The Resonance of Self-Care: Songwriting and Healing with Emma G
Sh!t That Goes On In Our HeadsMarch 05, 2024x
7
36:3333.79 MB

The Resonance of Self-Care: Songwriting and Healing with Emma G

Join us on ”Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads” as we delve into stress management and self-care with guest Emma G, exploring the healing power of music and songwriting for mental health and personal growth, and learn about her transformative workshops and book.

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Join your hosts, G-Rex and Dirty Skittles, as they dive deep with our vibrant guest, Emma G, into the powerful world of music, self-expression, and stress management. Emma G, a seasoned stress management coordinator and musician, shares her compelling story of overcoming personal adversity, highlighting her transformative journey through music and self-discovery.

**Lessons Learned:**

- The indispensability of self-care routines for individuals in high-stress jobs.
- Turning life's challenges into lyrical expressions can lead to profound personal growth.
- The importance of reframing negative thoughts to foster a more positive mindset.

**Key Insights:**

- The impact of environmental factors, urban vs. rural, on one's self-care practices.
- Emma's evolution through her experiences with brain surgeries and starting the band Static Era.
- How the power of music can be used to connect with and heal the younger self.
- The significance of authentic self-expression through music to resonate with our true emotions.
- Emma G's interactive workbook and her upcoming US tour aimed at empowering the youth through songwriting.

Don't forget to engage with Emma G's work and stay informed about her initiatives by visiting her website and signing up for her newsletter. As she prepares to release her book and hit the road for her tour, Emma's story is not just an inspiration but an invitation to all to find their voice.

Emma G's Contact Info:

Website: http://emmagmusic.com
Twitter: https://Twitter.com/emmagmusic
Instagram: https://Instagram.com/emmagmusic
Facebook: https://facebook.com/emmagspeaks
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmagmusic/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/emma-g-968906972
YouTube: https://youtube.com/emmagmusic
My Life, My Songs, My Healing: https://emmagmusic.bandcamp.com/merch/my-life-my-songs-my-healing-digital-e-book
BandsinTown: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/1586112-emma-g?came_from=257&utm_medium=web&utm_source=artist_event_page&utm_campaign=artist

**Remember to subscribe, rate, and review Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads**. 
Your feedback fuels our conversation and helps us continue producing content that resonates with you. Whether it's self-discovery through music or combating mental struggles, your input keeps our community thriving.

#StressManagement #MusicHeals #SelfCare #EmotionalWellbeing #Songwriting #PersonalGrowth #MentalHealthAwareness #SelfExpression #YouthEmpowerment #EmmaGMusic

S05E07 - The Resonance of Self-Care: Songwriting and Healing with Emma G


00:00:00
How are you, Emma? I'm not going to lie. I'm a bit of a zombie today.

00:00:03
I've had a very intense week.

00:00:06
So I'm excited to nap later this afternoon. I'm not going to...

00:00:10
It's been one of those days, but I'm happy to be here. It's been too long.

00:00:14
Yeah, I can relate to you. Yesterday I said my brains were mashed potatoes. Mashed potato brains?

00:00:20
Yeah. It's my favorite kind of brain. Yeah. I was like, I have no other way

00:00:23
to describe what it is that I'm feeling.

00:00:25
I was just disassociating in the complete stress of it all.

00:00:34
Music.

00:00:51
All right g-rex you want to do intro i will are you

00:00:54
ready yeah i'm ready you're ready three two

00:00:58
one welcome back to another episode

00:01:01
of shit that goes on in our heads today we have an

00:01:04
amazing guest we have emma g and i'm

00:01:07
so excited to have you here welcome emma wonderful to be back so i'm so well

00:01:13
back officially on air with you ladies but also just back seeing your beautiful

00:01:18
faces that's what a way to spend a saturday i know right better than being outside

00:01:24
no i'm just I'm just kidding.

00:01:24
So much, so much. It's just cold.

