Are you listening?

Do you listen to yourself? Like, really listen, deep down? I can confidently say that recently, no. I feel like I have lost a bit of that connection. I get to the point where I keep distracting myself so that I do NOT have to listen to my inner voice, because, quite frankly, I am afraid to hear what she has to say. She can be so on point, that it can be uncomfortable to hear.

Recently, I did an interview with Judy Librach on Finding Your Bliss about my debut album: fine. Judy is an absolute light, and she starts her interviews with a short breathing exercise to calibrate the room. What a delightful moment of pause and purposeful reflection. It reminded me a lot of the journey to this album - stops and starts that didn’t necessarily make sense at the time, but upon reflection were the pivotal pauses that I needed.

I released “fine.” in July of this year (2026), but I recorded it three years prior, almost to the day in 2023. “What took so long to release it?” “What was I waiting for?” These were questions that I was asked occasionally by friends or colleagues as I told them about the project - and mostly by myself. But the journey of this album was not meant to be rushed, even if I tried to force it, more than a few times, along the way.

The messy middle, which I don’t have the word count to fully explain in this article, started with a tour at the end of 2019. Thinking this was the beginning of my big break, my big opportunity to step into the dream that I had for myself, I wrote the track “Edge of Distortion” about learning to be more comfortable on the path we are meant to be on. Then in 2020, after living in Brazil briefly, I had to leave abruptly due to COVID and was stuck back in Toronto, alone in a house with all of my thoughts and what felt like the scariest uncertainty I had ever experienced. I fumbled my way through an unravelling of sorts that getting stopped in one’s tracks can prompt. And I wrote.

I wrote about the seemingly ludicrous advice we were receiving on how to soothe ourselves during an “unprecedented global crisis” in the song “SING ME TO SLEEP”. I wrote about trying to create certainty by defining new love in “swimming in the ocean”, about the unbearable anxiety of waiting for a response in “CHEAP fallbacks”. In 2021, I wrote about the deep pain of living in a body that can’t match the mind’s ambitions in “TRAPPED”. I also wrote about existential exhaustion in “i’m so tired” trying to find a way to keep going. In 2022 I wrote “fine!?” about pretending to have it together when I was really in so much chronic pain.

Then, I got news of the grant that would enable me to record an album and I kept writing. I took time, I built the team, but I didn’t officially record until the summer of 2023. What was supposed to be a winter recording in the worst month Montreal has to offer (March), became a summer studio session, the first ever in the new Seratone Studio in Quebec’s countryside. That was the best gift of all, to record in a beautiful location with my producer friend visiting from Brazil to record with me. We were able to build a little world to express the hurt and frustration and pain and longing that this record contains. I was able to be messy, unpolished. I was able to get it out.

The next two years were about slowly finishing the mixes, then the master, then building the visuals. They were about healing emotionally, finding small moments of presence to remember how to live again after a tough few years. They had some unexpected bumps in the road, like an emergency surgery and a required follow up surgery that definitely threw me off my game. They also brought me love and new friendships.

2025 set things in motion, emerging from my cave more and more to put myself - and my music - out there. It was about connecting with audiences and hearing them sing parts of my song back to me. It was about taking the brave step to release the first single.

This year, in releasing this album and all of the work that goes along with it, I have been so grateful for that period of time between recording and releasing. I needed it. I am grateful to have been able to be fully present for the process of releasing the album, to be able to show up for radio interviews feeling well. That is a huge gift.

Now, as I feel that impatience again for what is next, I am trying to slow myself down again, for a few moments of breath and reflection, to remember that the timeline is not always what we imagine, but it is usually exactly what we need.