Behind The Music

When I first began writing the songs that would become The Holy Hell of Hope, I really was unaware of the degree of deep healing that I still needed to go through in order to shed the devastating heartbreak of the last ten years, since the release of my first album The Dirty Side Up.   Of course it was easy to see how my partner Ed’s murder, and the unanticipated departure from music afterwards (just when some of my biggest music aspirations had landed) unearthed the ground from beneath me.  Those kinds of deeply traumatic events tear through your life so abruptly, you cannot ignore the devastation.

 

While loving an addict, you can.  The unmistakeable toll, while different is perhaps more insidious simply because the world for addicts and those who love them is one shrouded in the disdain of society, powerlessness, shame, despair, false starts and exhausting re-tries.  Then of course there is hope, desperate, aching hope - something so beautiful and necessary that addiction often makes a fool of. 

 

The Holy Hell of Hope

I cannot say with a straight face that a year later when I knew my partner was using drugs that I was oblivious to the dangers that lie ahead.  I knew; enough of my closest girlfriends had already been loving addicts doing vigilant duty on the front lines of the battlefield most will recognize as CO-DEPENDENCY.  Aware, I consciously made the choice to keep going.  Risk-ready.  But not fool-proof. 

 

It’s cool though; I could live with that.   I was a grown ass woman with her big girl panties on when I went in.  I wasn’t afraid to have a dream die on my watch.  I'd already had any number of delinquent dreams unceremoniously evicted from my banged up heart before.  It was the inability to let go of the dream that did an irreversible number on me. 



Hope never dies a natural death.



The stories, oh the stories.  There are so many I must tell.  This album, along with the book and film begins the conversation.

 

My intention

The Holy Hell of Hope is my personal mediation on how to make pain holy.  But these are not songs of sorrow. They are instead battle-cries, “fuck-that-anthems” that I’d like to think of as prescriptions for releasing a multitude of disappointments and restoring hope.

 

Hear the songs.

Read an excerpt.

 

To learn more about the overall project

The Badass That Hope Built™, click here.

 

To support the funding campaign, click here.