Allison Moorer has a depth to her that feels like the ocean, and you feel it immediately when you’re in her presence. She’s feels classic like Nicole Kidman meets Kate Winslet and throw in a touch of Joni Mitchell. There’s a confident quietness to her until she is engaged in conversation... then she speaks and all you want to do is listen. I met her at an eclectic dinner party hosted by a fabulous interior Photographer, Alyssa Rosenheck. I was moved by everything Allison spoke about; from how she just published a book and album called “Blood” on the murder-suicide of her parents, and how she and her sister, Grammy winner Shelby Lynne, became each other’s rock and “nightlights,” as one of the tracks on her new album sings about. She also talked about the trials and triumphs of raising a non-verbal ten year old with autism. Allison says God gives us the child we need. She is so tuned into her spiritual being. We talk about what it felt like to be nominated for an Oscar and a Grammy and playing the Oscars. This interview hits every nerve. Allison is so transparent and honest. I love this conversation, and I feel honored to know Allison.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Carol. She's a queen and she's getting not afraid of
just let flow, No one cry, caral this sounds care Hey, friends,
I am really excited about this podcast. I have Alison
(00:31):
Moore joining me. She is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful on
the inside and outside. She I grew up listening to
this one particular song that she's saying, A Soft Place
to Fall. My dad was obsessed with it when I
was growing up. We listened to it probably every day
of my childhood. Once I was old enough to know
(00:52):
what music was like my team years, I listened to
it all the time. So to have her on my
podcast was amazing. And then to hear her story, Oh man.
The song that I was listening to was a Soft
Place to Fall, which was nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Song she sang at the Oscars. She later
(01:14):
went on to be nominated for a Grammy with her
former husband, who she has a ten year old son
with John Henry, And we talked about that who has autism,
and she talks about parenting and sorry, that's my doorbell.
I would redo this intro, but this is called get real,
and there you go. That's my doorbell Um. She talks
(01:35):
about parenting and what he has taught her um as
a mother, and then but we talk a lot about
her childhood and what has shaped her into who she is,
which was the her upbringing from her parents and then
the murder suicide of her mom and dad. Her father
(01:56):
had a drinking problem and one night at her her
mom had left, he killed her, her mom and then
killed himself, and we talked about how that has shaped
Allison's life and her sister, Shelby Lynn, who is a
Grammy winner for her music. They're both so incredibly talented.
(02:16):
And I walked away from this interview just feeling so
unbelievably inspired by Allison's gift of sharing and her ability
to rise up. Because so many of us have struggles
that we deal with. There's a variety of levels and
of pain that we all go through, but a lot
(02:38):
of us don't want to confront our pain and don't
want to talk about it, and definitely don't just don't
want to accept it. And Allison has done all of
the above, and she is using her pain and her
story to make beautiful art and to share with the
world to help heal the world. And I think she
(03:00):
is one of the most special people I've ever gotten
to talk to. And I know that her interview is
going to inspire you to no end. And she ended
this interview, I always ask everyone to leave your light.
And she asked her what she wants people to know,
and she said that she tried, because she's tried her
(03:22):
whole life to be such an amazing person, to be
so good and to do great things because of a
variety of reasons. And I just want her to know.
And I know that you all will feel this when
you hear the here this interview. Not only has she tried,
but she has succeeded, and she has impacted this world
(03:44):
in the most amazing way. And I am so blessed
to have her on this podcast and I cannot wait
for you all to hear this episode. So here is
Alison Moore. I am always excited about my interviews, but
I am excited about this interview with you, and you're
so sweet. I'm excited too. Alison Moore is in my house,
(04:09):
which is also a thrill because I told you this.
We met at a dinner party the other day. We
have a mutual friend, Melissa rosen Heck. She has a
very beautiful long name. She's an awesome photographer. She does
interior photography, and she's just an incredible woman who's so
light inspired. So she had a dinner party for her
(04:30):
birthday and I didn knew I wasn't gonna know really
anyone there, but I was like, Elyssa is one of
those people that she's so awesome that when she invites
you to a dinner party of women, you want to
go because you know everyone's going to be awesome there.
And it totally was. And Allison was there. And one
of the things that Elissa did at this dinner party
(04:52):
that was so amazing she made everyone pick out a quote.
She had curated this beautiful party. She had all this
like this, this table of quotes like at each place,
mat right, and you had to walk around actually missed
that part. Such a great idea. It's such a great
exactly how that part was people in a great conversation starter. Well,
you know, I knew I wasn't going to know anyone
(05:13):
there either, Well I suspected I wouldn't, um, and I didn't,
but um, you know, she had quotes on cards at
every place setting and so I got there and we had,
you know, a drink and we sort of just talking
and then we went to move over to the to
(05:33):
the dining table, and she had a quote on a
card at each place setting and asked us to go
around and look for which one resonated the most with
us and sit at that place. So, UM, I thought
that was a really good idea. Which good Do you
remember your quote? UM, if you notice an absence of
this is not it verbatim. I can't remember it exactly,
(05:56):
but I did save the card and I second inside
a book. UM, if you something like if you notice
an absence of fire in the world, make it your
business to go about setting them. Yeah, tell me why
you picked that quote. I picked that because, UM, I
feel like I have always had that intention when it
(06:18):
comes to making art and the conversations that I want
to start and have around the art I make. UM,
I don't it kind of reminds me of that quote.
Don't do what you think you need to do do
in life what sets you on fire, because that's what
the world needs, basically, whatever it is you're passionate about. UM.
(06:43):
I released a book in October which two thousand nineteen,
with an album to go with it. Yes, So the
book is a memoir of my childhood and which was difficult,
and it's you know, it's seventh parts parts one and
two or about my childhood. In part three is present day,
(07:03):
which is sort of me reflecting on all of part
one and two and figuring out what that all means. Um. So,
I didn't know. I knew that I was putting myself
and my family's story out in the world in a
way that I had not previously done. But what I
was not prepared for, what I didn't think about, was
(07:26):
that when I did that, people would actually read it,
and then they would want to respond to me in
some way. They would want to tell me their stories
or they would be inspired to tell their own stories.
Because at the end of the day, no one has
a perfect childhood, no one has a perfect family. It's
all kind of a mess when it gets right down
to it, and it's a wonder any of us lived
(07:48):
through it. But in a lot of cases, um, people
are harboring trauma and if cult and holding things in
that they feel like they cannot say. Why do you
think that is? I think because family issues bring a
(08:10):
lot of shame to us. Dysfunction brings a lot of
shame to us, and shame itself as a is a
major dysfunction and something that keeps us from living fully.
You said something I had to write down quotes because
you said, um, what was it? It's hard to feel
(08:33):
there's your story. We're gonna have to talk about blood
and what inspired prompted you to start writing it because
I know it was a long time in the making
for you. But you said, it's hard to feel worth
when you when you don't feel that from your parents
or on some level. Well, I think it's it's like this.
(08:53):
Evolutionarily speaking, the Duchess make up a word. Evolutionary lanes
should be one of We are programmed to please and
trust our parents, mainly trust our parents. We have to
when we're babies. Got no choice, you, Yeah, you have
no choice but to trust the people who bring you
(09:15):
into the world. When that trust is broken or breached
in whatever way, I feel like it sets our access
at a tilt. Was your trust broken from the beginning? Absolutely? When?
And this is the rub Your parents are human beings,
so of course there's going to be damage in that area.
(09:38):
No one has ever parented perfectly, and no one's ever
going to. So this is um a push and a
pull and a dance that we have to dance with
each other, and we have to, through grace and forgiveness,
figure out how to function as human beings despite how
difficult it is to have an actual healthy relationship between
(10:01):
any two people. And when they're you know, you're bringing
a lot of family baggage from one side or the
other into a situation. My point is, putting your stuff
off on your child is going to happen. But having
the maximum self awareness about that, I think should go
hand in hand with the knowledge that, Okay, I know
(10:24):
I'm going to screw my child up in my very
own special way. Um, let me make sure that I'm
not dragging generations of other baggage into this. But most
people don't have any kind of self awareness about that, right,
And I think that that's the overarching message that I
wanted to get to, and not in a preachy way
at all. But just you know, I'm a big believer
(10:45):
in Show don't Tell, so through my own examination of
my own childhood, in my own life, and my own parenting,
you know, first of all, never would have written this
book had I not become a parent, I would have
had no reason to. And one of the things you
said it was you were able to forgive your dad
and have love for your dad because you have a
son and you know that your dad was once a
(11:09):
son and a child. I think we would be much
better off as people if we were able to see
each other that way. But he was once a clean
slate and absolutely and something happened to him, something happened
to him that caused him to go off the rails.
So just as I want to have compassion, amazing, you've
got gotten to forgiveness. Well, I want to have compassion
(11:30):
for myself and I can't have that unless I have
it for other people. And I can't have it for
other people unless I have it for myself. So that's
a circle and something that we always have to be
working on. How do we do that when we're trying
to pay the mortgage and take care of our children
and keep all the balls in the air and the
plates spinning and all the things we do and deal
(11:53):
with trauma that's just lingering in the background. We have
to somehow make room for that in our lives so
that we can have the awareness so we're not constantly
screwing up. At least that's how I feel. I have
to make some room in my own life for my
own self to have a minute, just a minute where
I tell myself that it's okay, that I'm gonna be okay,
(12:15):
and I'm not going to be the biggest screw up
that ever produced a child. Of course, so because that's
my of course, that's my feelings, like I'm gonna do
this wrong, and who knows. That's part nature, that's part nurture,
that's you know, a lot of things. But one of
my favorite sayings is, Okay, let's stop and go back. Now,
(12:35):
how did we get here? How did this happen? Let's examine.
That's sometimes easier said than done. We don't always have
time to stop and go back and examine every action,
word and gesture. But I do think that we have
to be able to do that at least some of
the time. Just slow down, talk about it, look at it,
(12:57):
say it. The fact that you have got to this
place of self awareness, to me is like when you
came upstairs, I had to hug you, and I had
to I was like crying a little bit because I
have been engulfed in your story lately, Like I've always
been a fan of you and your music, but I
haven't necessarily always known your full story until you have
(13:19):
just put this book out Blood with the album, and
it is you survived one of the most perfect traumas
you can as a child, and it was your dad
in a drunken state, in an angry state, killing your
mom and then himself, and you just decided to write
about this, and I want to know how you decided
(13:43):
it was time to share the story. And you also
said something like you're trying to get back to this
the girl, the little girl, Like there's a picture you
posted of like this little smiling girl. I think you're
in a bathtub. And on your album for Blood it's
I'm assuming you as a little girl. And is that
where you it was at like a joyful state, like
an innocent state, And how how are you getting How
(14:07):
was this book helping you to get back to her?
And how did you decide that it was time to
do this? Well, this will sound crazy, but I did not.
I never thought I would write a book. I didn't
think it was something I could do, much less would
want to do. Um. But about six weeks after my
son was born. I was invited to be a guest
(14:29):
on Maya Angelo's radio show, so you just idea, not
in person. She was in her studio in North Carolina
and I was in New York. But we spoke, you know,
back and forth. It was that conversation. It was incredible.
I just you know, I had no idea she was
even aware of me, and she starts singing my songs
to me, and it's like, you know, blew my mind
(14:52):
on many levels. And what a treasure this woman was
and still is for us, just as human beings to
I don't know, I don't even know. Um. But during
the course of the conversation, she was asking me about
my childhood. Um, we were discussing our upbringing. She didn't
(15:14):
have a great one either, so we were talking about that,
and she's I said something about my parents, you know,
and their importance in my life, and how their lives
were just as are more important than their deaths were
to me because they made a huge impact on my life.
(15:34):
That made a huge impact on my life. But I
try not to let that be the defining factor when
I think about my parents, which is hard some days. Um.
But she said, okay, so that's that, and uh so
now we have John Henry, what are you going to
tell him when he's old enough to ask what happened?
(16:00):
And I did not have an answer for her. So
for whatever reason, I began to turn that over in
my mind and I started to write about them. It
took me a while to find the real narrative of
this book interesting, And yeah, I didn't several narratives. Well,
(16:23):
I didn't know exactly what I was trying to say
it first, did you know exactly how you felt? Because
there's probably so many feelings from you love your parents.
You love your dad on some level because he's your dad,
and of course there's good in him, and but then
you probably hate hate him, and then you probably feel
(16:43):
I mean, what are the feelings that you feel? And
I think they run the gamut every possible emotion a
person could have. I've probably had about the situation. Um,
I just began to write and then I feel it out.
The story that I needed to tell was the only
(17:05):
one I could tell about them, which is what what
it felt like to be a child living with them?
What did it feel like? It felt like many things,
you know, it was often unstable, I was I often
felt unsafe. I sometimes I did you know, my father
was abusive? He was verbally abusive, who was physically abusive?
(17:27):
You know, I have so many memories of being terrified
as a child. I also have the other side of him,
which you know, was he was bright, he was talented,
he was funny, he was charismatic. You know, all of
these things that I guess during the course of writing
(17:50):
this book, I'm trying to figure out and if you
read it, you'll like know that I wrestle with all
of this information, and I try to figure out how
does a person who has so much And I was
often around people as a child who basically who thought
he was the best thing ever, who had known him
(18:10):
his whole life and talked about how great he was
and how kind he was. And that is not the
person I lived with. So I wrestled with that a lot,
like who is this person who's so violent and drunk
and abusive? Um, this is not the person that I
hear people talk about because he was also you know,
he was a teacher. He taught English. That's how he
(18:32):
met my mother was he was He was an English
teacher at my aunt's high school. And she actually introduced them.
He people, you know, men showed up at his funeral
who he had taught in high school, and they spoke
about how what an impact he made on their lives.
