This next chapter is brought to you by Zoloft :)

(and meditation, and prayer, and therapy, and sleep, and exercise, and writing, and leaning on the ones I love)

I’m not all the way back yet, but I’m getting there. Yesterday, I had some Sheryl Crow turned up loud, driving around with the windows down. I’m still only 5’2” on a good day, but internally, I feel a little taller. I went to a friend’s BBQ this weekend, and it didn’t take as much convincing to get my butt out of the house. These are little things that feel like big wins to me right now, and I’m grateful for the way I’m starting to feel more like myself. My laugh sounds like my own again. I’m feeling more creative.

It’s been a season of some endings—relationships, career chapters—and I’ve wrestled with my ability to see them as beginnings. I’ve been through low swings before, but lately, the heaviness felt different. I’m really working on learning how to accept help when I need it.

This is my first time taking medication, and I wrestled with the decision immensely. I battled thoughts like:

“If you take this, it means you aren’t capable of handling it yourself.”

“This is just a shortcut from the actual work.”

“What if being a little depressed is what makes you creative, and this takes it away?”

So far, none of that has been true. I see more possibility now. I carry more enthusiasm than I have in a long time—and that feels good. I feel more accepting of the different parts of me. I see value in them. My sensitive sadness, my thoughtful anxiety, my stubborn joy—they’re all pieces of me that I want sitting around the same table, figuring out how to exist in this weird and wonderful world. Right now, it feels like this medicine is helping to set that table, and making sure every part has a chair.

People used to call me Sunshine as a kid. I loved how it felt to hear that and held onto the name like a suit of armor. My little brain considered it a great honor—and a job—to bring it with me everywhere I went. I grew into that armor like skin and never gave myself the opportunity to take a look at my own universe underneath it. That universe has been knocking lately, and I’m finally starting to listen.

The first time depression came up was on a therapy call in a parking lot in Charlottesville, in November of 2019. I was sitting on the curb beside the iron fencing they hadn’t yet set up for entry to the arena, tossing crumbs of gravel toward the steps across from me. I was on tour, opening for one of my heroes. I’d spent the year on the road—playing shows in the UK and Australia for the first time, had just landed my first charting single on the radio, and was close to releasing my debut record. I was on clouds nine, ten, and eleven. So many of the dreams I’d worked toward since I could walk were becoming something real.

So it was incredibly difficult to understand why I felt such unrelenting emptiness, sitting on that curb, on the phone with a therapist I’d just started seeing.

I audibly blocked out the word when she said it—like the phone service had dropped, or like it was a profanity bleeped out on a televised award show. I had to ask her to repeat the sentence, and when I heard it again, every cell in my body picked up their boxing gloves, ready to fight and deny the word depression.

I couldn’t possibly be depressed. Not after clinging to that sunshine armor as a core part of my identity. Not after all my hard work to keep the sad away at all costs. I was a certified professional at seeing the bright side. At holding on to gratitude. So hearing that this emptiness had seeped through my air-tight system made me feel like a stranger in my own body. Add in some imposter syndrome with a side of codependent behavior, and I was pretty lost on that curb.

I got off the phone and called my manager, Crystal, and told her what I was trying to process as I watched the venue staff build the fencing. She held space for me that day and countless others since, with compassion, as I wrestled with this part of me and pulled myself together to start putting on makeup before showtime.

One of my favorite songs is by Travis Meadows. He sings: “Push it down… it comes out sideways…”

I’ve been pushing it down for a long time. And it has definitely been coming out sideways. I’ve closed off from people I love. Made myself smaller walking into rooms. Shrunk my shoulders in photographs. Sanded the edges of my creativity to fit in, to please, to avoid disrupting any apple cart. I’ve distanced myself from my conversations with God. I’ve accepted crumbs in relationships, thinking that was all I deserved. I misplaced my compass of vision—and my will for enthusiasm.

I think being an artist means your sensitivity is a superpower. It’s what makes it possible to put a feeling into a melody and say something true about the human experience. I love that part of the job so much. But my antennae for how others feel have operated on overdrive for most of my life. And in the current climate of being an artist—where likes and comments and algorithms hold the keys to whether your art is experienced—it’s hard to function with so much sensitivity. It’s easy to start swinging low.

So I’ve been working on getting to the root of it. Doing some gardening on the inside. Still plenty of weeds, but I’m making progress. Making sense of pivotal moments in my past. Connecting my habits to a purpose. Letting go of guilt. Surrendering what I can’t control. Building new roads in my mind. Not taking it all so seriously. Mindfully breathing. And slowly learning that depression doesn’t always need a reason or a rhyme.

It feels raw and scary to talk about this, but I think it’s important. The way we struggle is a big part of what it means to be human. And the carrying on—that’s where the definition grows. Sometimes carrying on means being carried. Means reaching out for help. Means answering when it’s offered. Means understanding that we contain multitudes of grit and grace—and they need each other. That’s the kind of life I want to build. The kind of story I want to tell.

Here’s to holding on to each other—and to accepting the help and the love we deserve. <3

From one wandering soul to another, I hope you know you’re loved as you are.

T xo