“Epiphany”

You probably won’t recall, but I wrote to you years ago when I first found a copy of Songs For The Inner Child.  It was my second year in college, if I recall correctly, so probably around 1998.  At the time, I was experiencing a profound depression which I attributed to my newly regained memories of sexual abuse at the hands of my brother’s friend, and was having especial trouble with nightmares, so “You Can Relax Now” became my favorite, and it got to the point where I could reach down and select the correct track on my CD player even groggy and barely awakened from one of them.  Your loving voice and soothing songs brought me a measure of peace during a time of huge emotional upheaval, and I was an am so very grateful for that.  You wrote me back fairly soon after I sent my letter, which completely blew me away!  I kept and treasured your kind response for years.

Now, a decade later, I still find immeasurable comfort from that CD.  About 3 years ago I finally pulled away from home and moved 700 miles north.  About a year and a half after that, I finally began to realize how toxic my family is and finally cut off contact.  And in the year and a half since then, I’ve been slowly starting to untangle the skein of cutting and bulimia and self-loathing and promiscuity, and to address and reconcile their roots.  I’ve found that the abuse at the hands of my brother’s friend came many years after the abuse at the hands of my parents, which I had not even begun to be able to assimilate at the time, since I was still living with them.  For years, I wondered why even with therapy, I couldn’t get that depression to do more than just get smaller in scope…  Now I’m finally coming to a place where it is actually resolving.  Slowly, and there is a long way to go, but I hit rock bottom in the spring last year (and came closer to suicide than I ever thought possible), and since then I have finally begun to actually heal and move forward.

In the meantime, a friend introduced me to the beautiful music of the Wailin’ Jennys, and today I’ve been downloading an albun from iTunes that they collaborated on, a lullaby CD called “Down at the Sea Hotel.”  One of the songs reminded me quite a bit of track 9, “Lullaby” (which is one of my current favorites, when I just need to get my mind to quiet down and let go).  And that got me to thinking that it has been quite a while since I got that CD and that just maybe you might have done some more music since then…  And since the album is still downloading (I’m on dialup, everything takes forever), I bopped over to Google to see if I could find you.  Whenever “Down at the Sea Hotel” finally finishes downloading, “You Can Relax Now” is set to follow.  I’ll eventually get “Bread for the Journey” and “A Place for You Here”, but the finances are somewhat tight; even in Portland (quite a bit cheaper than the San Jose/San Francisco area of California), the cost of living is a bit steep for one woman alone, no family or lover to support the income.  And not to mention my little family of cats and reptiles.

Anyway… I’m not sure that there is a central point to this email (my ADD is flaring tonight for sure!), just wanting to share with you how deeply your music has supported me and my healing process over the years.  If you have the time or inclination, I have a website over at geocities (’cause it’s free) with some of my poetry and short stories up; the poetry is mostly about my process, but the stories are mostly fairly upbeat things, designed for kids.  “Milking the Clouds” is actually with an artist friend of mine, and once she has illustrations for it we’ll be seeking professional publishing…  Which scares the living daylights out of me, but it WANTS to be a book, so… 🙂  http://www.geocities.com/altowolfkin

The long and the short of it is, many thanks, and all my love to you.

Epiphany