The Artist & Depression: An Interview with Matthew Perryman Jones

I’m beyond excited to share today’s podcast interview with you. Several weeks back, I sat down with Matthew Perryman Jones, one of the most truly gifted artists I know. As happens every time we connect, our conversation trailed off into distant fascinating lands and two and a half hours later, time’s up and I realize I’ve got some serious editing to do (which was really hard because every bit of our conversation was so valuable!)

Not only am I eager to share his story today, I’m blown away by the application it has for you and I, no matter if you’re an artist OR struggle with any shade of depression.

MPJ is one of my absolute favorite singer/songwriters. I love what American Songwriter Magazine wrote about him regarding his writing and song “Land of the Living,” which was featured in Oscar nominated film Manchester By the Sea’s official trailer. (Featured on the podcast.)

“MPJ’s songwriting acumen could easily be used as a musical template to demonstrate how less can be so much more. Land of the Living sounds cinematic and slowly worms its way inside your brain, feasts upon your emotions, and ultimately burrows down into your soul. It could be said that Matthew makes soul music — not based on how it sounds, but on where it originates and where it resides.”

I’ve always connected so deeply with his songs, and perhaps more importantly, his voice. However, his voice, as you will learn, did not come without a price. His journey’s been wrought with depression, anxiety, and at times, sheer panic and paranoia.

Today, he shares openly and vulnerably about those painful seasons and how he came to make peace with them, finding his voice along the way.

Please have a listen and sit with his story. It’s a redemption story—one that lends wisdom and clarity to our journey and all those painful questions along the way.

Also, if you haven’t already, check out his music! I look forward to having him back on the podcast to talk more about it as well as the writing process in general.

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

xoxo

{Video} Finding Your Voice (and an exciting announcement!)

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Sacred

One of my favorite things about music, and songs for that matter, is they help us access deep places of emotion mere words and conversation can’t touch. Melody, lyrics, and rhythm transport us to places we can’t analytically conjure up off the bat. It’s sacred, it’s cathartic, it’s inexplicable at times.

MPJ

Songs and the writers behind them are an invaluable gifts to our human experience. In step with this,  I’m thrilled to announce my upcoming podcast interview with the incomparable Matthew Perryman Jones. Of any singer/songwriter, Matthew has this downright uncanny ability to make me feel my feelings. I can’t run from the truth in his music.  His voice cuts straight to my core every time I hear it. Matthew’s truly a master of his craft, yet a humble one, as his journey’s been marked by crippling emotional pain and loss at times along the way.

Podcast

Part of the reason I started a podcast, (besides the fact that they are all I listen to these days!), is to bring to light the unexpected stories of great men and women we see crushing it in their field, whether creatives, humanitarians, writers, and innovators.

As you may know, It can be misleading if not discouraging to see these trailblazers on their public platforms, (especially social media), and assume they’ve lived a charmed life. Well, perhaps a few have, however, as I get to know these stories, so many have fought hard to get where they are and stand in their place of influence. I want to know how they’ve done it as this always seems to prop me up when I feel discouraged in my own journey of finding voice.

Enneagram

I can’t wait to bring you my conversation with Matthew. I believe so many of you will relate to his struggles, especially in terms of depression and anxiety. He’s a prolific poet, and singer’s singer, and a heart that bleeds kindness and compassion to everyone he meets. He’s also a 4w5 for you fellow enneagram nerds out there and describes how tool has helped in his overall emotional and spiritual journey.

If you want to get a head start on this very special podcast, check out Matthew’s work. Your soul will find a steady companion, one you’ll quickly realize isn’t going anywhere. Stay tuned!

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

xoxo

Matthew Perryman Jones: Finding My Voice

My song was my salvation.

