You Can Bloom Somewhere Ugly

(Scroll below to listen and see lyrics)

This is an album about the parts of myself I’m still learning to understand.

Jealousy, guilt, anger, insecurity, people-pleasing, and the tangled ways love and fear can move through an ordinary life.

I’m writing from the messy middle of being human, where I can recognize an old pattern and still slip into it, where tenderness and ugliness keep ending up in the same room.

Some of these songs come from moments that feel hard to admit. Reassurance-seeking, resentment, body shame, inherited anger, emotional exhaustion, and the ways I can lose track of myself while caring for everyone else.

I keep returning to one small thought:

I’m willing to like myself.

I'm taking a close look at the parts of myself that make me cringe. The reassurance I keep asking for after I've already heard it. The resentment hiding behind an automatic yes. The harsh voice that sometimes comes out of my mouth before I can catch it. I want to understand what I'm doing in those moments, especially when the person I'm being hurts someone I love.

Gold Mining

A lot of this album comes from what I like to call gold mining.

I dig through my old journals, looking for little pieces of myself buried between grocery lists, half-finished thoughts, and things I scribbled down when I was having a particularly hard day.

Sometimes I find a sentence that still makes my stomach turn.

Sometimes I find a version of myself I barely recognize.

And sometimes I realize I'm still doing the exact same thing, just wearing different clothes.

Some songs give those past versions of me a voice in the present tense. Others come from things I'm actively observing in myself today.

I like letting those voices speak as they are, with all their contradictions, even when I wish I had behaved differently.

A Few Songs Taking Shape

Triggered

The ugly little spiral of comparing my body to another woman's, even while sitting beside someone who loves me.

Say It Again

The space between hearing "I'm exhausted" and somehow translating it into "I'm leaving."

Everybody Gets The Nice One

I put down my fork to answer another phone call, offer comfort until my own words run out, and quietly resent being needed while desperately wanting to feel needed.

Because I Said So

This one reaches into my childhood and the moments when I hear an old, harsh authority coming out of my own mouth as a parent.

It's especially uncomfortable to recognize a behavior I once resented and find myself repeating it with someone I love so fiercely.

I Need Help. Sorry.

The ridiculous little tragedy of being willing to help everyone else while struggling to send a simple message asking for help myself.

These are working songs and titles, little pieces of a larger picture that's still coming together.

There will be more songs than this, these are just a few.

Understanding and Changing

I think a lot about the difference between understanding why I do something and actually changing what I do.

I can recognize the fear underneath my jealousy and still feel jealous.

I can understand where my anger comes from and still have to take responsibility for what happens when it spills out.

I can love people deeply and still feel exhausted by the ways I try to prove it.

That's part of what I'm exploring here.

The things I wish I could admit more easily, the habits I keep catching myself in, and the possibility of finding something worth loving in myself while all of that is still happening.

Still Growing

I'm still writing this album, and I love sharing pieces of the process as I go.

So this page will keep growing, with more songs appearing here and there as I finish them.

I like leaving the door open for anyone who gets curious enough to wander in while I'm still making a mess. 🖤