And I don't doubt that any of that is true.
Yet we have this other side that was not so
(18:54):
you knew it, like you, your sister and your mom
knew this other side. No, I think other people knew it.
Like think other people saw it. You know, you can't
completely hide. And I think that there was an awareness
of his drinking a close circle. Oh yeah, it's a
horrible alcoholic, and I think that that was responsible for
a lot of his issues and quite possibly some mental
(19:16):
illness that I, you know, don't know anything about. There
was just something off there, definitely. So the book is
about what that felt like to me as a child,
and also losing my parents at the age of fourteen
in the way that I did, and how unsettling that is,
(19:36):
and how you know, I've tried to just put the
pieces back together and do the best I could. Did
you try to block it? For a long time? I
never had that conscious thought, you know, there's um. I
was talking to someone yesterday about how powerful our brains
are and how hard they work to protect us from trauma.
You know. Um, the morning that my parents died, I
(20:01):
was fourteen. I was there. Your mom had just left
your dad about two months before that. Um, you know,
the police were there, The police came, I was questioned
about what had happened, and I, you know, did the
best I could there. But I remember doing so with
this very steely awareness, like I was a really cool
(20:21):
customer fourteen year old, which I would not have been
had I not become sort of hardened to a lot
of things in the world because of the way I
grew up. And the way that a person adapts is
to not feel to say you're always okay, to be
highly functional. Um, I remember standing at my closet thinking, Okay,
(20:47):
I need four dresses because I'm gonna have to go
to two weeks and two funerals. So it was just
very matter of fact, very pragmatic about it. Even though
you had a really great relationship with your mom, it
seemed as great as it could be. Was a person
who was oh absolutely, and she was funny, and she
was talented, and she was a you know, smartass and
(21:08):
many many things. She was a very um, vivacious person,
and she had a feisty side and she was just cool.
You know. I feel very lucky to have had her
as a mother because she was absolutely one of the
most capable people, um that I've ever seen as well,
(21:28):
and that gave me a really good foundation for always
figuring out a way to get the job done, whatever
the job is. Why do you think she stayed so long?
I think she stayed because, first of all, she loved
my father, and that's a difficult thing when your face.
I think, UM, as an adult, I'm I can now
(21:51):
have perspective on what it is to love someone who's
an addict, and how um you want to help, how
codependency comes into play. How if you have no knowledge
of what you're dealing with, you're absolutely floundering because you
can't make heads or tails out of any of it.
When everything can change from one moment to the next,
(22:12):
or if someone you love says, oh, I'm gonna change.
I promise it'll get better and I'll never do it again,
and then it's better for three days, and then it
goes back to how it was, and then you just
start this cycle over and over. Why she could not
break away from him completely? I don't really know, but
I also know, and this is one of the difficult
things about the situation too. When she did actually leave him,
(22:36):
he made good on his threat to kill her if
she ever did. He always did, and not only that,
he would say, if you leave me, I'm gonna kill you,
I'm gonna kill the girls, I'm gonna kill your parents,
gonna kill every damn body. So she was so she
was living with that knowledge. And you know, it's easy
for people to say, well, if I were in that situation,
(22:59):
I would just leap eve. I don't think that her
situation was that simple, actually, And then he actually did
what he said he was going to do. Now many
people don't do that, but I, you know, I have
to say, it's kind of surprising how often this happens.
And I've become even more aware of it since the
book came out, because people have come to me and said,
(23:20):
the same thing happened to me, same thing happened to me,
or this didn't happen to me, or are but this did.
How does that mane able to hear these similar stories? Well,
it's a lot to absorb. You know. I did a
book tour where um I called it a hybrid tour,
so I went into clubs that I would normally play
as a singer songwriter, but I did this sort of
(23:43):
dual thing for the book and the record. I spent
the first half of the show in conversation with another
person talking about the book and interspersing the songs from
the new record into the conversation. So it was just,
you know, sort of beautiful flow of talking about it
and then singing this songs that go with it and
all this you know, um information about this very specific thing.
(24:08):
But I did a meet and greet afterwards, and the
meet and greet would take just as long as the show.
It's like a whole other shows, and I wanted to
to grant that. You know, I've never been a person
who was really super excited about breaking that fourth wall
and having an intimate relationship with people who were interested
in the art that I make. Was it because you
(24:29):
didn't want to have these painful conversations in part? But
this was your moment where you're like, Okay, I'm doing
it well. I feel like it was just part of
the deal because it's like sharing this, So here we go,
I'm sharing this. You're listening to me I'm going to
return that and give and give you your moment to
share with me, because that's just the conversation we're having.
(24:52):
That's a big moment in your life and career to say, like,
I'm ready for this interaction and exchange and conversation. Well,
the only way I can make sense out of any
of the things that happen in my life is to
understand that it's possible that I am going through these
(25:14):
experiences because it is my job as an artist two
live them, process them, turn them into something, and then
turn that loose on the world. Because the job of
an artist is to be a mirror in so so
many ways. So we take our own experiences and we
reflect them back and and tell and and give them
(25:37):
to the world in a way that they can process
and themselves their own things. Because um, I think that's
why art is non negotiable in our lives. It's human beings.
We have to have it because it gives us a
better way to understand ourselves. Even for people who don't
(25:58):
make art, absorbing art is a way for for them
to come closer to their own experience when they find
something that they latch onto that is similar. It's a
way for us to be an actual community. Do you
feel like you were chosen to be an artist or
like like it was just your destiny? Or do you
feel like you're because you obviously have this incredible singing
(26:21):
voice and you're a great guitar player. Do you feel
careful I wouldn't say that you do you feel like
art chose you or your story because of the life
that you lead you had to go to art to
get it out, or because being an artist, and especially
an artist like yourself who is so willing to share that.
(26:45):
I don't know if people realize what a beautiful job
that is, but what a huge, heavy job that is too,
because you are literally sharing your whole, most intimate, deepest
darkest secrets with the whole world. And that's a big deal.
While trying not to share the deepest darkies what I mean,
(27:08):
But I just did well. I also and am and
i'll I do want to say this before I answer
your questions specifically, I am. I have made it my
business to be the same person on the outside that
I am on the inside. I don't want to be
(27:30):
living one life internally and living another externally. That just
doesn't that conflict doesn't feel good. I don't like that.
I don't like it when I see other people do it,
and I don't want to be a person who operates
that way in the world. I just it's too much
work in life is too short that um I know
(27:50):
that I have issues when I'm hiding something, either out
of shame or fear or whatever whatever the case may be.
I feel it physically if I want to say something
and don't so, And that doesn't mean that I can
go around just reacting to the world and saying whatever
it is I want to say. I want to be
very careful about what I say. But I think that
(28:14):
when we're talking about making room for yourself, giving yourself
time to investigate all those impulses before you put something
out in the world, I think is important. But um so,
I just want to be able to live in a
transparent way with everyone. And So, to answer your question
(28:36):
about was I chosen, No, I don't think that I
am special in that way. I don't at all. I
think that I am was raised in a musical family.
We always played music. My mother was from a musical family.
My father wasn't. But I think that was one of
(28:56):
the things that drew them together too, was he loved
music so much and wanted to play music. My mother
was just naturally talented, and I think that was definitely
a bond between them. Um So I had that background,
and my sister and I both sang from the time
we could talk. Um. So it's just something very natural
(29:17):
that I did. And because we sang as a family,
and because we did things like I don't know, come
to Nashville when I was thirteen and make a record
as a family, I thought that that was normal. So
family record, Yes, that's kind of a it's crazy because
I just thought it was normal. It's like, is that
a treasure to you? Or is it hard to listen to?
(29:37):
I don't even have a copy of this record. I
think my sister does, but I mainly just remember the
experience and thinking like, oh, yeah, that's just another dynamic
when y'all made the record, like what well it was
it was a custom record, so it was like, you know,
my my father found someone up here that would do
you know, produced I don't know, a thousand like singles.
(29:58):
This was a nineteen eighty five so, um, you know,
and this is still done all the time. Um in Nashville.
But you know, you hire a producer who says, you know, okay,
we'll produce this many records for you and provide the
band in the studio and all this stuff for this
(30:18):
much money. So that was basically what we did in night.
We came away with a single, a little forty five
record that had two so so we cut two songs,
and there was one song that my my daddy wrote
called Traveling Fever, which was just kind of okay, and
then we cut, um, we cut an old standard called
I Couldn't Stay Away from You. So my sister sang
(30:41):
the lead part, I sang hi harmony, and my mother
saying the low part, which was how we often sang.
It was the three of us were always singing together.
And he didn't do anything. He didn't know. He was
just there like skulking around. So he was a singer.
It was his whole thing. But why didn't he sing
because he, I guess knew that it was better the
(31:02):
other way. So, um, I think because I had that background,
and this is due to to you know, I give
my father full credit for this. He somehow through doing
those things, like because he always was playing in bands
like at whatever joint or the VFW are just you know,
(31:22):
just being sort of the local musician guy who had
a day job and and doing all those things. I
didn't think it was odd to pursue art as a
path when you know everybody there were there were no
other people who were living like this in South Alabama
really and certainly no one who you know whose livelihood
dependent dependent on what they made, you know, as artists.
(31:46):
But I do think because that was displayed to me
from an early age, I had an awareness of, oh,
this is an actual job. People do write songs and
sing them, and they, you know, can make a living
from from art. Um. I don't at all think I
was chosen. I just think that I was shown the way.
And I have hesitated to say that there are gifts
(32:14):
that come with losing my parents but one, but there
are some. UM. One of them was they when they
died that released me from their drama. I've thought many
times if that had not happened, what would my life
(32:36):
had turned into. What do you think it would have turned?
I think it would have turned into a life where
I was always struggling with whatever they were struggling with. UM.
Because in the middle, because they died, I was released
from that, which is not what I would have chosen.
But since that happened, I have to look at that
(32:56):
as an advantage. The other part of it is I
don't have to watch them get old. Yeah, they're sort
of stuck in amber in my memory. You know, my
mama was forty one and my daddy was forty four
when they died, So I've outlived them both. I'm forty seven,
which is an interesting place to get in life. How
interesting is how does that feel to outlived your parents?
(33:18):
I in a way, and it's it's interesting. And I
didn't realize that I had done this when I did it.
But I closed the book, so to speak, on this
book on my forty five birthday, which was the moment
that I officially had outlived both my parents. It was
that's the day I finished it. I thought I'm done here,
(33:39):
and I think it yes, and I and looking back,
I think that I felt like I don't have to
tell this story anymore, and my life has now become
my own. That was that a relief. It was a relief.
I think that that's common among people who lose a
parent at an early age. Though you're sort of watching
the clock going Am I gonna die at that same
age too? It just we have that in us, whether
(34:02):
we are aware of it or not. Um. There's a
great book called Motherless Daughters written by an author named
Hope Edelman, and I read that book gosh, probably twenty
years ago, um, and it made a big impact on
me because I realized that I was not alone in
some of these thoughts and feelings that I was having, Like,
(34:23):
am I going to die when I'm forty one? Two?
Am I gonna? Should I have children? I'm afraid that
something will happen to me and my child will be
left alone because these are the things that happen to me.
And that's just natural to go down that train of thought. Um.
But anyway, I'm trying to need it. I don't feel
like I was chosen at all. I feel like that
(34:44):
I have some extraordinary gifts. I can sing. I'm very
lucky to have that gift and have not always you know,
made it my first thing, and I don't feel like
I always have to. Music is a gift. I am
very fortunate that I've been able to make that my
life's work. By the way, I discovered you because growing up.
(35:11):
You are our family's favorite artists. Like my dad found
you first and watched the movie The Horse Whispered, and
you sang you actually have a cameo in that movie,
and you're singing the song A Soft Place to Fall.
If I didn't hear that song every day from my
entire childhood, I am not kidding you. And so one
(35:32):
time when I first took to Nashville, I swear I
actually it was really weird. I saw you in a
post office like in the Ups, and I was so
star struck because I was like probably ten years ago.
I was like, that's all listen. I can't believe it,
because you were the soundtrack of my growing up, Like
we listened to that song and that the Horse was
for in particular that album, but like your song A
(35:53):
Soft Place to Fault was like the theme song of
our family. And your voice is just so rich and
it's so honest. You can feel your honesty and everything
you're seeing. And you were nominated for an OSCAR Like
I heard Academy Award with that song the Song of
the Year. Then you were later nominated with your former
(36:14):
husband Steve or you are nominated for a Grammy. Your sister,
Shelby Lynn want a Grammy, right, So it's like wow,
like wow, the talent in your family, the talent in you,
It's just it's amazing to me. It's also amazing to
me that you navigated to get to this place when
you were really orphaned at age fourteen, your sister was seventeen,
(36:37):
That you were able to figure out how to make
your music and your gifts into this worldwide phenomenon that
we all get to experience. Like, how do you do
that when you don't know where you're going and you
have no home base anymore? A good question, And I
(36:59):
cannot take credit for any of it. I can't, you know,
how can get to the place where you're singing at
the Oscars, like you're singing on the stage at the Oscars. Well,
first of all, you mentioned my sister, So that's a
good opportunity for me to say. Had I not had
my older sister, I don't know what would have happened
(37:19):
to me, you know, because it's just the two of us,
just the two of us growing up together, living through
all that stuff. We are deeply bonded and a lot
of a lot of ways, you know, just as sisters yes.
