Girl with a ... Guitar

In the summer of 2023, I set out with my guitar, my husband, and his guitar to do a little summer tour. It was a two month tour through Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and back home to Tennessee. I almost called it “The Summer of Love Tour.” I’m so glad I didn’t because it was anything but that, behind the scenes anyway. It might as well have been called “The Peak of Relationship Issues Tour” but that doesn’t have much of a ring to it. It was not only my marriage that was in trouble. It was pretty much every relationship I had. It was relationships, period! I suck at them! Whether it was my spouse, or my siblings, or my staff, it was all suffering … and I do mean suffering! In an effort to quickly fix staff turnover issues, I turned around and repeated the same mistakes only to watch one after the other, like little atomic bombs, blow up in my face. My God! My God! Why have you … clearly messed up in your creation of me! WHAT IS GOING ON??? Why does this just keep happening? That tour ended in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. A few months later, I went back down to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, solo, just a "Girl with a Guitar" to bare my soul.

Picasso created this cubism portrait he named, "Girl with a Mandolin." It has always drawn me in because I’m not sure of another painting or piece that feels like me when I look at it. I am a complex mess - yes, we can give me a break and say “beautiful mess” if that’s what you want, but I’m about to get real about it all. It’s not a “beat myself up” approach, it’s just that I believe the only way to find healing for yourself, and possibly for others while you're at it, is through total transparency and honesty. So, I continue to choose that approach. 

I grew up in an exhaustively traumatized family. Life was chaotic and seemingly impossible to manage most of the time. I was born a free-spirited, “old soul”  hippy in the mid sixties, just a little out of my time. Life’s endless trials would hinder this inner bohemian more and more as time went by. To make matters a little more complex, I am an empath “on the spectrum.”  The trickle down effect of generational trauma surfaced and manifested in the form of stage IV ovarian cancer by 1999, bringing about a radical experience and total lifestyle change. This kind of ongoing trauma typically makes understanding how to properly manage relationships extremely difficult. At this peak in relational struggles, I chose 10 songs to take to Muscle Shoals. These were songs I had written in the past which have served to help me process through these relationship challenges. I never stop learning. I have been through twenty five years of inner healing and some counseling here and there, and I am currently in one of the biggest healing breakthroughs of my life’s journey so far. I embrace inner healing as a lifelong adventure because I have learned that it will take you from freedom to more freedom, from peace to more peace, and from love to more love. Every relational upset is always a call to “Return to Love” for me, and by that I personally mean a return to God, at deeper and deeper levels because I believe God is Love,  and without being deeply immersed, again and again, into God’s love for me, I am unable to love others well. Every relational failure in my life  becomes a deeper dive into understanding this thing we know to be love. I would say that this new Muscle Shoals record reflects one of my deepest dives so far into the questions of love.

Love to all,

Jill