-Matthew Perryman Jones

Backstory

I have been a massive MPJ ( Matthew Perryman Jones) fan ever since I heard his unforgettably haunting voice pair with simple guitar chords at a local church in downtown Nashville probably close to fifteen years ago.  I remember thinking to myself, “Now, THAT is how a hymn is supposed to sound.”  It was this stunning mix of clarity and brokenness; youthful, yet carrying the weighty wisdom of an old soul.  I didn’t know who he was, but I hoped I’d always have access to that voice somehow.  Thankfully, his burgeoning career as a singer/songwriter has opened up a whole new world of music and truth for fans and friends, alike.

Co-write

A couple years back, I reached out to Matthew to write. I knew him indirectly through the years thanks to mutual friends, and sensed a real depth and kindness.  Also, I had started a little musical side project and was concurrently binging on his Until the Dawn Appears record nonstop, so why not aim high, right?  He graciously accepted and we sat down to write a couple of times.  Well, truth be told, each time we got a few minutes into an idea, then derailed with unending chatter about the Enneagram, therapy, etc…  I’m pretty sure it was the death of that song.  However, better than a song, a friendship launched andI am beyond grateful to have him share a bit of his story with us today on the blog.  As you will read, he vulnerably bridges that often despairing gap between creativity and the emotional struggles involved along the artistic  journey, namely depression and anxiety.  Matthew is an artist’s artist: a true master of his craft and a transparent source of light and hope for so many, myself most definitely included.  You are in for a treat today, friends…

The Start

Music seems to have always been with me. As far back as I can remember I was drawn to music and performing for people. It is in my blood to some degree. My mom was a singer, mostly performing solos in church. She has a beautiful voice. She also played piano and accordion in our house early on. My father loved music but was more of a listener. He lived mostly on a diet of folk music-Joan Baez, The Kingston Trio and the like. As a kid I gravitated to my dad’s record collection and would spend hours laying on the floor listening to records reading the lyrics and looking at the pictures inside the covers. I was fascinated. 

Heroes

In high school I started a band with a friend. We called the band “This Island Earth”. Bands like U2, R.E.M. and the Smiths informed our musical aspirations. This was the late 80’s and earnest, passionate (perhaps melodramatic at times) music was abundant in the more underground territory of rock-n-roll (U2 and R.E.M. were actually just emerging from the underground then). I looked up to these artists who were in their early to mid twenties as gods among us. They all seemed larger than life. They appealed to that expanding sense of grandiosity that was inside of me. I felt that anything was possible and I wanted to sing my way into transcendence…anything to take me out of the hardships of home life and the growing emotional complexities that seemed to mark my teenage years. 

Feel it all

I grew up being what might be labeled a “Highly Sensitive Person” (HSP). Since I can remember I have always felt things deeply, both personally and empathically. I have that classic story of not ever feeling that I was like the others, or one of the gang. I would observe other people having a kind of ease about their life that I simply never felt; like I didn’t get the memo (for all you psycho-diagnostic nerds, I fall in that low percentile personality type of the population—Myers Briggs: INFP/Enneagram: 4 with a 5 wing). 

Senses

I had friends and was easy to get along with but inwardly I never felt like I actually fit anywhere. I felt things intensely and was hyper-aware of everything around me. I had a kind of inordinate sense of life. Colors, smells, the feel of the air, the taste of food, were all on stun. For the most part I was intoxicated with these things. I had traces of what I would call depression now and again but I was mostly a highly energetic and incurably optimistic person. I always had a sense of possibility moving forward into my life. But there of course was a shadow cast with the light. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. 

Panic

After a couple years of playing and developing as a band, we split due to the other guys graduating high school and heading off to college. However, right around this time is when my world turned upside down. For various reasons I won’t get into here, my life became more inward. I didn’t have that outflow of expression I found playing in a band. I began experiencing high anxiety. It would come out of nowhere, this gnawing sense that something bad was going to happen. It wasn’t tied to anything in particular which made it more concerning. Eventually these became full blown panic attacks. A panic attack for me was this disturbing sense in my gut and body met with my mind going out of control. The sense of doom brought about thoughts of death and mortality. My thoughts were irrational and out of control, but it seemed I could do nothing about it. I began spiraling into a very dark place. 