Also we're bonded musically. We have that bond which is
very strong, and we have a trauma bond that trauma
bonds are unbreakable. So she came to Nashville first. She
(37:48):
in a lot of ways set the example for saying
this is where I'm going. No one who's who knows
her is going to tell you that she's ever done
anything but sing, and ever wanted to do anything but sing,
and everyone always knew that she would sing, and and um,
you know, I sang back up for her for a
long time. So I learned a lot about the music
business through that and you know, also some things not
(38:13):
to do. Um. But I'm very thankful to her for
being my older sister and in a lot of ways
my guardian angel. And she she blazed a lot of trails.
There's just through her determination and um, her willingness to
put herself out there in so many ways. So I
(38:34):
did not do that alone, and I did have her
example to go by, and I'm very thankful for that.
But just kind of national and start playing. She did well.
You know you've heard her sing, So it's kind of
undeniable that it's just like the gift is so strong family. Well,
she just and who knows why that is? Who knows,
because you'll both have messages. I think that it's, you know,
(38:58):
it's a culmination of things. It's it's not just talent,
it's not just ability. It's you know, having the heart
to do it as part of it as well, and
and the determination and the ability to um stand up
for yourself and say, well, actually, this is the kind
of art I'm gonna make. Because we both could have
gotten lost in the shuffle very early on, and no
(39:19):
one would have. She's made fifteen records, I've made ten.
That's just sort of extraordinary in itself that we didn't
fall by the wayside when we not neither one of
us have been very commercially successful. So anyway, I'm very
thankful to her for that. And I just I don't
know the answer other than to say, I just did
(39:40):
it because it was what I felt like I needed
to do, and I figured it out as it went
along and made a lot of mistakes and got really
lucky at the same time. What has that journey felt
like to you, your musical journey after you and Shelby
were on your own and living in Nashville, what did
that feel like? Now you're this wide open news space,
(40:01):
like it's just the two of y'all, now your full
force pursuing music as a life. Yeah, and you're on
your own. Well, you know, as I said, she came
here before I did. I decided to go to college,
and um, did you put yourself through college? So how
did you decide to go to college? So when my
(40:24):
parents died, I um moved in with my aunt and uncle.
Mama had a will that said if anything happened to
her and daddy that her sister would take my sister
and me. So my sister was seventeen, almost eighteen, and
she was out of high school, so she didn't have
to do anything. She was kind of on her own.
(40:44):
But I moved in with my aunt and uncle, um
for my my tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade years of school.
And um my mama also had a life insurance policy
that gave both my sister and me ten thousand dollars,
So I saved money and I paid for two and
a half years of college at a state school in
(41:05):
Alabama with that money, and then I got then I
got student loans to pay for the rest, and I
worked two jobs, and I did. I just knew that
I needed. I'm a person who, you know, looking back
as on myself as a child, I was very concerned
about how am I going to be able to take
care of myself? Um. I was very responsible, always got
(41:28):
my school work done, tried to be a model student. Basically,
I was just trying to hold things together by doing
everything perfectly. And I think that I carry that into
my life now because I'm still very Okay, I gotta
get my work done. I can't be late. I need
to do, you know, all the things to make it
appear as if I have it all together. And I
was doing that when I was four years old. She
(41:50):
be the opposite. She's not as much that way as
I am, but she's still very We're both very concerned
with things have to be in order. We have to
be organized. We can't be late. It's all a reaction
against the chaos of our reaction to the chaos of
our childhood. Um, because as good as a mama as
I had, she was still always late. She never had
(42:11):
it together, you know that kind of thing, and god
knows how could she have. So we we're both, um,
very concerned with all the details being right. Um. So
I went to college, I got a degree. Then I
came to Nashville, same back up for her. Somehow started
(42:32):
writing songs. I got my first publishing deal when I
was twenty four. My first record came out when I
was um no um. And that's just so much of it. Yeah.
I worked hard, I did, and I made it my
business to be the best I could what I was doing.
But I also got really lucky. And you know, I
(42:54):
never had to kill myself in clubs or anything like that.
Basically I got discovered and Tony Brown signed me to
in c A and legendary producers of all times. Yeah,
and I'm very lucky. How did you get discovered? I
sang at a benefit concert for a friend of mine
who died in the Value jet plane crash. He was
(43:14):
a songwriter and I sang one of these his songs.
They had a benefit at the Rhyman or basically a
celebration of his life and songs at the Rhyman. And
I was completely unknown, though he had been a friend
of mine and we used to sing together. Just when
I was coming up. I was just green year old baby,
and um, I sang one of his songs and an
(43:35):
agent at Monterey Peninsula, which used to be a booking
agent in town, a booking agency basically plucked me out
and said, you're coming with me, and I'm going to
introduce you to all these people in town. And then
it just went from there. How crazy? How did that
rocket ship than feel? Especially from coming from this insane
(43:57):
upbringing and now you're on a new rocket It like
you're going into a new world of chaos, but it's
all like exciting, it seems. How was that transition because
it went fast for you and the right right away,
didn't it? It did? Yeah, it did. Looking it didn't
feel fast at the time, but looking back on it,
it was like, you know, that was pretty fast. And
(44:19):
I was so very young, but I also was very
mature because of of what I had been through in
my life and because I had had some exposure to
the music business through my sister. It wasn't like I
was trying to figure out what was going on. I
knew exactly what was going on. I knew what the
process was, and I just went about the process. Was
(44:39):
it fun? I liked it? Um, Yeah, I loved it.
I loved writing songs. I loved being in the studio.
I'd loved trying to find myself in that way. Now,
as you know, the music business is very difficult and
if you don't prove yourself right away in some way,
you can get left behind. But I think because I
(45:00):
was signed by Tony Brown as a singer songwriter, and
he sort of protected me at the label and you know,
basically told everybody hands off. You know, she's she's an artist,
and that I'm going to let her do what she
wants to do. Force you into being something that you
weren't right. It was a huge blessing. Now, the other
(45:20):
side of that is I didn't get the promotion dollars
that you know, the people that they thought they could
have hits on did. But I will also say I
just made my tenth record twenty one years down the line,
and a lot of the people that did get that
promotion money, what happened to them. That's something I love
about Tony Brown is he has always loved the artist
(45:41):
and the art. He is so passionate about the artistry,
which is amazing to have something like that as the
head of a label. I know, sir, he doesn't get
enough credit for that either. He's so true to that. Yeah. Wow,
So then you got married and now you have a
(46:02):
son who's ten. Yes, fast forward to talk to me
about that one. Um, when I had John Henry in
two thousand ten, Um, I didn't know what I was
gonna do. I thought I would continue to make music.
I was, you know, married to his dad as a
singer songwriter. We were trying to tour together as much
(46:23):
as we could at that time so that we could
keep everybody together at a new a new baby. And
so I ended up being actually part of his band
for a while. And then Um, after I did that,
I realized when when John Henry was about sixteen months old,
(46:45):
that something had happened. But something was going on with him,
because this was a child who started using words by
a year old. In some ways, he was um on
the front end developmentally. I looking back, I realized that
he was behind developmentally in some ways too. And that's
(47:08):
a puzzle that I haven't quite figured out yet, like
and who knows that I ever will. All I know
is he started calling the dogs when he was about
a year old, like saying the dog's name. We had
Bow and we had Pete, and both have passed now,
but he, you know, just started picking up boards really quickly.
Then we were um. After his first birthday, I went
(47:31):
on the road with Steve, which meant John Henry went
on the road too, So we're all basically living in
a tour bus. John Henry took his first steps in
a tour bus sitting outside the House of Blues in Houston, Texas.
I know, poor baby le and I missed it because
I was on stage and his first cousin was our
nanny at the time, and she witnessed it, but I
(47:53):
actually actually missed it. But anyway, the point is we
were on the road and shortly after he's started to walk,
his word usage started to dwindle, and I thought, well,
I wonder what's going on here, And as with many
things with children, you just have to wait and see.
(48:15):
Even though I kind of had a sense of there's
something not right here, I began to call his pediatrician
and say, you know, I think he's using his words
less and I sort of had this sense like something's wrong.
I was something's wrong, and I started to just sort
of feel the word autism, like not even really knowing
(48:35):
what autism was, having no knowledge of it really at all.
It wasn't really as talked about back then either. That's
even back then, but I feel like it should just
becoming a bigger conversation. It wasn't in my dialogue, you know,
certainly not, but it's it's almost like I could feel
the word in the back of my brain, if that
(48:56):
makes any sense. So I was really concerned about what
was going on. I kept calling his and I'm on
the road right in a different city every day. I'm
not at home. I can't take him into the pediatrician.
I was in this mode of, Okay, I think something's
going on here, but there's absolutely nothing I can do
about it, and I have to wait and see on this.
(49:18):
Meanwhile calling everyone I knew, talking to his doctor, talking
to other parents, you know, and getting some really bad advice.
The point is is, you know, his doctor said, uh,
you know, when boys start to walk, then the verbal
thing usually takes a back seat. You just have to
give this some time. He's gonna be okay. Having that
(49:40):
conversation about three times and then taking him into the
doctor and she literally told me there's absolutely no way
he could have autism. Look at him, because here's this
beautiful blond, blue eyed, gorgeous baby who was very social
and would do things like wave to people planes and
(50:00):
say hi and do all these things. When that started
to go away, I could see him start to go inward,
like somehow he was going into himself and becoming, um,
not as out as he had been as a baby baby.
And the pediatrician literally told me that, And that's that's
(50:21):
a whole another conversation, like how we think just because
something's beautiful, it has to be perfect and good. Um, yeah,
really interesting how we do that. That's our you know,
physical appearance is part of our filter. It's one of
the ways in which we sort people. Um. So, anyway,
(50:42):
he ended up being diagnosed at twenty three months old,
and that completely changed everything for me because I knew
that I could no longer tour. I was going to
have to be at home because he needed a lot
of therapy and I was going to have to manage that.
So um, that's what I did. I tried to develop
(51:02):
my career as a songwriter more because I had a
publishing deal at the time, and and but you know,
I figured out very quickly. You know, my songs are
sort of idiosyncratic and I'm not going to become one
of those people who just gets tons of songs cut,
blah blah blah. So I also was faced with the
(51:22):
fact that I was going to be unable to get
all of the care that he needed under one roof
in a school situation in Nashville, Tennessee. So we enrolled
him in a school in New York City and I
lived there for um gosh, that was when he was
(51:45):
so six six more years because I lived in New
York before I came back to Nashville when he was diagnosed,
because I just wanted to get somewhere easier to live.
I realized that I wasn't going to be able to
get everything that he needed in Nashville, so we went
back to New York and lived there for six years.
And that was when I really got serious about writing Blood.
(52:06):
Because I couldn't tour. I went back to school. I
got an m f A and creative writing and during
the process of writing this book, so I got a
master's and really just started. It was partly because I
was trying to figure out the next part of my life,
like what am I going to do with myself? Because
I can't just be a special needs mom, and you're
a sharer of I've got to do something with my life.
(52:28):
I gotta be making art. I've got to be being
creative in some way. So the only know how, the
only way I know how to do that is to
turn my own life into some kind of art. So
that's where blood came from. And it was all and
it was really inspired by him, because part of it
is me looking at all of that information and trying
(52:51):
to figure out how it affected me so that I
know what to look for so that I can be
the best parent that I can. How how's it did
you do you think it's you know, affected me in
a lot of ways. It's made me absolutely distrustful of
the world. That's my biggest issue. I always say that
trust is my biggest issue in life. That's I feel
(53:14):
like that's what I'm here to learn is how to trust,
just trust period, trust in God, trust in myself, trust
in other people. Because, and this is common among children
of alcoholics. We feel like we have to do everything
ourselves and that we can't ask for help. And for
whatever reason, our childhood experiences are not filled with yes,
(53:38):
you can depend on me for my parents. So we
end up little overachievers and feeling like we have to
do everything for ourselves and we have to be perfect,
and we have to be diligent in everything and make
an a and get a gold star and do it
all right, and but never look like we're working hard
and never ask for help. That's one of my main
(54:02):
issues in life is all of that. And that's a lot.
So how has that transferred now into your parenting, especially
with a son who's autistic. Well, I think one of
the best things that it's taught me is I can't
do it by myself. There's absolutely no way that I
can take care of him and earn a living and
(54:24):
be a decent artist, mother, friend, wife, whatever it is.
I can't do all that. I have to have help
with him, and I have to be able to say
I don't understand this. I need a team of people
to help me figure out the puzzle of autism and
(54:45):
just how to deal with life knowing that my son
may never be independent. You know, we don't know. I
don't know. I always maintain that he will surprise us,
and of course he does surprise me every day. But
I think that he has something to say and he
(55:06):
has a purpose beyond anything that I can understand right now.
And that's another thing that's taught me as patients, like
I'm not going to know the answer to this today.
This is a wait and say. Yeah, wait and see
is like my worst thing. So your whole journey now
is to wait and see. Isn't interesting how we're forced
into these situations that we want to resist whole heart. Yes,
(55:30):
remember when I said to you at that dinner party,
you get the child that you need. Yes, you did
say that, because for everyone who follows this podcast, I
followed my journey to motherhood and I've had so much
anxiety and I at that dinner party was no shocker.
I had a little I had to drink some wine
for the first time in a while, so I was
(55:51):
like feeling it because I hadn't been drinking it forever.
Started crying, telling everyone we have all they anxiety about
be your mother, and Alison and was just dropping some wisdom. Well,
I don't know, I um. I always say, yeah, you
don't get the child you want, you get the child
(56:12):
you need, because really the beauty of being a parent
is you get to see just how little you actually
do know, and you you come up against something that
is bigger than you are. And there's absolutely no way
that any of us can do it without a whole
lot of faith and trust that these little pieces of
(56:38):
our soul that break off and grow feet and walk
out away from us are gonna be okay. You know,
it's the hardest thing in the world. Is the hardest
thing in the world. Now, I just met your tiny daughter,
and she's so precious, and she's so little, and she's
gonna grow, and she's gonna walk away from you, and
you're gonna have to have a foundation of trust and
(56:59):
faith that she is going to be okay. And all
you can do is trust that she will so, and
chances are she will be okay. The fact that you
said trust is your hardest thing, how and now we're
talking about how you have to trust, how do you
do that? How do you get there when just into it?
