what would dolly do? and tracy too...

reclaiming my voice and two of my favorite female vocalists of all time

author’s note: this is the first entry in reclaiming my voice, a series within my memoir-in-motion, venus consciousness. it is where i will tell the stories behind the songs that shaped me, and the ones i have written myself, as i find my way back to my own voice.

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when i started listening to music, my favorite singer-songwriter was tracy chapman. she sang with a kind of truth i recognized, even then. her songs gave me hope in a world that often felt hopeless. she spoke to my heart in the same way my own future songwriting would, a voice in the darkness, saying you are not alone.

her debut album was among the first cds i owned, and when i began learning guitar, her songbook was the first i bought. i especially loved ‘fast car’ and it fit my hands and my voice like it had been waiting there all along. i felt the ache in her voice, the quiet truth of being stuck somewhere with no escape, but the fragile hope of finding a way out. even before i knew consciously what “trapped” meant, i always was.

‘you got a fast car, is it fast enough so we can fly away? we’ve gotta make a decision, leave tonight or live and die this way.’

here’s a simple voice memo recording of me singing a line of ‘fast car’ today, decades after I first learned it, still carrying the same ache and hope that made me pick up my guitar in the first place.

when i used to strum and sing that song, i didn’t know yet that i would one day both dream of and own my own fast cars. or that i would have my own nights of deciding to stay, or to run. to give everything away and go, like the day i drove out of carbondale, with my two young girls, leaving all i knew behind.

the mountain air was hot and dry that late august day, carrying the smell of summer fields already turning golden. i loaded what i could into the back of my Subaru, a few bags, some toys, a handful of clothes, and drove away. i knew the kindhearted parents from my 6th grade class i had been forced to abandon, would pack up what remained, so the bank could foreclose on the house. all the furniture, the kitchen where i had cooked countless meals, the backyard with the apple orchard where the girls had played… it all was to become someone else’s. i was now homeless and on the run, not sure if we were safe from my ex’s anger, only sure that staying would have been worse.

when I was a little girl, i used to have recurring nightmares about escaping. sometimes i had wings and i could flap hard enough to lift myself over rooftops and treetops. but i always came back down. and when i did, there was always a bad guy there chasing me, and always faster than me. other nights my legs felt like lead and my voice was felt stuffed with cotton. i would try to run but i couldn’t move and when i tried to scream, nothing came out. these dreams always ended before i could get away.

music has always been where i go to gather the pieces, after loss, after betrayal, after another chapter ends sooner than I had hoped. each time i begin again, it is different. i am carrying more scars, but also more truth, more clarity about what matters.

back in high school i would sit on the floor of my room and play ‘fast car’ over and over, letting the melody etch itself into me. it was the first time i realized that a song could tell the truth about loneliness and hope in the same breath. and maybe, even then, i knew that i wanted to do that too one day with my own stories, to take what was heavy and make it move.

over time, i began writing my own songs. they carried the same threads i had first heard in ‘fast car,’ hope tangled with heartbreak, the quiet resilience of someone who has survived more than she ever thought she could.

that is why i made my own debut album last year, birth of venus. that is why i bought the studio with the life insurance money from finn’s passing. i wanted to carry forth hope into a place where peoples’ songs, and the stories behind them, could have a life of their own.

i remember the day i signed the papers for the studio, the echo of my footsteps across the empty floor, the way i pictured filling it with sound and light. i imagined it as a place where other musicians could come and feel safe enough to take risks, where we would build something lasting. i could see the late nights, the coffee cups and scribbled lyric sheets, the sound of the first playbacks when a song finally found its skin.

but the dream unraveled quickly. i carried too much of the burden, and in the end, i was burned. the studio, like so many other things i’ve poured myself into, slipped away before it had a chance to become what i imagined.

that is why i am here now. because beginning again is an act of courage. last week, the weight of everything i have carried in this lifetime pressed hard against me. all the grief, the old betrayals, the quiet ache of dreams that did not make it, felt like a million-ton boulder on my chest. it would have been easy to stay pinned there, to let the heaviness decide for me.

however, i remembered that on my desk is a mug from one of the friends who helped me leave carbondale, and on it are the words, “what would dolly do?”

dolly parton is the woman who gave me the courage to start singing and songwriting again during covid, when i realized that if i didn’t, a part of me was dying. if dolly could keep showing up for her voice, then so could i. she felt like a fairy godmother, giving me permission to be myself and share my songs.

when i was deciding whether to buy the studio last year, i woke at five one morning with those words in my mind. i knew then i could do it, but i had to buy it alone. i didn’t know how important that choice would be later, when the studio became a place that was no longer emotionally safe for me to stay, and i had to sell it. but at least i could, because i had followed my intuition through the confusion, the way i always have.

last week, under the weight of all the dreams that have crumbled and all the places i have had to flee, i asked myself again, “what would dolly do?” the answer came as an image, my arms resting on the laptop, typing. yes. i must tell my story, or a part of me dies.

this is how i move forward. by speaking up. by singing. by refusing to go silent. perhaps you, too, have a story that will not let you go until you tell it.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