Torment

At this point I’m 17. Due to the unpredictable and regularly occurring panic attacks I dropped out of high school my senior year. I didn’t feel comfortable driving and eventually became housebound. My parents would take me to psychologists, psychiatrists and nutritionists. My psyche seemed to be erupting with all kinds of neurosis. I became paranoid and wouldn’t eat food thinking it was poisoned and eventually began having obsessive thoughts, mostly in the form of religious blasphemies looping in my head. Growing up in a Christian home, I thought I was possessed or something horrible. I was 125 lbs and would shake and slap my head to rid myself of these tormenting thoughts. And there seemed to be no help. Medications seemed to just make me a zombie but inwardly I was in hell. I can say without melodrama or exaggeration that I was a person in sheer mental torment. 

Prayer Songs

I would wade through these dark waters for the next 5 years. There were small seasons of mild reprieve where I could function to a certain level. I would go to church (the only social interaction I had) but never fully shared what all was going on. I felt crazy. People who sensed something was wrong with me would prescribe more prayer and bible reading. The fact was that I likely read the bible and prayed more than they did. I had a belief in God that became an absolute lifeline. However, God did not feel real or close at all. I felt abandoned both socially and spiritually. I clung desperately to whatever belief I had and walked through some very dark places on an internal and spiritual level. But in that dark and desolate cave I would sing. My song was my salvation. No one heard me. It was in that dark, quiet and lonely place that I would sing. 

As I write this I am overwhelmed with emotion remembering it. Song was how I spoke to God and felt any shred of connection. I cannot adequately describe how alone in the world I felt; how separated from God and people I felt. I was alone and terrified. But I would sing. 

Light through the cracks

I believe it was during this time that I found my voice. Through the aid of therapy and eventually the right medication the dark fog that surrounded me gradually began to clear. I would slowly notice the birds singing and the crisp blue sky begin to open. I was coming back to life. I felt a profound gratitude for life. I got a job at a grocery store and would stock the shelves…and sing. There was always a song on my lips. But it came from a completely different place than it did when I was 16. I had come through the dark forest and had something to say. 

Healer

For a couple years I just lived, healed and assimilated myself back into “normal” life. Eventually, I went through the hoops to get myself into college. One thing I did during those 5 years of exile was read like crazy. It’s all I ever did (I was far from a reader prior to that). So I was ready to go to school and start finding my path. I thought that what I would do was study to become a therapist. I knew at this point in my life that I wanted to be an agent of healing in some form or fashion. Becoming a therapist was the only thing that made sense at that point. But I was living in a new trajectory and I was open for wherever the path would go. 

Confessions and spotlight

To make a long story just a little bit longer, while I was in college I met a guy who invited me to play in his folk band. I will have to skip over some details here, but the short of it is that I started playing music again. I was writing and singing and eventually performing live. As a performer I was painfully shy. I was not interested in the spotlight or having the attention on me. I found it wildly uncomfortable. But after shows people would come up to me and express, sometimes with tears, how much the music connected with them emotionally and how I said things that they thought and experienced but didn’t know how say it. Some people would confess things to me that they had never told their spouse—hidden depression and dark thoughts. I was hearing all kinds of things. But I was learning that a connection was happening and the music seemed to be opening doors in people they had long locked tight. 

Nashville

Music and therapy seemed to be a good couple. So I went in that direction. I started pursuing a life as a therapist disguised as a performing songwriter. Again, I could write a book about how I ended up in Nashville and began my descent into the music business, but I will stick to the heart of things here. I was playing music for people, specifically hurting people. I directed my voice to the lonely, the confused, the abandoned, the heart-broken. I wasn’t looking for a record deal or fame. I wanted my music to find connection in the neglected and forgotten places. I based my songwriting approach from something I read from Henri Nouwen, “Rarely do happy endings truly make us happy. But often one’s careful and honest articulation of the pains and ambiguities in life brings us new hope”. I wasn’t going to write pop songs. I was going to write people songs. 