(57:19):
How do you find trust minute to minute that What
do you lean on for it? I pray, I meditate,
I make I try to make that room for myself
that we were talking about earlier, so that I can
get back to my center. Because I do think despite
(57:40):
all the things that I've been through in my life
and that's not to say that my life has been terrible.
My life has been wonderful. I've had some extraordinary experiences.
But despite the things that would that contribute to my
feelings of distrust and dis comfort in the world, an
(58:01):
uneasiness and anxiety and all those things that we deal with. UM,
I do believe that my sinner is that child that
you that you talked about seeing the picture of in
the bathtub. Um, she is happy, and she's joyous, and
she's full, and she's ready to take on the world
and have all those wonderful experiences and just is happy
(58:23):
to just be here, just you know, to show up
and have the experience. So when I say, you know,
I think what I said was two thousand nineteen will
always be the year that I started to reclaim her.
When I look at those pictures of myself as a child,
I see a lot of stuff, you know. I see
(58:43):
someone who is becoming aware that things aren't necessarily great.
But I also see a determination and a sweetness that
I you like, you know, at times of my life
has disappeared because of whatever experience and what I feel like.
(59:12):
One of my goals personally is to be able to
rely on who that person was and still is because
she did trust, and she did have joy, and she
did have hope, and and she did have excitement about
whatever was happening. So I try to look at that
and realize that that is still in me and what
(59:33):
that To find that it requires that I make some
room in my life for myself. So when I talk
about I need a team to help me figure out
what's going on with my my son, well, I do
you know he's been doing forty hours of therapy per
week since he was about two years old. I haven't
(59:53):
done all that, you know. I'm very lucky that early
on I was trained to embed those techniques into our
lives so that we live in a way that's always
about drawing him out communicatively. Um, but I can't do
that all day every day, And I knew very early
on that I didn't want to do that all day
(01:00:13):
every day. I want to be his mama. I want
to be his safe place. I want to be the
person that he comes to when he has a skinned knee.
I don't want to be the person who's always trying
to do therapeutic techniques with him all the time. So
I gotta have either through his school that he's in
New York City or in the summertime when he's here
in Nashville. I have, you know, three or four people
(01:00:35):
who are in and out of our house all day
doing speech therapy, doing a bi a therapy, doing music therapy,
all those things that we have to do because that's
what he needs. In order for me to pull that off,
I gotta make a little bit of room in my
life for myself to reconnect with that child who had hope,
who had hope and just did trust other people to
(01:01:00):
um to help. How has it been trusting other people
and having a team. It's hard because going back to
the part of me that's like, nope, I can do
it myself. I'm just gonna grip my teeth and I'm
gonna set my jaw and I'm gonna make it like
I needed it. I need it to be that you can't. Well.
(01:01:22):
Parenting is just the very best way for me to
learn that I'm not gonna be able to hold my
mouth right and make this like I want it. So
when I say, hey, baby, when you you get the
child you need, he is my greatest teacher, and that
(01:01:43):
it's forcing me to be able to trust others and
also let go and say, you know what, I'm not
gonna be the perfect mother and he may completely embarrass
me in public or uh, and we'll and I'll have
to learn how to laugh and get through that. Or
(01:02:05):
was that hard to do that? Those that initial acceptance
that this isn't going to be my this what I
dreamed it would be, you know, but it's better because
it's what you need, it's what it's something that I
need to learn. It was hard to let go of
the dream. Well, I don't know that I necessarily had
(01:02:26):
a dream of what our perfect experience would be. I
just the minute I found out that I was going
to have John Henry. I loved him and I wanted him. However,
he came exactly um and he has autism, he's non verbal,
he has behavioral problems. And that's what we got. That's
what we're dealing with. So we do the best we
can on a day, day to day basis. And you know,
(01:02:49):
the day to day thing, the minute to minute thing,
is a huge lesson for me because I'm a planner.
I need to, you know, have all the ducks in
a row and make sure I have everything done right perfectly. Well,
guess what, that's just not the way life is. And
sometimes I don't know, we get on an airplane and
(01:03:10):
he screams the old time and there's nothing I can do,
and I've got people shooting me dirty looks, are saying,
you know, saying, well, you know, you shouldn't have him
on a planet what And I have to say, we
have to live life, and you shouldn't be protected from him, amen,
because people get really you know, discombobulated about their bubbles
(01:03:32):
being Yeah, and I just you know, I've had to
learn how it's all an exercise and compassion, have passionately assholes, yes, yes,
and and how effective it is when you don't lash
back but instead say he has autism and I'm very sorry.
(01:03:55):
We're doing the best we can do. That's the best
because that shuts people up, Like turn that conversation around. Um.
Usually people just are embarrassed that they were a ship
and like and they shut up or they leave or
whatever it is. Um. You know, I've had experiences like
just this past fall, I was in New York and
(01:04:16):
John Henry and I were spending the weekend together, and
we went a restaurant together and people don't realize what
they're looking at. They don't because we don't have awareness
about what autism is, and because it can manifest itself
in so many different ways. They just see a nine
year old boy who isn't behaving the way that they
think he should. They don't understand that he doesn't have
(01:04:40):
language that they can understand. They don't understand that he
may make weird noises or he has to have his
iPad at the table, otherwise he'd be eating their French
fries off of their plate because he would have climbed
over the booth or whatever it is. You know, I
had someone complained to me about how much noise he
making during a meal. They were sitting at the booth
(01:05:05):
next to us, and um, I just sort of absorbed it.
We were getting ready to leave. I paid the check
and on the back of the receipt, I just wrote,
I'm so sorry we disturbed you. My son has autism
and it's a miracle that he made it through this
meal without throwing a tantrum. I'm going to be grateful
(01:05:26):
for that and just let you know what we're going through. Well,
And I just I've been practicing, so I just wrote
that right, But this is a way of ripping a
new one in a nice way and in a way
that allows them to not react to me having them,
(01:05:52):
and it allows them to learn and become better. And
that's that's the best thing I can do. But that's
involving you raising yourself higher, which is God so well.
And I haven't always done that, you know, I will.
I have to say, you know, I have gone off
on people who have attacked me for not doing what
they think I should be doing, and they don't understand
(01:06:14):
that maybe I'm in a moment of crisis, or maybe
I'm just at my WIT's in or maybe I've gotten
a chunk of my hair pulled out on the plane
that we're on, where they don't understand why he's screaming,
and I'm like, well, I don't understand why he's screaming
his ears. Maybe you know he wears at this point
in his life, he wears those bows noise canceling headphones
(01:06:37):
because he's so sound sensitive. So you know, my point is, I,
you know, I have to try to take care of
myself so that I'm able to say I'm so sorry.
I hope that we didn't disturb you and that's also
me teaching him as you know, you know, parenting is
(01:06:59):
more about setting an example. Oh gosh, okay, I want
to talk to you forever. I mean I would literally
talk to you forever. We've been talking to hours. So
I have a couple more questions I want to ask you.
And I talked too much. No, no, no no. My
first question is, this is a big question, but how
(01:07:22):
have you come to terms of God through all your journey?
I think that God is a big question. I have
been through times in my life when I have asked
myself do I even believe in God? I remember when
I was a small child, lying in my bed at
(01:07:43):
night praying please God, don't let Daddy hurt Mama. Please, God,
don't let Daddy hurt Mama, and saying it over and
over and over again. Because my sister and I, you know,
we shared a room until she's about eleven years old.
We would lie there and we would hear them fighting.
Is that what that's our night lights about? Yea, she
was your your night light and telling your mom could
come and she still is. Yeah. Um. After they died,
(01:08:09):
I was so angry and so so very angry for
a very long time anger will fuel you to get
a lot of ship done. Um. But I wasn't in
touch with my spiritual self in a way other than
(01:08:30):
making art. And I wasn't even making art in a
spiritual way until I noticed that that was really missing
from my life. And I had also Yeah, and also
going back to that little girl and that picture, she
believed in God. She believed that Jesus loved her, all
(01:08:51):
the things that they tell us. And I'm not a
a person who goes by any religion or any of
that stuff that I was taught as a child, or
any of the Southern Baptist up for the methods stuff.
When you know, we actually made it to church when
I was little. It was to one of those, the
Baptist Church and the Methodist Church. I'm not into that.
I'm into whatever save you, whatever gets you through it.
(01:09:15):
I'm down with all the kingpin deities, whatever they you know,
I don't care. As long as it's about peace and love,
I'm good with it. So I try to think about that.
I read a lot um of spiritual writing. I'm a
big Thomas Martin fan. I'm a big Richard Roar fan.
(01:09:37):
You did do you get his daily newsletter. I love it.
It's so good. I just registered for a course through
the Center for Action and Contemplation, the Wisdom the Wisdom
Way of Knowing. I'm very excited about that. It starts
in March. Awesome. Um, and I'm a nerd, so I'm
always doing this class or that, or you're curious in
(01:09:59):
your searcher. Well, I just want to know as much
as I can about all the avenues, you know, so
that I can come to some sort of peace and
calm in my own self. So where I am with
God these days is I absolutely believe that there's a God,
and I believe that that God is with me and
(01:10:19):
taking care of me and my husband and my child
and everyone that I love. Now, that does not mean
that I think God's gonna go make everything okay for me.
I don't believe in that prosperity gospel stuff. Um. I
think that God is in us. God is the best
(01:10:40):
part of us. Why do terrible things happen? Don't know.
I think terrible things have to happen just like beautiful
things have to happen. We have to have the contrast.
There has to be some kind of balance, and that's
very confusing. I think when something's happened, then you got
(01:11:05):
that just shouldn't have happened. School shootings that shouldn't happen. Um,
children being harmed, abused, killed, threatened, shamed. That shouldn't happen, Um,
but it does. I think bad things happen when human
beings go by their own will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not
(01:11:27):
the God part of who they are. And then I
want to ask you about I'm to Blame because that's
a song on your album and it's a note from
your dad. After our parents died, my sister was going
through an old briefcase that had belonged to Daddy, which
(01:11:49):
I had seen in the closet most of my life.
This briefcase state in a closet to the right of
the fireplace, and it was full of old papers and
tapes and this, that and the other. So she was
going through it after they died, and she found a
lyric to a song called I'm the One to Blame. Well,
(01:12:09):
neither one of us had ever heard this song. It
was just a lyric and it was kind of stunning
and it's quality and in its honesty, so she put
music to it. Wow, and Um, neither one of us
had ever recorded it, So I recorded it on on
(01:12:32):
this new record that's the companion piece to this book.
I thought it was time. I loved the song and
I wanted to give him a voice that was his
actual voice. So what was what is the voice? I
think the lyric of that song is the closest that
(01:12:52):
we get to him being accountable, and it's also very sad.
How does it go? Of course, sorrow took the pride.
I'll take the blame, which is profound that he would
take the blame. Just those two lines are kind of brilliant.
Sorrow took the pride. I'll take the blame, sorrow, So
(01:13:14):
his sadness took the pride, and he will take the
blame sadness for that, and he'll blame He'll take the
blame for letting his sadness when whoa. Yeah, it's really
simple and deep. That is really deep and shows a
side of him that I always knew was there, and
(01:13:37):
as an adult can see how it was there. You
know what, I'd give for one conversation with the man,
because I think that he did have that ability to
be deep and profound and wanted to be He was
just also a terrible alcoholic and when you are one
(01:13:57):
that rules your life. Oh wow, what an amazing person
you are. You are You are a messenger on this earth,
that is for sure. God is using you in a
really big way through the journey that you're that you've walked.
So I want to wrap up with I always wrap
(01:14:20):
up with this question, leave your light, after your life,
your journey, your experiences. What do you want people to
know that I tried really hard? Gosh, Allison, there's a
(01:14:49):
lot in that statement, but that's true. Have you given
that runs the gamut? You know that I tried hard
to be a good mama, take care of my away,
and be a good friend, and be a good partner,
and be a good artist. Have you given yourself grace?
I try. I try. Not easy, not easy to do,
(01:15:14):
but that's one of the things I'm working on. Well.
I just want you to know, from an outsiders perspective,
you have made such a beautiful ripple effect of your
life and everything that you have shared, From your art,
from your story in a book, from the human that
you are, from your wisdom at a dinner table that
I picked up within five seconds of just being around you,
(01:15:37):
from the are that you put out from the way
you're raising your son and being open and walking that
journey and sharing it. You're not just trying, You're You're
really impacting. And I am so blessed and grateful that
I got to cross paths with you, and I pray
that you stay in my life because you are someone
that is so inspiring because sorry, Sugar is really agreeing
(01:15:59):
with yours on that's so inspiring because you're not turning
away from the cards that you're being dealt. You're leaning
into them so deeply and letting them become a beautiful thing,
even though they're so painful. And I think that is
so hard to do, and so many people will not
do that, and you do that. I hope that this
(01:16:22):
part of this experience, this journey, this life, if you will,
I hope that in my revealing myself so much, that
I do it with the most self respect that I can.