00:01:31
Yeah so emma you said you've

00:01:34
had a rough week anything you want to well i'm using

00:01:37
the word rough very objectively i'll

00:01:41
be honest when i say rough i mean it's just

00:01:43
been an emotionally charged week you know

00:01:46
as somebody who's

00:01:50
like moved to this country doing music and

00:01:53
you know my whole mission was to make music with

00:01:56
a message and help touch people's lives and help empower

00:01:59
and whatever that has evolved in many ways

00:02:02
and this week has been the manifestation of one

00:02:05
such evolution where because i'm

00:02:08
so focused on mental and emotional health i

00:02:12
have now been instated as the

00:02:15
stress management coordinator for a

00:02:18
volatile workplace or work

00:02:21
you know volatile volatile country workplace so

00:02:25
that sounds really trivial and I'm probably naming the wrong

00:02:28
thing but working with NGO workers and reporters

00:02:31
who are going over to volatile or dangerous countries to

00:02:35
you know do humanitarian work or just report on

00:02:38
what's going on in places like Somalia or Ukraine etc etc so it's just been

00:02:43
like it's been a lot you know managing personalities managing stress levels

00:02:48
working through them with you know different stress management techniques which

00:02:52
of course all relate back to music songwriting and singing meditation breathing.

00:02:58
Body placement and things like that so it's just

00:03:01
it's been a lot and then that spring during the day

00:03:04
followed up by you know coaching clients and then gigging in

00:03:09
the evening i just need some i

00:03:12
need a rest day a self-care day shall

00:03:15
we say yeah that was what i was about to ask

00:03:18
is having that as your day-to-day like

00:03:21
how are you taking care of yourself well a lot of the same

00:03:24
sort of practices that i talk about when i'm teaching it's uh

00:03:27
you know very much rooted in getting enough rest feeding

00:03:31
yourself nutritious delicious foods but also just sleeping and meditation and

00:03:37
stretching oh my gosh stretching is so so important as vocalists but just as

00:03:45
human I think it's really easy for us to forget the emotional,

00:03:49
mental, and physical are so,

00:03:51
closely aligned, and of course, our spiritual selves as well,

00:03:54
that when we don't take time to look after our bodies, we're just kind of.

00:03:59
Tends to not do well

00:04:02
yeah and and that you know that

00:04:05
kind of goes back to like the cortisol too right like it just sticks

00:04:08
down in your belly and if you're not you know doing something

00:04:11
to like move your body or laugh or get your

00:04:14
endorphins going you know it it can hurt your

00:04:17
your physical well-being as well as your.

00:04:20
Mental well-being so like even being as

00:04:23
cold as hell as it is up here like if.

00:04:26
I can't go outside i'm just going to go up and down the stairs two or three times even.

00:04:29
If my arthritis is really bothering me it's just

00:04:32
getting my heart rate up enough to you know

00:04:35
kind of relieve some of that stress or i'll go

00:04:38
and do the three by two piece of the sidewalk

00:04:41
that i can actually shovel without having to

00:04:44
use a snowblower so it's awesome

00:04:47
i love that yeah i've been really leaning into

00:04:50
yoga to start off my days as well has been really

00:04:52
helpful to just get the you know the oxygen flowing and activate

00:04:57
the muscles a little bit but it's important we just forget

00:04:59
i think it's really you know it's imperative that especially

00:05:03
living in big cities we take that

00:05:06
time to step away and even

00:05:08
in the country right like i live in you know

00:05:11
the rural part of upstate new york so you know

00:05:15
just making sure that i'm taking care of

00:05:17
that part of me right i'm all about nature but

00:05:21
i am not going to go outside if it's 10 degrees it's not

00:05:24
gonna it's not gonna happen i forgot that

00:05:27
you're in upstate new york i spent a week just a

00:05:30
week and a half nearly two weeks actually um in lake george

00:05:33
in upstate new york and fell in

00:05:36
love with the place except when it got cold dude.

00:05:40
It was cold yeah no i'm nope you can keep I will take it over like 292 days

00:05:56
of super hot weather. So I'm fine with that.

00:05:59
I was going to say 292. Yeah, Florida. That's pretty cool. You're saying you're not coming back.

00:06:03
I'm not. No. Well, maybe just for one event, but that's it.

00:06:09
Yeah. So Emma, how did you find, find therapy and music? When did that start for you?