Save me

Since that time my career has gone through all kinds of seasons. I have found varying degrees of what might be called success. My songs have found their way into TV shows, films, movie trailers and even a few radio stations. I have been wooed and whipped by the music business enterprise. But to this day I still receive emails from people telling me how my music saved their life. I’ve heard stories of how my voice has accompanied someone through the darkest times of their life. Again, this is where tears of immense gratitude come up. It moves me so deeply to think that something I put out in the world could offer some company to a soul that feels alone or broken by life. 

Staying True

Hearing these stories is why I continue to make music because it’s why I started in the first place. I think about throwing in the towel quarterly. I don’t like the enterprise of the music business. But I tell you, almost with precise timing, the moments I have been on the cusp of quitting I will get an email or have someone at a show tell me another story and end that story saying, “please keep making music, it matters”. 

Mystery

Over the last 17 years of pursuing a life in music and storytelling, I have come back into seasons of depression and hardship. It’s an ongoing process. Always. I have found great help with therapists and spiritual directors and friends. Life ebbs and flows. My belief and unbelief in a God, Source, Ground of Being, etc. has gone through many formations. I’m learning to lean into the Mystery a bit more and be ok with it, even enjoy it.  And I will continue to write about it all along the way trusting that it will find its way to other souls who need a little company as they stumble through their own experience. 

Not Alone

If I have something I am hoping to convey in my music it is this: you are not alone. I believe this is the primary value of music within the world. Music lets people know they are not alone in the world; that there is a thread within the collective human experience. We are not alone. I believe the more personal the writing, the more universal. We’re all cut out of the same hunk of cheese.

As a writer, my job is simply to stay true to what is inside me to say, whether it’s sexy or not; whether it will sell records or not. I have to stay true to that voice that emerged many years ago out of a dark place. No one will ever really know what it took to find that voice but me and I will guard it. I hope you reading this will do the same (wherever your voice finds expression). 

You have a voice. Guard the voice that is yours, listen to it, know it and let it be known. It matters.

MPJ

Triumph Over Misery: The Beautiful Story of Ruthie Lindsey

Author Jamais Cascio once said, “Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival.  The goal of resilience is to thrive.  I never thought I would need to know this lesson until my life was turned upside down.

-Ruthie Lindsey

Meet Ruthie Lindsey

Today’s post is very near and dear to my heart for several reasons.  Our guest blogger is Ruthie Lindsey (visit her website), a designer, speaker, stylist, and overall inspirer.  She travels all over sharing her incredible story that invites us to a high and spacious place of living beautifully in the midst of painful realities.

  I have known Ruthie now for about fifteen years and have observed from a distance her journey in and out of joy-filled vibrancy and physical/emotional pain, concurrently.  Whereas we will go months without seeing each other, every time we do, I’m reminded of something so lovely and moving.  I am reminded that there is always hope, even in our darkest nights.  She simply exudes life, style, and fun.  If you have met Ruthie Lindsey or follow her on social media, you know exactly what I am talking about.  She takes her pain and brokenness and fear; she holds it up to the light, vulnerably-courageously,  and gives it a name outside of hers.  Unmistakably, she touches the hurting hearts of countless others.    It’s beauty from ashes and that kind of beauty is simply incomparable; without need of filters.

Close to Home

My older sister and best friend, Kristen has dealt with chronic pain due to endometriosis and resulting surgical nerve damage for nearly two decades.  It breaks my heart to watch her in pain; to know she is suffering and no one can take it away from her, definitely not me.  This type of pain is systemic: when she hurts, her community and family suffer as well because we love her and desperately long to see healing.  This overcoming story not only gives me hope in facing my own nasty demons, but also for my remarkably courageous sister who has yet to see the light at the end of her tunnel.