UM that there is a level of um sharing but
(01:16:44):
not oversharing, and UM, you know, sometimes I don't know
where that line is. I want to be aware of it,
but that's a factor. UM. I just I hope that
I can do it with with grace because for whatever reason,
I know that I'm supposed to share my stories. I
(01:17:05):
hope that I do it in a way that people
can relate to and that you know, doesn't embarrass my
family or the people around me or me. So you know,
it's a constant, it's a constant tight rope walk, but
minutes minute. Thank you so much for coming on here, Alison,
(01:17:25):
thank you for having me. Incredible, like, you're so incredible,
and I just love back to you. Blessed that you
would share that your story with me and your time
with me, because I know it's so valuable and I'm
so appreciative. Absolutely back to you. Okay, you're the best. Bye.
Carol. She's a queen and she's getting not afraid of
just let flow, No one cry, caral this sounds care Hey, friends,
I am really excited about this podcast. I have Alison
(00:31):
Moore joining me. She is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful on
the inside and outside. She I grew up listening to
this one particular song that she's saying, A Soft Place
to Fall. My dad was obsessed with it when I
was growing up. We listened to it probably every day
of my childhood. Once I was old enough to know
(00:52):
what music was like my team years, I listened to
it all the time. So to have her on my
podcast was amazing. And then to hear her story, Oh man.
The song that I was listening to was a Soft
Place to Fall, which was nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Song she sang at the Oscars. She later
(01:14):
went on to be nominated for a Grammy with her
former husband, who she has a ten year old son
with John Henry, And we talked about that who has autism,
and she talks about parenting and sorry, that's my doorbell.
I would redo this intro, but this is called get real,
and there you go. That's my doorbell Um. She talks
(01:35):
about parenting and what he has taught her um as
a mother, and then but we talk a lot about
her childhood and what has shaped her into who she is,
which was the her upbringing from her parents and then
the murder suicide of her mom and dad. Her father
(01:56):
had a drinking problem and one night at her her
mom had left, he killed her, her mom and then
killed himself, and we talked about how that has shaped
Allison's life and her sister, Shelby Lynn, who is a
Grammy winner for her music. They're both so incredibly talented.
(02:16):
And I walked away from this interview just feeling so
unbelievably inspired by Allison's gift of sharing and her ability
to rise up. Because so many of us have struggles
that we deal with. There's a variety of levels and
of pain that we all go through, but a lot
(02:38):
of us don't want to confront our pain and don't
want to talk about it, and definitely don't just don't
want to accept it. And Allison has done all of
the above, and she is using her pain and her
story to make beautiful art and to share with the
world to help heal the world. And I think she
(03:00):
is one of the most special people I've ever gotten
to talk to. And I know that her interview is
going to inspire you to no end. And she ended
this interview, I always ask everyone to leave your light.
And she asked her what she wants people to know,
and she said that she tried, because she's tried her
(03:22):
whole life to be such an amazing person, to be
so good and to do great things because of a
variety of reasons. And I just want her to know.
And I know that you all will feel this when
you hear the here this interview. Not only has she tried,
but she has succeeded, and she has impacted this world
(03:44):
in the most amazing way. And I am so blessed
to have her on this podcast and I cannot wait
for you all to hear this episode. So here is
Alison Moore. I am always excited about my interviews, but
I am excited about this interview with you, and you're
so sweet. I'm excited too. Alison Moore is in my house,
(04:09):
which is also a thrill because I told you this.
We met at a dinner party the other day. We
have a mutual friend, Melissa rosen Heck. She has a
very beautiful long name. She's an awesome photographer. She does
interior photography, and she's just an incredible woman who's so
light inspired. So she had a dinner party for her
(04:30):
birthday and I didn knew I wasn't gonna know really
anyone there, but I was like, Elyssa is one of
those people that she's so awesome that when she invites
you to a dinner party of women, you want to
go because you know everyone's going to be awesome there.
And it totally was. And Allison was there. And one
of the things that Elissa did at this dinner party
(04:52):
that was so amazing she made everyone pick out a quote.
She had curated this beautiful party. She had all this
like this, this table of quotes like at each place,
mat right, and you had to walk around actually missed
that part. Such a great idea. It's such a great
exactly how that part was people in a great conversation starter. Well,
you know, I knew I wasn't going to know anyone
(05:13):
there either, Well I suspected I wouldn't, um, and I didn't,
but um, you know, she had quotes on cards at
every place setting and so I got there and we had,
you know, a drink and we sort of just talking
and then we went to move over to the to
(05:33):
the dining table, and she had a quote on a
card at each place setting and asked us to go
around and look for which one resonated the most with
us and sit at that place. So, UM, I thought
that was a really good idea. Which good Do you
remember your quote? UM, if you notice an absence of
this is not it verbatim. I can't remember it exactly,
(05:56):
but I did save the card and I second inside
a book. UM, if you something like if you notice
an absence of fire in the world, make it your
business to go about setting them. Yeah, tell me why
you picked that quote. I picked that because, UM, I
feel like I have always had that intention when it
(06:18):
comes to making art and the conversations that I want
to start and have around the art I make. UM,
I don't it kind of reminds me of that quote.
Don't do what you think you need to do do
in life what sets you on fire, because that's what
the world needs, basically, whatever it is you're passionate about. UM.
(06:43):
I released a book in October which two thousand nineteen,
with an album to go with it. Yes, So the
book is a memoir of my childhood and which was difficult,
and it's you know, it's seventh parts parts one and
two or about my childhood. In part three is present day,
(07:03):
which is sort of me reflecting on all of part
one and two and figuring out what that all means. Um. So,
I didn't know. I knew that I was putting myself
and my family's story out in the world in a
way that I had not previously done. But what I
was not prepared for, what I didn't think about, was
(07:26):
that when I did that, people would actually read it,
and then they would want to respond to me in
some way. They would want to tell me their stories
or they would be inspired to tell their own stories.
Because at the end of the day, no one has
a perfect childhood, no one has a perfect family. It's
all kind of a mess when it gets right down
to it, and it's a wonder any of us lived
(07:48):
through it. But in a lot of cases, um, people
are harboring trauma and if cult and holding things in
that they feel like they cannot say. Why do you
think that is? I think because family issues bring a
(08:10):
lot of shame to us. Dysfunction brings a lot of
shame to us, and shame itself as a is a
major dysfunction and something that keeps us from living fully.
You said something I had to write down quotes because
you said, um, what was it? It's hard to feel
(08:33):
there's your story. We're gonna have to talk about blood
and what inspired prompted you to start writing it because
I know it was a long time in the making
for you. But you said, it's hard to feel worth
when you when you don't feel that from your parents
or on some level. Well, I think it's it's like this.
(08:53):
Evolutionarily speaking, the Duchess make up a word. Evolutionary lanes
should be one of We are programmed to please and
trust our parents, mainly trust our parents. We have to
when we're babies. Got no choice, you, Yeah, you have
no choice but to trust the people who bring you
(09:15):
into the world. When that trust is broken or breached
in whatever way, I feel like it sets our access
at a tilt. Was your trust broken from the beginning? Absolutely? When?
And this is the rub Your parents are human beings,
so of course there's going to be damage in that area.
(09:38):
No one has ever parented perfectly, and no one's ever
going to. So this is um a push and a
pull and a dance that we have to dance with
each other, and we have to, through grace and forgiveness,
figure out how to function as human beings despite how
difficult it is to have an actual healthy relationship between
(10:01):
any two people. And when they're you know, you're bringing
a lot of family baggage from one side or the
other into a situation. My point is, putting your stuff
off on your child is going to happen. But having
the maximum self awareness about that, I think should go
hand in hand with the knowledge that, Okay, I know
(10:24):
I'm going to screw my child up in my very
own special way. Um, let me make sure that I'm
not dragging generations of other baggage into this. But most
people don't have any kind of self awareness about that, right,
And I think that that's the overarching message that I
wanted to get to, and not in a preachy way
at all. But just you know, I'm a big believer
(10:45):
in Show don't Tell, so through my own examination of
my own childhood, in my own life, and my own parenting,
you know, first of all, never would have written this
book had I not become a parent, I would have
had no reason to. And one of the things you
said it was you were able to forgive your dad
and have love for your dad because you have a
son and you know that your dad was once a
(11:09):
son and a child. I think we would be much
better off as people if we were able to see
each other that way. But he was once a clean
slate and absolutely and something happened to him, something happened
to him that caused him to go off the rails.
So just as I want to have compassion, amazing, you've
got gotten to forgiveness. Well, I want to have compassion
(11:30):
for myself and I can't have that unless I have
it for other people. And I can't have it for
other people unless I have it for myself. So that's
a circle and something that we always have to be
working on. How do we do that when we're trying
to pay the mortgage and take care of our children
and keep all the balls in the air and the
plates spinning and all the things we do and deal
(11:53):
with trauma that's just lingering in the background. We have
to somehow make room for that in our lives so
that we can have the awareness so we're not constantly
screwing up. At least that's how I feel. I have
to make some room in my own life for my
own self to have a minute, just a minute where
I tell myself that it's okay, that I'm gonna be okay,
(12:15):
and I'm not going to be the biggest screw up
that ever produced a child. Of course, so because that's
my of course, that's my feelings, like I'm gonna do
this wrong, and who knows. That's part nature, that's part nurture,
that's you know, a lot of things. But one of
my favorite sayings is, Okay, let's stop and go back. Now,
(12:35):
how did we get here? How did this happen? Let's examine.
That's sometimes easier said than done. We don't always have
time to stop and go back and examine every action,
word and gesture. But I do think that we have
to be able to do that at least some of
the time. Just slow down, talk about it, look at it,
(12:57):
say it. The fact that you have got to this
place of self awareness, to me is like when you
came upstairs, I had to hug you, and I had
to I was like crying a little bit because I
have been engulfed in your story lately, Like I've always
been a fan of you and your music, but I
haven't necessarily always known your full story until you have
(13:19):
just put this book out Blood with the album, and
it is you survived one of the most perfect traumas
you can as a child, and it was your dad
in a drunken state, in an angry state, killing your
mom and then himself, and you just decided to write
about this, and I want to know how you decided
(13:43):
it was time to share the story. And you also
said something like you're trying to get back to this
the girl, the little girl, Like there's a picture you
posted of like this little smiling girl. I think you're
in a bathtub. And on your album for Blood it's
I'm assuming you as a little girl. And is that
where you it was at like a joyful state, like
an innocent state, And how how are you getting How
(14:07):
was this book helping you to get back to her?
And how did you decide that it was time to
do this? Well, this will sound crazy, but I did not.
I never thought I would write a book. I didn't
think it was something I could do, much less would
want to do. Um. But about six weeks after my
son was born. I was invited to be a guest
(14:29):
on Maya Angelo's radio show, so you just idea, not
in person. She was in her studio in North Carolina
and I was in New York. But we spoke, you know,
back and forth. It was that conversation. It was incredible.
I just you know, I had no idea she was
even aware of me, and she starts singing my songs
to me, and it's like, you know, blew my mind
(14:52):
on many levels. And what a treasure this woman was
and still is for us, just as human beings to
I don't know, I don't even know. Um. But during
the course of the conversation, she was asking me about
my childhood. Um, we were discussing our upbringing. She didn't
(15:14):
have a great one either, so we were talking about that,
and she's I said something about my parents, you know,
and their importance in my life, and how their lives
were just as are more important than their deaths were
to me because they made a huge impact on my life.
(15:34):
That made a huge impact on my life. But I
try not to let that be the defining factor when
I think about my parents, which is hard some days. Um.
But she said, okay, so that's that, and uh so
now we have John Henry, what are you going to
tell him when he's old enough to ask what happened?
(16:00):
And I did not have an answer for her. So
for whatever reason, I began to turn that over in
my mind and I started to write about them. It
took me a while to find the real narrative of
this book interesting, And yeah, I didn't several narratives. Well,
(16:23):
I didn't know exactly what I was trying to say
it first, did you know exactly how you felt? Because
there's probably so many feelings from you love your parents.
You love your dad on some level because he's your dad,
and of course there's good in him, and but then
you probably hate hate him, and then you probably feel
(16:43):
I mean, what are the feelings that you feel? And
I think they run the gamut every possible emotion a
person could have. I've probably had about the situation. Um,
I just began to write and then I feel it out.
The story that I needed to tell was the only
(17:05):
one I could tell about them, which is what what
it felt like to be a child living with them?
What did it feel like? It felt like many things,
you know, it was often unstable, I was I often
felt unsafe. I sometimes I did you know, my father
was abusive? He was verbally abusive, who was physically abusive?
(17:27):
You know, I have so many memories of being terrified
as a child. I also have the other side of him,
which you know, was he was bright, he was talented,
he was funny, he was charismatic. You know, all of
these things that I guess during the course of writing
(17:50):
this book, I'm trying to figure out and if you
read it, you'll like know that I wrestle with all
of this information, and I try to figure out how
does a person who has so much And I was
often around people as a child who basically who thought
he was the best thing ever, who had known him
(18:10):
his whole life and talked about how great he was
and how kind he was. And that is not the
person I lived with. So I wrestled with that a lot,
like who is this person who's so violent and drunk
and abusive? Um, this is not the person that I
hear people talk about because he was also you know,
he was a teacher. He taught English. That's how he
(18:32):
met my mother was he was He was an English
teacher at my aunt's high school. And she actually introduced them.
He people, you know, men showed up at his funeral
who he had taught in high school, and they spoke
about how what an impact he made on their lives.
And I don't doubt that any of that is true.
Yet we have this other side that was not so
(18:54):
you knew it, like you, your sister and your mom
knew this other side. No, I think other people knew it.
