The Work of Your Life
Authenticity costs more than you think…
Authenticity costs more than you think—and most artists aren't willing to pay the price. We all have a story to tell, and yours is completely unique. But coming to terms with your story? That might be the hardest work you'll ever do.
In my mid-30s, when the lemons of my life began to suck hard, when I'd laid my pain points bare before God for so long I was sure his ears had fallen off, I finally decided to get some counseling. It was a hail mary for relief, for change, and to try to find an answer to the 'why' that was holding me hostage.
That's when I met Betty. Betty was a petite little grandma, a Presbyterian minister's wife with a string of psychology degrees behind her name. She was prim and proper, the kind that might wear a floral hat for afternoon tea with the ladies. But looks were deceiving: Betty could deliver the sweetest, barbwired questions about your life, the kind that'd leave you emotionally scrambling for the fetal position. Hard, terrible questions like: "So do you remember the first time you knew you didn't like yourself?" or "Where was all your emotional investment going all these years you've been single?" Like I said, terrible, hard, gut-punch questions… and all from the sweetest little tea-drinking grandma lady you'd ever want to meet.
Betty was a 'family systems therapist,' the kind that helps people excavate the crooked roots of their family trees. How did you become who you are? Why do you make the choices you make? That was her territory.
Now, I've always been a storyteller. A yarn spinner. From the moment I learned to speak, stories have been my breath. Got that gene from my mother, who can regale entire rooms with stories that will make you simultaneously weep and howl. But those years (and I do mean years) with Betty were my first babysteps into my story. The story of Melissa. The little girl who loved stories but had trouble getting down to the core of her own.
So what were the big Betty revelations, you might ask? The kind that every creative professional needs to hear. Most of our emotional wiring gets locked in between birth and age five. Before we can even speak, we've already concluded whether we're loved, safe, or worth a damn. There are influential adults around the conference table in our minds that program messages about who we are—messages that may not be true.
Through those sessions, I spent time looking at the roadblocks I'd erected, brick by brick, for survival. Betty delivered stingers in support of my little girl self. "You do realize that adult Melissa has kept little Melissa's mouth duct-taped shut, right?" Ouch. Stop it already. Where that little girl was creative and adventurous, I'd become a 'get shit done' machine with no time for vulnerability.
"This is the work of a lifetime," she'd say. "Most people aren't brave enough. But until you do it, you'll never embrace the amazing, beautiful core of who you are—or why you're here."
Here's what I've learned working with artists over the years: this same inner work that Betty guided me through is exactly what separates artists who connect authentically with their audience from those who stay stuck performing some acceptable 'rockstar' version of themselves. You know the ones—the comedians battling depression behind their punchlines, the red carpet walkers with eating disorders, the singers projecting confidence but tearing down every note afterward. They're all trapped in personas that feel hollow because the platform prefers power over truth. The artists who do this work—who excavate their own crooked roots and reclaim their silenced voices—they're the ones whose art moves people at their core because they have been brave enough to unearth their own story. Everyday people prefer truth to power. In fact, we starve for lack of it.
For most creatives in the music business, way underneath the professional persona you project lies the real YOU. Your authentic self—the gravity and graces of you as an artist with a divine purpose for your life. It's where connections with the people you meet and the audiences you serve hold more value than a paycheck or a growing social following, where your deepest truth becomes their deepest resonance. It's where the caged bird doesn't just stick her head out of the open cage door—she spreads her wings and soars.