00:06:15
When did I find therapy and music? I think it was something that I,

00:06:20
that's like, there's no simple answer to that question.

00:06:24
I think as a young child, I started turning to music and songwriting as tools

00:06:32
to kind of just communicate my thoughts and feelings at an early,

00:06:38
you know, at a young age, because, I mean, I don't know if your listeners know

00:06:41
anything about my story, but, you know, by the time I was 10,

00:06:44
I'd already had 10 brain surgeries.

00:06:46
And so that was something that was really hard to communicate about to my friends and family.

00:06:54
How many people do you know who had one brain surgery, let alone 10.

00:06:58
And so, you know, the additional ramifications of those surgeries,

00:07:02
brain damage or, you know, isolation or being called every name under the sun,

00:07:09
it was really difficult to sort of figure out how to overcome as a young person.

00:07:16
So music helped me to at least find the vocabulary to explain and express myself.

00:07:23
Myself but then you know as

00:07:26
I became a teenager and continued to

00:07:29
live life and experience all the things that young women

00:07:32
endure unfortunately all too often it

00:07:35
just continued to serve as my voice and my

00:07:38
opportunity to tell the world all this shit's happening and it's horrible and

00:07:43
hard and I don't know what to do about it but at that point in my life I was

00:07:48
very much rooted in this place of I need to try and at least express that or

00:07:53
at least try to talk about it or at least try to like,

00:07:57
you know, help people understand or make people understand what was going on.

00:08:03
It didn't yet click that the answer was in the question.

00:08:09
And so to be able to then turn around and say, oh, I can express myself,

00:08:16
but actually in the self-expression, I can actually come to my own conclusions about how to overcome.

00:08:23
That didn't happen until much later.

00:08:26
I had moved to Auckland, or Auckland as Americans say, moved to Auckland in

00:08:32
2011 and started started a

00:08:34
hard rock band called Static Era with one of my dear friends, Chris Young,

00:08:39
who used to play guitar for a rock band that I was in love with called Tadpole.

00:08:44
And he was like, well, why don't we start a band? And I was like, okay, let's do that.

00:08:48
Touch wood. Oh my gosh, is this actually happening? But because he was older

00:08:51
than me and had experience in music for so much longer than I had,

00:08:54
he pointed out to me, hey Emma, there's some really great material here,

00:08:59
but what would it look like to actually create more of a positive spin on this?

00:09:04
So i think it was at that point that i kind of coined

00:09:08
my the whole philosophy of okay life can

00:09:11
be shit but it's our job to take the shit turn

00:09:14
it into fertilizer and plant a garden and that

00:09:17
was done okay it's fine

00:09:20
for us to look at the crap and feel the feelings

00:09:22
and feel the hurt and hurt and you know be

00:09:26
sad and depressed and overwhelmed but if

00:09:30
we took a step outside of our ego for a minute and looked

00:09:33
at okay so what can we do from here how can

00:09:36
we grow from here what are the silver linings here

00:09:39
then you know maybe there's

00:09:42
some opportunity for us to actually grow and become happier

00:09:45
healthier human beings and that was you know 2012 2013

00:09:49
to you know 2024 baby

00:09:53
and i'm all about that like and it's again it's important

00:09:55
for us to like recognize the enemy recognize the

00:09:59
the depression or the anxiety or the overwhelm but then also give us give ourselves

00:10:03
permission to like go well okay but i'm the writer of my own song so how can

00:10:07
i cognitively shift this into something that makes me feel empowered strong

00:10:11
motivated positive insert other adjective here.

00:10:19
Do you have any i guess maybe advice or helpful tips to people who are looking

00:10:24
to take their shit it and turn it into a garden i do and i'm getting two seconds yeah,

00:10:34
Well, you see my pajama pants. Okay, I got mine on too.

00:10:40
All of that advice is in this book. It's my latest interactive workbook.

00:10:44
It's based on my last TEDx talk, which is called From Pain to Playlist,

00:10:48
Turning Struggles into Song.

00:10:51
It's full of tips and tricks that people can use when it comes to cognitively

00:10:57
reframing disempowering thoughts or ideas into something positive.

