When Stillness Stewards Change

People always want to know your why. Simon Sinek put it at the center of the golden circle, and Viktor Frankl proved that if you have a good why, you can sustain any how.

But what if your why changes?
What if the world twists, knocking you off your feet and to your knees?
What if the “why” that got you where you are won’t get you where you need to be?

In 2023, the life I had envisioned for myself disappeared. I didn’t have an anchor, my roots pulled up by heartache. My joyful, buoyant personality plunged below the surface, trading places with anxiety.

It was in that moment that David Waggoner’s poem Lost found me: “Stand still. The forest knows where you are.” 

These words entered into conversation with two other poets in my life. Bob Dylan was singing, “I know it looks like I'm movin', but I'm standin' still,” and T.S. Eliot was writing about the “still point of the turning world."

This paradoxical relationship between stillness and unfolding fed my imagination like coins in a jukebox, and the muse gave me a line: The reason you came doesn’t have to be the reason you stay.

I stood still in Winston-Salem and let the creative work of my life unfold around me. I carried that little line of mine wherever I went—a talisman in my pocket whose touch made me a little less afraid. I became like a little kid with a favorite book, reciting my line to anyone who would listen. People smiled and said it was good. But to be a songwriter, you have to conjure the sonic world where the line belongs; otherwise, you’re just a poet.

In the fall of 2024, I found myself on an artist retreat at the Everwood Farmstead. The paths there wind through the woods just enough to let you get lost and still somehow find your way back.

I took my line with me—burning a quiet hole in my chest. One night, I sat alone on the old wooden stage in a barn-turned-music-haven and began to sing. The owls and crickets backed me up as the song came out. The tone was heavy, slow, and dark–probably because of the bourbon. I had found my way to what felt like a mediocre first date: no love at first sight, but enough sparks to try again.

I let the song unfold. Playing it. Testing it. Revising it. Searching for the core. Then one night at dinner, the conversation turned toward the pain of life—those shattering moments that leave us playing in the ash and dust of what once felt certain. I said, “I’ve got a song about this.” By the last chorus, they were singing with me. With the final chord, my good friend looked up and said, “Yeah, that hits.”

The dinner host—who also happens to be my pastor—said, “Do you want to play that during Communion on Sunday?” That invitation was a christening.

Found Love was being mixed when all this went down, but I sent a rough recording to Ethan, my engineer and co-creator, and asked if we could squeeze “The Reason” into the project. What you hear on the record was arranged and played by him: a simple, shimmering song. Brighter than the version I perform solo, which has grit and drop-D chords. Ethan’s take feels more like a question: Does this singer know the depth of the heartbreak she’s singing about? It’s a harbinger of hope to come, the prelude to the story.

In speech class, they tell you: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them you told them. “The Reason” is the first part. Found Love, the album, does the telling. “Walking Straight,” the final track, set for release in late 2026, will tell you what I told you.

Earlier this year, I played “The Reason” at an event for Authoring Action. Afterward, one of the authors came up and said, “That’s my song.” Every time I see her, she says, “The only way to win is to show up and play.” That’s what it’s all about—hearing someone state your lyric as their own truth. That’s when you know the muse showed up, you served the song, and the world is made a little more whole through the process.

June 9, 2025