Ruthie Lindsey’s story is not just about chronic pain, it’s about the suffering we all face in our human frailty.  It is about standing smack dab in the middle of our story, pain, loneliness, heartache and all, and writing a new ending that offers life and hope to others.  In return, our cups get filled no matter what circumstances dictate.  Hope is a hurricane of a force.  When we give it away from a place of desperate need, we cultivate sunshine in the center of our storm.  I sincerely hope you read every word of her story.  Your life will be richer for it.

The Accident

When I was a senior in high school, I pulled out in front of an ambulance that hit me after crushing my car door going 65.  I broke three ribs, punctured my lungs, my spleen ruptured and I broke the top two vertebrae in my neck.  I was told I had a 5 percent chance to live and a 1 percent chance to ever walk again.  After I was stable and off life support, they took bone from my hip and fused it into my neck by wrapping it with metal wire.  I was so fortunate to have youth and good health on my side.  After a month, I walked out of the hospital with only a neck brace.  I was able to graduate on time and I honestly went back to my “happy go lucky” life as normal.  I would occasionally get sore if I danced too much (which is often), but otherwise I was able to forget it even happened.  I felt very removed from my story.  When I spoke about it, it was almost as if I was talking about it in third person, like it happened to someone else.

A Rude Awakening

A year after graduating college, I met my very first boyfriend and we were married within 10 months!  A year into our marriage, I was walking out of a Starbucks one day, when a searing pain shot through my neck and into my head.  I fell to my knees and nearly blacked out.  The pain continued with more and more frequency, and would leave me with horrific migraines.  It was so debilitating that I couldn’t function.  I saw tons of doctors, and each time they would order a scan and an elusive black spot appeared on the film.  They simply informed me it was the magnet in the machine interacting with the wired from my spinal cord fusion.  I tried countless (unsuccessful) therapies, then was prescribed heavy narcotics for my pain.  As a result of the pain, and the medication, I began spending more and more time in my bed.  I isolated myself and withdrew from my community and my marriage.  I though of myself as a burden.  This continued for over four years, exhausting money we barely had.

After these four years of mental and emotional exhaustion, I saw a new doctor who insisted on seeing what was under that little black spot on all my films.  A $50 X-ray showed that one of the wires had broken and pierced my brain stem.  What I learned is that I am apparently the only person in the world who has ever had this.  Specialists explained the risk of paralysis involved in attempting to remove the wire, but explained that if we didn’t try, I would eventually become paralyzed anyway.  I was one wrong turn of the head away from never walking again.  Insurance wasn’t going to cover my surgery, claiming my accident as a pre-existing condition.  Two weeks later my dad informed my mother that he was going to sell our farm to afford the procedure.

Loving Well

The night before he came to see me and tell me what he was planning to do with the farm, my dad had a freak accident.  After falling down a flight of stairs he passed away shortly thereafter from brain damage.  My dad’s sudden passing was a massive loss to my family, our community and me.  I remember lying in my bed night after night pinching myself until I bled because nothing felt real.  I felt I must be in a nightmare.  We were all absolutely devastated and heartbroken, but out of that loss something really beautiful happened.  My godfather set up a medical fun for me in my dad’s honor and money and letters started pouring in.  We would get letters that said, “Your dad sent me on my senior trip” or “your dad bought my prom dress” and your dad paid my tuition” or “your dad fixed my roof,” and on and on.  When my brothers and I were kids, whenever we left my dad’s presence, he would always say, “I love you so much, remember your manners, and always look out for the little guy.”  He wanted us to see and love the people who everyone else missed, and that’s what he did.  because he had loved people so well, this crazy amount of money was raised so that I could have this surgery.