00:11:01
I will tell you from the job that I was showing this to to a friend of mine

00:11:04
last night, but he was most fascinated by this because one of the things,

00:11:09
he looked at one of the pages, he's like, imagine depression was a person and

00:11:13
write a song to them or write a letter to them. What does that even mean?

00:11:17
And I was like, well, we think about it. When we're feeling in our gunk,

00:11:21
when we're feeling in our feelings, it's easier for us to continue that,

00:11:25
you know, mouth wheel of continued overwhelm, continued stress,

00:11:31
continued dark thoughts.

00:11:33
If we give ourselves permission to like you know step outside of our ego again,

00:11:39
take a more holistic look at at the situation and instead of like lashing out

00:11:46
at our parents and our partners husbands wives to talk about like oh i'm depressed

00:11:51
why aren't you helping me,

00:11:53
why don't we actually attack the feeling because that's the actual enemy here

00:11:57
not enemy you can turn the front yeah our enemies into friends you know but

00:12:01
like that's what we're We're actually trying to manage here. So what would you say?

00:12:06
And of course, you know, a number of my songs are...

00:12:11
Examples of how I've turned my emotions into humans that I've been like screw

00:12:18
you I'm dumping you now yes our relationship is over close the door on your

00:12:25
way out goodbye depression.

00:12:27
Don't call me I won't call you that hit hard right as you said that I thought

00:12:32
holy shit yeah what would I say to that emotion right like fuck that's good

00:12:38
that's good I need the book I I need to write it down. I need to go through the motions.

00:12:41
Man, that hit. Yeah, I could have used that book, you know, when I was still

00:12:46
in my fog, you know, before, you know, Christmas Day 2022.

00:12:49
I could have used that, right? We were just talking about like,

00:12:53
what did I do to help myself?

00:12:55
Well, you know, one of the things I couldn't do is I couldn't find my voice

00:12:58
or couldn't find my footing.

00:13:00
Your book will help people to find their voice and find their footing.

00:13:04
One question that you know dirty skills always

00:13:07
ask me is you know what would

00:13:09
you have done different well i would have opened up my fucking

00:13:12
mouth a lot sooner but you know

00:13:15
i just couldn't because i didn't have those tools i have those tools now

00:13:18
and your book is going to be a huge tool for people out there they're going

00:13:23
through something similar thank you and i i appreciate that but i also want

00:13:28
to like encourage you to have a break with yourself because it's easy for us

00:13:32
to like you know say I should have I'm a big believer in stopping shooting on yourself.

00:13:38
We really need to stop shooting on ourselves because if

00:13:43
we continue to like

00:13:46
have a narrative of I should have done that okay but

00:13:51
because you didn't these other things

00:13:54
happened which have now contributed to the beautiful aspects of your personality

00:13:57
and your resilience and your your strength you know what I mean and even still

00:14:01
like you know opening your mouth and saying something in the moment might have

00:14:03
actually been worse you don't know everything happens I think in you know it's

00:14:08
divine time let's take at least like.

00:14:12
I'm a big believer in maybe not even opening your mouth so much to the world,

00:14:17
but at least taking the time to understand yourself, because that's where it

00:14:21
should kind of fall away.

00:14:23
The issue, I think a lot of the time, especially in 2024, in a time when we're

00:14:28
so distracted and overwhelmed by the news and social media and everything else

00:14:34
going on around in the world, especially at the moment,

00:14:37
is that we don't take time to at least open our minds to ourselves.

00:14:42
You know and take the time to understand our own thoughts and feelings and that can be incredibly,

00:14:48
powerful when it comes to overcoming some struggles you

00:14:52
know like a song that I released last year called Barbed Wire it won a telly

00:14:57
award for the music video category last year and this year it's up for some

00:15:03
whammies here in the Washington DC mid-tree area but the song I mean I'm 35

00:15:09
now. I wrote this song just after my 15th birthday.

00:15:11
It took me 20 years.

00:15:14
I could have released it and put it out to the world when I was 15.

00:15:19
But in all honesty, if I had, I

00:15:22
think there's every possibility that it

00:15:27
would have opened up a can of worms that I was not equipped to actually deal

00:15:32
with because you know the song is about sexual abuse and that's a really scary

00:15:38
topic to dive into when you're 15 but at least i had something to help me understand it.

