Shortly after releasing my third album Miracles in 2015 — which had me reaching for and embracing the light in my life after darker, past periods of depression and addiction — I experienced a painful breakup from my long-term partner and moved on my own from Joshua Tree, Calif. to Austin, Texas. There, I took time away from performing live and working on new music to heal my heart, reclaim my sense of self and independence, date, explore, be a bit wild, and also delve deeper into long-held emotional and ancestral wounds that had begun to surface more prevalently in my life… much like so much collectively has surfaced from the subconscious of our culture over these past years.
To me, this period was a kind of “dark night of the soul,” one that was filled with many dark nights in themselves, but moreover a prolonged period of excavating my “shadow” — a Jungian psychological concept referring to the unconscious aspects of self: our wounds, fears, desires, our “dark side,” though it’s not entirely “bad.” During this time, I also read Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ seminal work, Women Who Run With The Wolves, which helped me to reclaim my essential feminine power, and I began to heal myself as a young woman in a culture and world which systematically devalues women. (And I stand with so many women who are doing this vital work in this time in their own unique and valuable ways.)
What emerges on my new record, Impossible Journey Of My Soul Tonight, is the bloom of my processing of these experiences through the murky yin of self-examination and healing, as I explore my past wounds and love lost, and embrace my newfound independence of self and soul. While I know too well the darkness and pain life can often bring, this album is meant to be a hope and a call to explore the depths and wounds within… while honoring the light we all carry inside and the gift of life itself. In short, to fully embrace ourselves — the dark, light and every color in between.