Spiral

The doctors were able to remove the wire from my brain stem by taking bone from my other hip and fusing my neck back together with titanium screws.  Although able to walk afterward, I ended up getting major nerve damage in the surgery, and now my right side feels like it’s on fire at all times.  While recovering, I ended up contracting a bacterial infection called C. diff while in the hospital for another minor surgery.  I was so sick.  I stopped sleeping.  I had constant panic attacks and ultimately I had a full-blown nervous breakdown.  My husband was away on tour in Australia, and I had the feeling my marriage was coming to an end, which sent my downward spiral into a tailspin.  I became incapable of taking care of myself, so I moved home to live with my family in Louisiana.

Wakeup Call

My breakdown made me want to change everything.  I realized that I had identified myself with my pain for so long, so that is exactly how everyone else saw me.  Every conversation and interaction revolved around my condition.  When I would see people, they would ask, “How’s your back?” or “Are you hanging in there?” In some subconscious, gross way I found comfort in that, because it helped to justify having resigned myself to never-ending bed rest.

We teach people how to see us.  I don’t know what it was, but something changed, and I decided I was tired of people always feeling sorry for me.  If we lead from a place of brokenness, insecurity or bitterness, that is exactly who they will think we are.  But, if we lead from a place of love and wholeness, with compassion and strength, they are able to see us for who we really are.  I started to speak out loud the beautiful things I saw in people, places and experiences I was having.  I was looking for it an I was speaking it, and what’s so amazing is that as I was looking for beauty all around me I was reconnecting with my community.  The more I made myself get out of my bed and connect and love people, the less I was noticing how much I was hurting.  The very nature of pain is selfish and pulls our focus inward.  When I focused my energy outward, when I was doing things that were life-giving, things that I loved, I wasn’t thinking about my pain.

Energy Shift

The best decision I made was to wean myself off of all the pain meds I had been on for so long.  It took four months to wean myself off of the meds completely.  My marriage couldn’t survive under the circumstances, and I found myself single for the first time in a decade, and as a result of my time in self-exile, the bills were piling up.  I decided to focus my energy on doing little projects around the house to help me reclaim the space as my own.  I didn’t think much of it at first, but friends began assuring me that I had a knack for design.

The Rest of the Story

In short time, friends asked me to collaborate on projects.  I started an Instagram account and began posting the things that I was doing.  People started asking me to help them throw dinner parties, arrange flowers, set tables and decorate spaces.  I learned to say yes.  Around this time I had also started having people who didn’t know me following me on Instagram.  I started getting comments like, “You live my dream life!” And “I want your life!”  And to be honest, it made me feel nauseous.  I remembered lying in my bed for years, looking on Facebook and feeling so depressed, wishing that was me playing with my children and having all of these adventures, instead of lying in my bed hurting all the time.  I needed to give people a context for my joy.  I ended up writing out my entire story and sharing it online.  I remember feeling so vulnerable and exposed when I hit publish, but I knew I needed to give everyone the full scope of what was going on.  The truth was, my circumstances had not changed.  I was still in pain every minute, I was handling a divorce and I missed my dad every day, but I had learned to live differently.

We so often think, “I will be happy once I get, fill in the blank (that boyfriend, a certain job, a husband, baby, that house, etc.).”  But those things won’t fulfill us, until we ourselves are fulfilled.  I learned to find contentment despite my hardship.  And unexpectedly, I discovered that exposing myself made me feel less vulnerable.

Living to Thrive

Suffering is one of the things that unifies humanity.  At some point or another we all experience loss.  Sometimes, feeling hopelessness can give us a new lens through which to see the world because we learn to be more empathetic to those around us.  Now when I interact with someone suffering from heartache, loss or unendurable physical pain, I immediately have common ground to stand on with him or her.  I would never wish what Iv’e experienced on anyone, and I know that there are plenty of people with even more harrowing personal stories, but if telling my story of overcoming anguish helps just one person feel like she or he is not alone in despair, then at least what I went through had a purpose.  It took a long time, but I finally found myself.  It’s not the version of a life that I fantasized about as a child, but it’s better, because it’s a life that I earned in triumphing over my misery.  I’m proud to say I learned resilience from the unexpected, and now my mission in life is to thrive.