heartbreaking season where I found myself consistently believing I had nothing left to bring. I lost much in the leaving, and while some things were gently laid to rest by me, others were ripped from my weary heart at the hands of those I deeply trusted. In this, I began to distrust myself, too.
After more than a decade of offering my voice to a space that made me believe my value was transient, I began to translate that into the things I do, the way I communicate, and the ways I worship. I began to subconsciously assume that those parts of me have fleeting value too.
This played out in a learned need to commodify my creativity:
My work is only worthy if someone else deems it so.
My words are only worthy if x amount of people listen to them/read them/respond to them.
My time can only be spent doing things that bring monetary gain to my family.
Deep down, I know this is a lie. I know it. I talk to my therapist about it, I podcast about it, and I write essays on it. But at the end of the day, my actions have spoken louder than my words. At some juncture of my journey as a musician and a creative, I stopped playing and writing because I struggled to see the point. I believe the half-truths: the words I write, the songs I sing, the poems I pen don’t make an impact, so why do them at all?
I feel the weight of failure and disappointment in walking away from what I thought I’d do—what everyone expected me to do—but I also am beginning to sense the freedom to create for creation’s sake for the first time, maybe ever.
In the years that followed my leaving, I’ve lived in the dissonance between what my heart knows to be true and what I’ve been grievously led to believe. And here, on the other side of wading back into waters that once welcomed me, I know I’ve got to cling to a better way. I’ve no real interest in launching a full-blown singer-songwriter career again, nor do I have any desire to step back into full-time ministry at a church any time soon, but I know there must be a middle ground.
A place where songs are still written as a way to process the world around me. Where words beckon me like the haven they’ve always been. Where creativity is not a waste of time, but an act of worship. Where storytelling is not secondary but sacred to my soul.
For too long, I’ve had nothing to say because I was told I didn’t say it well enough. But in the same way that I pulled my beautiful guitar from the shadows of my home, so a tiny bit of my heart is being dragged back into the light with the promise of nothing more than the kindness of God meeting me there.
My therapist friend calls it an awakening, but it feels a bit more like a reintroduction. The girl I was years ago—the one who shared her life in song, the one who gathered friends around and peeled back the curtain of vulnerability, the one who permitted herself to have a voice—feels like an entirely different person. But—she’s still me.
So, I find myself asking the question: can I reintroduce myself to her? Can I give myself permission to rewrite the narrative as it needs to be now? Perhaps as it was always intended to be?
//
The final chord hums as I sit in that tiny therapy room where holy freedom lingers in this moment. My hands shake and my voice quivers more than I anticipated; it’s been a while since I’ve played my songs for someone and it feels like a small act of bravery and breakthrough to share my soul in this way again.
“Why now? After all these years, why am I suddenly finding songs again?”
My therapist dabs a tear from her eyes, “I’d like to think it’s because you’re healing.”
And I’d like to think she’s right.
Here’s a snippet of the song I wrote that day, friends. Maybe one day I’ll play it (and others) for you.
Time’s a thief and all the world’s a victim
Everyone is fatally human
But we’re living anyway
All the fools and saints together
Hope deferred is almost always promised
Like childhood dreams are over before they started
But in the end, we find
That we are not defined by purpose under pressure
Can we rewrite this song?
Because the words won’t come and the melodies feel foreign to me
Can we meet again like childhood friends?
Can we reintroduce myself to me?