Like think other people saw it. You know, you can't
completely hide. And I think that there was an awareness
of his drinking a close circle. Oh yeah, it's a
horrible alcoholic, and I think that that was responsible for
a lot of his issues and quite possibly some mental
(19:16):
illness that I, you know, don't know anything about. There
was just something off there, definitely. So the book is
about what that felt like to me as a child,
and also losing my parents at the age of fourteen
in the way that I did, and how unsettling that is,
(19:36):
and how you know, I've tried to just put the
pieces back together and do the best I could. Did
you try to block it? For a long time? I
never had that conscious thought, you know, there's um. I
was talking to someone yesterday about how powerful our brains
are and how hard they work to protect us from trauma.
You know. Um, the morning that my parents died, I
(20:01):
was fourteen. I was there. Your mom had just left
your dad about two months before that. Um, you know,
the police were there, The police came, I was questioned
about what had happened, and I, you know, did the
best I could there. But I remember doing so with
this very steely awareness, like I was a really cool
(20:21):
customer fourteen year old, which I would not have been
had I not become sort of hardened to a lot
of things in the world because of the way I
grew up. And the way that a person adapts is
to not feel to say you're always okay, to be
highly functional. Um, I remember standing at my closet thinking, Okay,
(20:47):
I need four dresses because I'm gonna have to go
to two weeks and two funerals. So it was just
very matter of fact, very pragmatic about it. Even though
you had a really great relationship with your mom, it
seemed as great as it could be. Was a person
who was oh absolutely, and she was funny, and she
was talented, and she was a you know, smartass and
(21:08):
many many things. She was a very um, vivacious person,
and she had a feisty side and she was just cool.
You know. I feel very lucky to have had her
as a mother because she was absolutely one of the
most capable people, um that I've ever seen as well,
(21:28):
and that gave me a really good foundation for always
figuring out a way to get the job done, whatever
the job is. Why do you think she stayed so long?
I think she stayed because, first of all, she loved
my father, and that's a difficult thing when your face.
I think, UM, as an adult, I'm I can now
(21:51):
have perspective on what it is to love someone who's
an addict, and how um you want to help, how
codependency comes into play. How if you have no knowledge
of what you're dealing with, you're absolutely floundering because you
can't make heads or tails out of any of it.
When everything can change from one moment to the next,
(22:12):
or if someone you love says, oh, I'm gonna change.
I promise it'll get better and I'll never do it again,
and then it's better for three days, and then it
goes back to how it was, and then you just
start this cycle over and over. Why she could not
break away from him completely? I don't really know, but
I also know, and this is one of the difficult
things about the situation too. When she did actually leave him,
(22:36):
he made good on his threat to kill her if
she ever did. He always did, and not only that,
he would say, if you leave me, I'm gonna kill you,
I'm gonna kill the girls, I'm gonna kill your parents,
gonna kill every damn body. So she was so she
was living with that knowledge. And you know, it's easy
for people to say, well, if I were in that situation,
(22:59):
I would just leap eve. I don't think that her
situation was that simple, actually, And then he actually did
what he said he was going to do. Now many
people don't do that, but I, you know, I have
to say, it's kind of surprising how often this happens.
And I've become even more aware of it since the
book came out, because people have come to me and said,
(23:20):
the same thing happened to me, same thing happened to me,
or this didn't happen to me, or are but this did.
How does that mane able to hear these similar stories? Well,
it's a lot to absorb. You know. I did a
book tour where um I called it a hybrid tour,
so I went into clubs that I would normally play
as a singer songwriter, but I did this sort of
(23:43):
dual thing for the book and the record. I spent
the first half of the show in conversation with another
person talking about the book and interspersing the songs from
the new record into the conversation. So it was just,
you know, sort of beautiful flow of talking about it
and then singing this songs that go with it and
all this you know, um information about this very specific thing.
(24:08):
But I did a meet and greet afterwards, and the
meet and greet would take just as long as the show.
It's like a whole other shows, and I wanted to
to grant that. You know, I've never been a person
who was really super excited about breaking that fourth wall
and having an intimate relationship with people who were interested
in the art that I make. Was it because you
(24:29):
didn't want to have these painful conversations in part? But
this was your moment where you're like, Okay, I'm doing
it well. I feel like it was just part of
the deal because it's like sharing this, So here we go,
I'm sharing this. You're listening to me I'm going to
return that and give and give you your moment to
share with me, because that's just the conversation we're having.
(24:52):
That's a big moment in your life and career to say, like,
I'm ready for this interaction and exchange and conversation. Well,
the only way I can make sense out of any
of the things that happen in my life is to
understand that it's possible that I am going through these
(25:14):
experiences because it is my job as an artist two
live them, process them, turn them into something, and then
turn that loose on the world. Because the job of
an artist is to be a mirror in so so
many ways. So we take our own experiences and we
reflect them back and and tell and and give them
(25:37):
to the world in a way that they can process
and themselves their own things. Because um, I think that's
why art is non negotiable in our lives. It's human beings.
We have to have it because it gives us a
better way to understand ourselves. Even for people who don't
(25:58):
make art, absorbing art is a way for for them
to come closer to their own experience when they find
something that they latch onto that is similar. It's a
way for us to be an actual community. Do you
feel like you were chosen to be an artist or
like like it was just your destiny? Or do you
feel like you're because you obviously have this incredible singing
(26:21):
voice and you're a great guitar player. Do you feel
careful I wouldn't say that you do you feel like
art chose you or your story because of the life
that you lead you had to go to art to
get it out, or because being an artist, and especially
an artist like yourself who is so willing to share that.
(26:45):
I don't know if people realize what a beautiful job
that is, but what a huge, heavy job that is too,
because you are literally sharing your whole, most intimate, deepest
darkest secrets with the whole world. And that's a big deal.
While trying not to share the deepest darkies what I mean,
(27:08):
But I just did well. I also and am and
i'll I do want to say this before I answer
your questions specifically, I am. I have made it my
business to be the same person on the outside that
I am on the inside. I don't want to be
(27:30):
living one life internally and living another externally. That just
doesn't that conflict doesn't feel good. I don't like that.
I don't like it when I see other people do it,
and I don't want to be a person who operates
that way in the world. I just it's too much
work in life is too short that um I know
(27:50):
that I have issues when I'm hiding something, either out
of shame or fear or whatever whatever the case may be.
I feel it physically if I want to say something
and don't so, And that doesn't mean that I can
go around just reacting to the world and saying whatever
it is I want to say. I want to be
very careful about what I say. But I think that
(28:14):
when we're talking about making room for yourself, giving yourself
time to investigate all those impulses before you put something
out in the world, I think is important. But um so,
I just want to be able to live in a
transparent way with everyone. And So, to answer your question
(28:36):
about was I chosen, No, I don't think that I
am special in that way. I don't at all. I
think that I am was raised in a musical family.
We always played music. My mother was from a musical family.
My father wasn't. But I think that was one of
(28:56):
the things that drew them together too, was he loved
music so much and wanted to play music. My mother
was just naturally talented, and I think that was definitely
a bond between them. Um So I had that background,
and my sister and I both sang from the time
we could talk. Um. So it's just something very natural
(29:17):
that I did. And because we sang as a family,
and because we did things like I don't know, come
to Nashville when I was thirteen and make a record
as a family, I thought that that was normal. So
family record, Yes, that's kind of a it's crazy because
I just thought it was normal. It's like, is that
a treasure to you? Or is it hard to listen to?
(29:37):
I don't even have a copy of this record. I
think my sister does, but I mainly just remember the
experience and thinking like, oh, yeah, that's just another dynamic
when y'all made the record, like what well it was
it was a custom record, so it was like, you know,
my my father found someone up here that would do
you know, produced I don't know, a thousand like singles.
(29:58):
This was a nineteen eighty five so, um, you know,
and this is still done all the time. Um in Nashville.
But you know, you hire a producer who says, you know, okay,
we'll produce this many records for you and provide the
band in the studio and all this stuff for this
(30:18):
much money. So that was basically what we did in night.
We came away with a single, a little forty five
record that had two so so we cut two songs,
and there was one song that my my daddy wrote
called Traveling Fever, which was just kind of okay, and
then we cut, um, we cut an old standard called
I Couldn't Stay Away from You. So my sister sang
(30:41):
the lead part, I sang hi harmony, and my mother
saying the low part, which was how we often sang.
It was the three of us were always singing together.
And he didn't do anything. He didn't know. He was
just there like skulking around. So he was a singer.
It was his whole thing. But why didn't he sing
because he, I guess knew that it was better the
(31:02):
other way. So, um, I think because I had that background,
and this is due to to you know, I give
my father full credit for this. He somehow through doing
those things, like because he always was playing in bands
like at whatever joint or the VFW are just you know,
(31:22):
just being sort of the local musician guy who had
a day job and and doing all those things. I
didn't think it was odd to pursue art as a
path when you know everybody there were there were no
other people who were living like this in South Alabama
really and certainly no one who you know whose livelihood
dependent dependent on what they made, you know, as artists.
(31:46):
But I do think because that was displayed to me
from an early age, I had an awareness of, oh,
this is an actual job. People do write songs and
sing them, and they, you know, can make a living
from from art. Um. I don't at all think I
was chosen. I just think that I was shown the way.
And I have hesitated to say that there are gifts
(32:14):
that come with losing my parents but one, but there
are some. UM. One of them was they when they
died that released me from their drama. I've thought many
times if that had not happened, what would my life
(32:36):
had turned into. What do you think it would have turned?
I think it would have turned into a life where
I was always struggling with whatever they were struggling with. UM.
Because in the middle, because they died, I was released
from that, which is not what I would have chosen.
But since that happened, I have to look at that
(32:56):
as an advantage. The other part of it is I
don't have to watch them get old. Yeah, they're sort
of stuck in amber in my memory. You know, my
mama was forty one and my daddy was forty four
when they died, So I've outlived them both. I'm forty seven,
which is an interesting place to get in life. How
interesting is how does that feel to outlived your parents?
(33:18):
I in a way, and it's it's interesting. And I
didn't realize that I had done this when I did it.
But I closed the book, so to speak, on this
book on my forty five birthday, which was the moment
that I officially had outlived both my parents. It was
that's the day I finished it. I thought I'm done here,
(33:39):
and I think it yes, and I and looking back,
I think that I felt like I don't have to
tell this story anymore, and my life has now become
my own. That was that a relief. It was a relief.
I think that that's common among people who lose a
parent at an early age. Though you're sort of watching
the clock going Am I gonna die at that same
age too? It just we have that in us, whether
(34:02):
we are aware of it or not. Um. There's a
great book called Motherless Daughters written by an author named
Hope Edelman, and I read that book gosh, probably twenty
years ago, um, and it made a big impact on
me because I realized that I was not alone in
some of these thoughts and feelings that I was having, Like,
(34:23):
am I going to die when I'm forty one? Two?
Am I gonna? Should I have children? I'm afraid that
something will happen to me and my child will be
left alone because these are the things that happen to me.
And that's just natural to go down that train of thought. Um.
But anyway, I'm trying to need it. I don't feel
like I was chosen at all. I feel like that
(34:44):
I have some extraordinary gifts. I can sing. I'm very
lucky to have that gift and have not always you know,
made it my first thing, and I don't feel like
I always have to. Music is a gift. I am
very fortunate that I've been able to make that my
life's work. By the way, I discovered you because growing up.
(35:11):
You are our family's favorite artists. Like my dad found
you first and watched the movie The Horse Whispered, and
you sang you actually have a cameo in that movie,
and you're singing the song A Soft Place to Fall.
If I didn't hear that song every day from my
entire childhood, I am not kidding you. And so one
(35:32):
time when I first took to Nashville, I swear I
actually it was really weird. I saw you in a
post office like in the Ups, and I was so
star struck because I was like probably ten years ago.
I was like, that's all listen. I can't believe it,
because you were the soundtrack of my growing up, Like
we listened to that song and that the Horse was
for in particular that album, but like your song A
(35:53):
Soft Place to Fault was like the theme song of
our family. And your voice is just so rich and
it's so honest. You can feel your honesty and everything
you're seeing. And you were nominated for an OSCAR Like
I heard Academy Award with that song the Song of
the Year. Then you were later nominated with your former
(36:14):
husband Steve or you are nominated for a Grammy. Your sister,
Shelby Lynn want a Grammy, right, So it's like wow,
like wow, the talent in your family, the talent in you,
It's just it's amazing to me. It's also amazing to
me that you navigated to get to this place when
you were really orphaned at age fourteen, your sister was seventeen,
(36:37):
That you were able to figure out how to make
your music and your gifts into this worldwide phenomenon that
we all get to experience. Like, how do you do
that when you don't know where you're going and you
have no home base anymore? A good question, And I
(36:59):
cannot take credit for any of it. I can't, you know,
how can get to the place where you're singing at
the Oscars, like you're singing on the stage at the Oscars. Well,
first of all, you mentioned my sister, So that's a
good opportunity for me to say. Had I not had
my older sister, I don't know what would have happened
(37:19):
to me, you know, because it's just the two of us,
just the two of us growing up together, living through
all that stuff. We are deeply bonded and a lot
of a lot of ways, you know, just as sisters yes.
Also we're bonded musically. We have that bond which is
very strong, and we have a trauma bond that trauma
bonds are unbreakable. So she came to Nashville first. She
(37:48):
in a lot of ways set the example for saying
this is where I'm going. No one who's who knows
her is going to tell you that she's ever done
anything but sing, and ever wanted to do anything but sing,
and everyone always knew that she would sing, and and um,
you know, I sang back up for her for a
long time. So I learned a lot about the music
business through that and you know, also some things not
(38:13):
to do. Um. But I'm very thankful to her for
being my older sister and in a lot of ways
my guardian angel. And she she blazed a lot of trails.
There's just through her determination and um, her willingness to
put herself out there in so many ways. So I
(38:34):
did not do that alone, and I did have her
example to go by, and I'm very thankful for that.
But just kind of national and start playing. She did well.
You know you've heard her sing, So it's kind of
undeniable that it's just like the gift is so strong family. Well,
she just and who knows why that is? Who knows,
because you'll both have messages. I think that it's, you know,
(38:58):
it's a culmination of things. It's it's not just talent,
it's not just ability. It's you know, having the heart
to do it as part of it as well, and
and the determination and the ability to um stand up
for yourself and say, well, actually, this is the kind
of art I'm gonna make. Because we both could have
gotten lost in the shuffle very early on, and no
(39:19):
one would have. She's made fifteen records, I've made ten.
That's just sort of extraordinary in itself that we didn't
fall by the wayside when we not neither one of
us have been very commercially successful. So anyway, I'm very
thankful to her for that. And I just I don't
know the answer other than to say, I just did
(39:40):
it because it was what I felt like I needed
to do, and I figured it out as it went
along and made a lot of mistakes and got really
lucky at the same time. What has that journey felt
like to you, your musical journey after you and Shelby
were on your own and living in Nashville, what did
that feel like? Now you're this wide open news space,
(40:01):
like it's just the two of y'all, now your full
force pursuing music as a life. Yeah, and you're on
your own. Well, you know, as I said, she came
here before I did. I decided to go to college,
and um, did you put yourself through college? So how
did you decide to go to college? So when my
(40:24):
parents died, I um moved in with my aunt and uncle.
Mama had a will that said if anything happened to
her and daddy that her sister would take my sister
and me. So my sister was seventeen, almost eighteen, and
she was out of high school, so she didn't have
to do anything. She was kind of on her own.
(40:44):
But I moved in with my aunt and uncle, um
for my my tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade years of school.
And um my mama also had a life insurance policy
that gave both my sister and me ten thousand dollars,
So I saved money and I paid for two and
a half years of college at a state school in
(41:05):
Alabama with that money, and then I got then I
got student loans to pay for the rest, and I
worked two jobs, and I did. I just knew that
I needed. I'm a person who, you know, looking back
as on myself as a child, I was very concerned
about how am I going to be able to take
care of myself? Um. I was very responsible, always got
(41:28):
my school work done, tried to be a model student. Basically,
I was just trying to hold things together by doing
everything perfectly. And I think that I carry that into
my life now because I'm still very Okay, I gotta
get my work done. I can't be late. I need
to do, you know, all the things to make it
appear as if I have it all together. And I
was doing that when I was four years old. She
(41:50):
be the opposite. She's not as much that way as
I am, but she's still very We're both very concerned
with things have to be in order. We have to
be organized. We can't be late. It's all a reaction
against the chaos of our reaction to the chaos of
our childhood. Um, because as good as a mama as
I had, she was still always late. She never had
(42:11):
it together, you know that kind of thing, and god
knows how could she have. So we we're both, um,
very concerned with all the details being right. Um. So
I went to college, I got a degree. Then I
came to Nashville, same back up for her. Somehow started
(42:32):
writing songs. I got my first publishing deal when I
was twenty four. My first record came out when I
was um no um. And that's just so much of it. Yeah.
I worked hard, I did, and I made it my
business to be the best I could what I was doing.
But I also got really lucky. And you know, I
(42:54):
never had to kill myself in clubs or anything like that.
Basically I got discovered and Tony Brown signed me to
in c A and legendary producers of all times. Yeah,
and I'm very lucky. How did you get discovered? I
sang at a benefit concert for a friend of mine
who died in the Value jet plane crash. He was
(43:14):
a songwriter and I sang one of these his songs.
They had a benefit at the Rhyman or basically a
celebration of his life and songs at the Rhyman. And
I was completely unknown, though he had been a friend
of mine and we used to sing together. Just when
I was coming up. I was just green year old baby,
and um, I sang one of his songs and an
(43:35):
agent at Monterey Peninsula, which used to be a booking
agent in town, a booking agency basically plucked me out
and said, you're coming with me, and I'm going to
introduce you to all these people in town. And then
it just went from there. How crazy? How did that
rocket ship than feel? Especially from coming from this insane
(43:57):
upbringing and now you're on a new rocket It like
you're going into a new world of chaos, but it's
all like exciting, it seems. How was that transition because
it went fast for you and the right right away,
didn't it? It did? Yeah, it did. Looking it didn't
feel fast at the time, but looking back on it,
it was like, you know, that was pretty fast. And
(44:19):
I was so very young, but I also was very
mature because of of what I had been through in
my life and because I had had some exposure to
the music business through my sister. It wasn't like I
was trying to figure out what was going on. I
knew exactly what was going on. I knew what the
process was, and I just went about the process. Was
(44:39):
it fun? I liked it? Um, Yeah, I loved it.
I loved writing songs. I loved being in the studio.
I'd loved trying to find myself in that way. Now,
as you know, the music business is very difficult and
if you don't prove yourself right away in some way,
you can get left behind. But I think because I
(45:00):
was signed by Tony Brown as a singer songwriter, and
he sort of protected me at the label and you know,
basically told everybody hands off. You know, she's she's an artist,
and that I'm going to let her do what she
wants to do. Force you into being something that you
weren't right. It was a huge blessing. Now, the other
(45:20):
side of that is I didn't get the promotion dollars
that you know, the people that they thought they could
have hits on did. But I will also say I
just made my tenth record twenty one years down the line,
and a lot of the people that did get that
promotion money, what happened to them. That's something I love
about Tony Brown is he has always loved the artist
(45:41):
and the art. He is so passionate about the artistry,
which is amazing to have something like that as the
head of a label. I know, sir, he doesn't get
enough credit for that either. He's so true to that. Yeah. Wow,
So then you got married and now you have a
(46:02):
son who's ten. Yes, fast forward to talk to me
about that one. Um, when I had John Henry in
two thousand ten, Um, I didn't know what I was
gonna do. I thought I would continue to make music.
I was, you know, married to his dad as a
singer songwriter. We were trying to tour together as much
(46:23):
as we could at that time so that we could
keep everybody together at a new a new baby. And
so I ended up being actually part of his band
for a while. And then Um, after I did that,
I realized when when John Henry was about sixteen months old,
(46:45):
that something had happened. But something was going on with him,
because this was a child who started using words by
a year old. In some ways, he was um on
the front end developmentally. I looking back, I realized that
he was behind developmentally in some ways too. And that's
(47:08):
a puzzle that I haven't quite figured out yet, like
and who knows that I ever will. All I know
is he started calling the dogs when he was about
a year old, like saying the dog's name. We had
Bow and we had Pete, and both have passed now,
but he, you know, just started picking up boards really quickly.
Then we were um. After his first birthday, I went
(47:31):
on the road with Steve, which meant John Henry went
on the road too, So we're all basically living in
a tour bus. John Henry took his first steps in
a tour bus sitting outside the House of Blues in Houston, Texas.
I know, poor baby le and I missed it because
I was on stage and his first cousin was our
nanny at the time, and she witnessed it, but I
(47:53):
actually actually missed it. But anyway, the point is we
were on the road and shortly after he's started to walk,
his word usage started to dwindle, and I thought, well,
I wonder what's going on here, And as with many
things with children, you just have to wait and see.
(48:15):
Even though I kind of had a sense of there's
something not right here, I began to call his pediatrician
and say, you know, I think he's using his words
less and I sort of had this sense like something's wrong.
I was something's wrong, and I started to just sort
of feel the word autism, like not even really knowing
(48:35):
what autism was, having no knowledge of it really at all.
It wasn't really as talked about back then either. That's
even back then, but I feel like it should just
becoming a bigger conversation. It wasn't in my dialogue, you know,
certainly not, but it's it's almost like I could feel
the word in the back of my brain, if that
(48:56):
makes any sense. So I was really concerned about what
was going on. I kept calling his and I'm on
the road right in a different city every day. I'm
not at home. I can't take him into the pediatrician.
I was in this mode of, Okay, I think something's
going on here, but there's absolutely nothing I can do
about it, and I have to wait and see on this.
(49:18):
Meanwhile calling everyone I knew, talking to his doctor, talking
to other parents, you know, and getting some really bad advice.
The point is is, you know, his doctor said, uh,
you know, when boys start to walk, then the verbal
thing usually takes a back seat. You just have to
give this some time. He's gonna be okay. Having that
(49:40):
conversation about three times and then taking him into the
doctor and she literally told me there's absolutely no way
he could have autism. Look at him, because here's this
beautiful blond, blue eyed, gorgeous baby who was very social
and would do things like wave to people planes and
(50:00):
say hi and do all these things. When that started
to go away, I could see him start to go inward,
like somehow he was going into himself and becoming, um,
not as out as he had been as a baby baby.
And the pediatrician literally told me that, And that's that's
(50:21):
a whole another conversation, like how we think just because
something's beautiful, it has to be perfect and good. Um, yeah,
really interesting how we do that. That's our you know,
physical appearance is part of our filter. It's one of
the ways in which we sort people. Um. So, anyway,
(50:42):
he ended up being diagnosed at twenty three months old,
and that completely changed everything for me because I knew
that I could no longer tour. I was going to
have to be at home because he needed a lot
of therapy and I was going to have to manage that.
So um, that's what I did. I tried to develop
(51:02):
my career as a songwriter more because I had a
publishing deal at the time, and and but you know,
I figured out very quickly. You know, my songs are
sort of idiosyncratic and I'm not going to become one
of those people who just gets tons of songs cut,
blah blah blah. So I also was faced with the
(51:22):
fact that I was going to be unable to get
all of the care that he needed under one roof
in a school situation in Nashville, Tennessee. So we enrolled
him in a school in New York City and I
lived there for um gosh, that was when he was
(51:45):
so six six more years because I lived in New
York before I came back to Nashville when he was diagnosed,
because I just wanted to get somewhere easier to live.
I realized that I wasn't going to be able to
get everything that he needed in Nashville, so we went
back to New York and lived there for six years.
And that was when I really got serious about writing Blood.
(52:06):
Because I couldn't tour. I went back to school. I
got an m f A and creative writing and during
the process of writing this book, so I got a
master's and really just started. It was partly because I
was trying to figure out the next part of my life,
like what am I going to do with myself? Because
I can't just be a special needs mom, and you're
a sharer of I've got to do something with my life.
(52:28):
I gotta be making art. I've got to be being
creative in some way. So the only know how, the
only way I know how to do that is to
turn my own life into some kind of art. So
that's where blood came from. And it was all and
it was really inspired by him, because part of it
is me looking at all of that information and trying
(52:51):
to figure out how it affected me so that I
know what to look for so that I can be
the best parent that I can. How how's it did
you do you think it's you know, affected me in
a lot of ways. It's made me absolutely distrustful of
the world. That's my biggest issue. I always say that
trust is my biggest issue in life. That's I feel
(53:14):
like that's what I'm here to learn is how to trust,
just trust period, trust in God, trust in myself, trust
in other people. Because, and this is common among children
of alcoholics. We feel like we have to do everything
ourselves and that we can't ask for help. And for
whatever reason, our childhood experiences are not filled with yes,
(53:38):
you can depend on me for my parents. So we
end up little overachievers and feeling like we have to
do everything for ourselves and we have to be perfect,
and we have to be diligent in everything and make
an a and get a gold star and do it
all right, and but never look like we're working hard
and never ask for help. That's one of my main
(54:02):
issues in life is all of that. And that's a lot.
So how has that transferred now into your parenting, especially
with a son who's autistic. Well, I think one of
the best things that it's taught me is I can't
do it by myself. There's absolutely no way that I
can take care of him and earn a living and
(54:24):
be a decent artist, mother, friend, wife, whatever it is.
I can't do all that. I have to have help
with him, and I have to be able to say
I don't understand this. I need a team of people
to help me figure out the puzzle of autism and
(54:45):
just how to deal with life knowing that my son
may never be independent. You know, we don't know. I
don't know. I always maintain that he will surprise us,
and of course he does surprise me every day. But
I think that he has something to say and he
(55:06):
has a purpose beyond anything that I can understand right now.
And that's another thing that's taught me as patients, like
I'm not going to know the answer to this today.
This is a wait and say. Yeah, wait and see
is like my worst thing. So your whole journey now
is to wait and see. Isn't interesting how we're forced
into these situations that we want to resist whole heart. Yes,
(55:30):
remember when I said to you at that dinner party,
you get the child that you need. Yes, you did
say that, because for everyone who follows this podcast, I
followed my journey to motherhood and I've had so much
anxiety and I at that dinner party was no shocker.
I had a little I had to drink some wine
for the first time in a while, so I was
(55:51):
like feeling it because I hadn't been drinking it forever.
Started crying, telling everyone we have all they anxiety about
be your mother, and Alison and was just dropping some wisdom. Well,
I don't know, I um. I always say, yeah, you
don't get the child you want, you get the child
(56:12):
you need, because really the beauty of being a parent
is you get to see just how little you actually
do know, and you you come up against something that
is bigger than you are. And there's absolutely no way
that any of us can do it without a whole
lot of faith and trust that these little pieces of
(56:38):
our soul that break off and grow feet and walk
out away from us are gonna be okay. You know,
it's the hardest thing in the world. Is the hardest
thing in the world. Now, I just met your tiny daughter,
and she's so precious, and she's so little, and she's
gonna grow, and she's gonna walk away from you, and
you're gonna have to have a foundation of trust and
(56:59):
faith that she is going to be okay. And all
you can do is trust that she will so, and
chances are she will be okay. The fact that you
said trust is your hardest thing, how and now we're
talking about how you have to trust, how do you
do that? How do you get there when just into it?
(57:19):
How do you find trust minute to minute that What
do you lean on for it? I pray, I meditate,
I make I try to make that room for myself
that we were talking about earlier, so that I can
get back to my center. Because I do think despite
(57:40):
all the things that I've been through in my life
and that's not to say that my life has been terrible.
My life has been wonderful. I've had some extraordinary experiences.
But despite the things that would that contribute to my
feelings of distrust and dis comfort in the world, an
(58:01):
uneasiness and anxiety and all those things that we deal with. UM,
I do believe that my sinner is that child that
you that you talked about seeing the picture of in
the bathtub. Um, she is happy, and she's joyous, and
she's full, and she's ready to take on the world
and have all those wonderful experiences and just is happy
(58:23):
to just be here, just you know, to show up
and have the experience. So when I say, you know,
I think what I said was two thousand nineteen will
always be the year that I started to reclaim her.
When I look at those pictures of myself as a child,
I see a lot of stuff, you know. I see
(58:43):
someone who is becoming aware that things aren't necessarily great.
But I also see a determination and a sweetness that
I you like, you know, at times of my life
has disappeared because of whatever experience and what I feel like.
(59:12):
One of my goals personally is to be able to
rely on who that person was and still is because
she did trust, and she did have joy, and she
did have hope, and and she did have excitement about
whatever was happening. So I try to look at that
and realize that that is still in me and what
(59:33):
that To find that it requires that I make some
room in my life for myself. So when I talk
about I need a team to help me figure out
what's going on with my my son, well, I do
you know he's been doing forty hours of therapy per
week since he was about two years old. I haven't
(59:53):
done all that, you know. I'm very lucky that early
on I was trained to embed those techniques into our
lives so that we live in a way that's always
about drawing him out communicatively. Um, but I can't do
that all day every day, And I knew very early
on that I didn't want to do that all day
(01:00:13):
every day. I want to be his mama. I want
to be his safe place. I want to be the
person that he comes to when he has a skinned knee.
I don't want to be the person who's always trying
to do therapeutic techniques with him all the time. So
I gotta have either through his school that he's in
New York City or in the summertime when he's here
in Nashville. I have, you know, three or four people
(01:00:35):
who are in and out of our house all day
doing speech therapy, doing a bi a therapy, doing music therapy,
all those things that we have to do because that's
what he needs. In order for me to pull that off,
I gotta make a little bit of room in my
life for myself to reconnect with that child who had hope,
who had hope and just did trust other people to
(01:01:00):
um to help. How has it been trusting other people
and having a team. It's hard because going back to
the part of me that's like, nope, I can do
it myself. I'm just gonna grip my teeth and I'm
gonna set my jaw and I'm gonna make it like
I needed it. I need it to be that you can't. Well.
(01:01:22):
Parenting is just the very best way for me to
learn that I'm not gonna be able to hold my
mouth right and make this like I want it. So
when I say, hey, baby, when you you get the
child you need, he is my greatest teacher, and that
(01:01:43):
it's forcing me to be able to trust others and
also let go and say, you know what, I'm not
gonna be the perfect mother and he may completely embarrass
me in public or uh, and we'll and I'll have
to learn how to laugh and get through that. Or
(01:02:05):
was that hard to do that? Those that initial acceptance
that this isn't going to be my this what I
dreamed it would be, you know, but it's better because
it's what you need, it's what it's something that I
need to learn. It was hard to let go of
the dream. Well, I don't know that I necessarily had
(01:02:26):
a dream of what our perfect experience would be. I
just the minute I found out that I was going
to have John Henry. I loved him and I wanted him. However,
he came exactly um and he has autism, he's non verbal,
he has behavioral problems. And that's what we got. That's
what we're dealing with. So we do the best we
can on a day, day to day basis. And you know,
(01:02:49):
the day to day thing, the minute to minute thing,
is a huge lesson for me because I'm a planner.
I need to, you know, have all the ducks in
a row and make sure I have everything done right perfectly. Well,
guess what, that's just not the way life is. And
sometimes I don't know, we get on an airplane and
(01:03:10):
he screams the old time and there's nothing I can do,
and I've got people shooting me dirty looks, are saying,
you know, saying, well, you know, you shouldn't have him
on a planet what And I have to say, we
have to live life, and you shouldn't be protected from him, amen,
because people get really you know, discombobulated about their bubbles
(01:03:32):
being Yeah, and I just you know, I've had to
learn how it's all an exercise and compassion, have passionately assholes, yes, yes,
and and how effective it is when you don't lash
back but instead say he has autism and I'm very sorry.
(01:03:55):
We're doing the best we can do. That's the best
because that shuts people up, Like turn that conversation around. Um.
Usually people just are embarrassed that they were a ship
and like and they shut up or they leave or
whatever it is. Um. You know, I've had experiences like
just this past fall, I was in New York and
(01:04:16):
John Henry and I were spending the weekend together, and
we went a restaurant together and people don't realize what
they're looking at. They don't because we don't have awareness
about what autism is, and because it can manifest itself
in so many different ways. They just see a nine
year old boy who isn't behaving the way that they
think he should. They don't understand that he doesn't have
(01:04:40):
language that they can understand. They don't understand that he
may make weird noises or he has to have his
iPad at the table, otherwise he'd be eating their French
fries off of their plate because he would have climbed
over the booth or whatever it is. You know, I
had someone complained to me about how much noise he
making during a meal. They were sitting at the booth
(01:05:05):
next to us, and um, I just sort of absorbed it.
We were getting ready to leave. I paid the check
and on the back of the receipt, I just wrote,
I'm so sorry we disturbed you. My son has autism
and it's a miracle that he made it through this
meal without throwing a tantrum. I'm going to be grateful
(01:05:26):
for that and just let you know what we're going through. Well,
And I just I've been practicing, so I just wrote
that right, But this is a way of ripping a
new one in a nice way and in a way
that allows them to not react to me having them,
(01:05:52):
and it allows them to learn and become better. And
that's that's the best thing I can do. But that's
involving you raising yourself higher, which is God so well.
And I haven't always done that, you know, I will.
I have to say, you know, I have gone off
on people who have attacked me for not doing what
they think I should be doing, and they don't understand
(01:06:14):
that maybe I'm in a moment of crisis, or maybe
I'm just at my WIT's in or maybe I've gotten
a chunk of my hair pulled out on the plane
that we're on, where they don't understand why he's screaming,
and I'm like, well, I don't understand why he's screaming
his ears. Maybe you know he wears at this point
in his life, he wears those bows noise canceling headphones
(01:06:37):
because he's so sound sensitive. So you know, my point is, I,
you know, I have to try to take care of
myself so that I'm able to say I'm so sorry.
I hope that we didn't disturb you and that's also
me teaching him as you know, you know, parenting is
(01:06:59):
more about setting an example. Oh gosh, okay, I want
to talk to you forever. I mean I would literally
talk to you forever. We've been talking to hours. So
I have a couple more questions I want to ask you.
And I talked too much. No, no, no no. My
first question is, this is a big question, but how
(01:07:22):
have you come to terms of God through all your journey?
I think that God is a big question. I have
been through times in my life when I have asked
myself do I even believe in God? I remember when
I was a small child, lying in my bed at
(01:07:43):
night praying please God, don't let Daddy hurt Mama. Please, God,
don't let Daddy hurt Mama, and saying it over and
over and over again. Because my sister and I, you know,
we shared a room until she's about eleven years old.
We would lie there and we would hear them fighting.
Is that what that's our night lights about? Yea, she
was your your night light and telling your mom could
come and she still is. Yeah. Um. After they died,
(01:08:09):
I was so angry and so so very angry for
a very long time anger will fuel you to get
a lot of ship done. Um. But I wasn't in
touch with my spiritual self in a way other than
(01:08:30):
making art. And I wasn't even making art in a
spiritual way until I noticed that that was really missing
from my life. And I had also Yeah, and also
going back to that little girl and that picture, she
believed in God. She believed that Jesus loved her, all
(01:08:51):
the things that they tell us. And I'm not a
a person who goes by any religion or any of
that stuff that I was taught as a child, or
any of the Southern Baptist up for the methods stuff.
When you know, we actually made it to church when
I was little. It was to one of those, the
Baptist Church and the Methodist Church. I'm not into that.
I'm into whatever save you, whatever gets you through it.
(01:09:15):
I'm down with all the kingpin deities, whatever they you know,
I don't care. As long as it's about peace and love,
I'm good with it. So I try to think about that.
I read a lot um of spiritual writing. I'm a
big Thomas Martin fan. I'm a big Richard Roar fan.
(01:09:37):
You did do you get his daily newsletter. I love it.
It's so good. I just registered for a course through
the Center for Action and Contemplation, the Wisdom the Wisdom
Way of Knowing. I'm very excited about that. It starts
in March. Awesome. Um, and I'm a nerd, so I'm
always doing this class or that, or you're curious in
(01:09:59):
your searcher. Well, I just want to know as much
as I can about all the avenues, you know, so
that I can come to some sort of peace and
calm in my own self. So where I am with
God these days is I absolutely believe that there's a God,
and I believe that that God is with me and
(01:10:19):
taking care of me and my husband and my child
and everyone that I love. Now, that does not mean
that I think God's gonna go make everything okay for me.
I don't believe in that prosperity gospel stuff. Um. I
think that God is in us. God is the best
(01:10:40):
part of us. Why do terrible things happen? Don't know.
I think terrible things have to happen just like beautiful
things have to happen. We have to have the contrast.
There has to be some kind of balance, and that's
very confusing. I think when something's happened, then you got
(01:11:05):
that just shouldn't have happened. School shootings that shouldn't happen. Um,
children being harmed, abused, killed, threatened, shamed. That shouldn't happen, Um,
but it does. I think bad things happen when human
beings go by their own will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not
(01:11:27):
the God part of who they are. And then I
want to ask you about I'm to Blame because that's
a song on your album and it's a note from
your dad. After our parents died, my sister was going
through an old briefcase that had belonged to Daddy, which
(01:11:49):
I had seen in the closet most of my life.
This briefcase state in a closet to the right of
the fireplace, and it was full of old papers and
tapes and this, that and the other. So she was
going through it after they died, and she found a
lyric to a song called I'm the One to Blame. Well,
(01:12:09):
neither one of us had ever heard this song. It
was just a lyric and it was kind of stunning
and it's quality and in its honesty, so she put
music to it. Wow, and Um, neither one of us
had ever recorded it, So I recorded it on on
(01:12:32):
this new record that's the companion piece to this book.
I thought it was time. I loved the song and
I wanted to give him a voice that was his
actual voice. So what was what is the voice? I
think the lyric of that song is the closest that
(01:12:52):
we get to him being accountable, and it's also very sad.
How does it go? Of course, sorrow took the pride.
I'll take the blame, which is profound that he would
take the blame. Just those two lines are kind of brilliant.
Sorrow took the pride. I'll take the blame, sorrow, So
(01:13:14):
his sadness took the pride, and he will take the
blame sadness for that, and he'll blame He'll take the
blame for letting his sadness when whoa. Yeah, it's really
simple and deep. That is really deep and shows a
side of him that I always knew was there, and
(01:13:37):
as an adult can see how it was there. You
know what, I'd give for one conversation with the man,
because I think that he did have that ability to
be deep and profound and wanted to be He was
just also a terrible alcoholic and when you are one
(01:13:57):
that rules your life. Oh wow, what an amazing person
you are. You are You are a messenger on this earth,
that is for sure. God is using you in a
really big way through the journey that you're that you've walked.
So I want to wrap up with I always wrap
(01:14:20):
up with this question, leave your light, after your life,
your journey, your experiences. What do you want people to
know that I tried really hard? Gosh, Allison, there's a
(01:14:49):
lot in that statement, but that's true. Have you given
that runs the gamut? You know that I tried hard
to be a good mama, take care of my away,
and be a good friend, and be a good partner,
and be a good artist. Have you given yourself grace?
I try. I try. Not easy, not easy to do,
(01:15:14):
but that's one of the things I'm working on. Well.
I just want you to know, from an outsiders perspective,
you have made such a beautiful ripple effect of your
life and everything that you have shared, From your art,
from your story in a book, from the human that
you are, from your wisdom at a dinner table that
I picked up within five seconds of just being around you,
(01:15:37):
from the are that you put out from the way
you're raising your son and being open and walking that
journey and sharing it. You're not just trying, You're You're
really impacting. And I am so blessed and grateful that
I got to cross paths with you, and I pray
that you stay in my life because you are someone
that is so inspiring because sorry, Sugar is really agreeing
(01:15:59):
with yours on that's so inspiring because you're not turning
away from the cards that you're being dealt. You're leaning
into them so deeply and letting them become a beautiful thing,
even though they're so painful. And I think that is
so hard to do, and so many people will not
do that, and you do that. I hope that this
(01:16:22):
part of this experience, this journey, this life, if you will,
I hope that in my revealing myself so much, that
I do it with the most self respect that I can.
UM that there is a level of um sharing but
(01:16:44):
not oversharing, and UM, you know, sometimes I don't know
where that line is. I want to be aware of it,
but that's a factor. UM. I just I hope that
I can do it with with grace because for whatever reason,
I know that I'm supposed to share my stories. I
(01:17:05):
hope that I do it in a way that people
can relate to and that you know, doesn't embarrass my
family or the people around me or me. So you know,
it's a constant, it's a constant tight rope walk, but
minutes minute. Thank you so much for coming on here, Alison,
(01:17:25):
thank you for having me. Incredible, like, you're so incredible,
and I just love back to you. Blessed that you
would share that your story with me and your time
with me, because I know it's so valuable and I'm
so appreciative. Absolutely back to you. Okay, you're the best. Bye.
Host
Caroline Hobby
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