00:15:47
Huge i have goosebumps it's huge it's so huge and like you're giving people the tools,

00:15:56
that they need to get past some of the worst shit

00:15:59
that's going on in their heads right now you know

00:16:02
a lot of times people don't know where to turn they

00:16:05
don't know what to do they don't know how to express what's

00:16:09
going on inside them when i was talking to

00:16:12
dirty earlier like on the

00:16:15
outside i look perfectly fine like nothing could

00:16:18
touch me but on the inside like i was killing

00:16:21
myself right i was talking bad about myself

00:16:24
like i just couldn't i just wanted to be

00:16:27
done i'm so thankful that you know

00:16:29
there was a garden guardian angel 988 was available

00:16:32
that my wife was home and then i was in therapy the very

00:16:35
next day but like you know books like your book and your music that helps people

00:16:42
right like on their on the worst day of their life right music is to me is a

00:16:47
healer absolutely show us laughter absolutely and inappropriate jokes,

00:16:54
yeah that's kind of depending on the words depending where you're at like depends

00:16:58
on the joke i think some jokes oh you need to pick your audience but yes i agree.

00:17:04
Yeah i mean that's huge

00:17:07
i mean kind of going back to what you said i mean yeah you had something to

00:17:11
help you get through that and i think that's key i mean that's i wish you know

00:17:17
my my childhood wasn't the best either but and i think i don't remember the

00:17:22
exact age that i was able to to identify what was happening, but it wasn't enough.

00:17:27
Even though I knew what was going on was wrong, I didn't have anything to relate it back to, right?

00:17:34
Like there wasn't any music that I could think of in like the nineties that

00:17:37
I could say, oh, that is exactly what's happening here.

00:17:41
You know, so almost some, like myself, I would imagine there's other people

00:17:45
who feel alone when you're going through that at a young age,

00:17:48
not having a name to put to it.

00:17:50
So I think just Just the fact that you've even shared that there is a song out

00:17:54
there like that will help, right?

00:17:57
Because at times when you don't have the words to put to a feeling or an emotion

00:18:01
or, you know, whatever's happening to you, music has always worked for me.

00:18:06
Like, I will love a song to death because it has identified a feeling I have.

00:18:11
And in a way, I don't think I could ever have put words to. So I think that's huge.

00:18:14
Which I challenge you a little bit because I think

00:18:18
yes we'll feel that

00:18:21
way but you know when

00:18:24
I mean because I was the same way I've been writing and making up

00:18:27
songs since I was three I'm not normal I get that but I think when we so I sort

00:18:34
of I kept making up songs so on and so forth but I often same thing as you would

00:18:39
turn to other people's music to try and make sense of my my own thoughts and feelings,

00:18:44
you know, so like listening to Iron Maiden, listening to Britney Spears,

00:18:48
the Spice Girls, Enigma, but I woke up one day and realized.

00:18:58
These are someone else's words, this is someone else's experience,

00:19:03
this isn't actually my narrative,

00:19:05
so what would it look like for me to write my own narrative,

00:19:08
right, like if these guys can do it,

00:19:11
I'm smart I sing I know

00:19:14
how to write I know how to speak use words

00:19:17
so what does it look like to you

00:19:21
know to be able to use my own verbiage and my own lyric and take that one step

00:19:25
further to look at you know finding those words you would be amazed at how music

00:19:32
affects our brain in a way that helps us access those vocabularies that we don't often think we have.

00:19:40
And I will tell you this because I ran some experiments when I was teaching

00:19:44
at a university back in New Zealand.

00:19:46
A lot of our learners were second chance learners, had been incarcerated or

00:19:49
dropped out of school early or whatever, were told their entire lives that they

00:19:53
were not intelligent human beings.

00:19:55
They did not want to write essays at all. The idea made them freeze.

00:20:00
They closed off. They didn't know what to say, how to say it, whatever.

00:20:06
So I'm somebody that's like, I don't even look at the box.

00:20:09
I think it's so outside the box that it doesn't exist for me so

00:20:12
I got my you know these students to wrap their

00:20:16
research papers and to you

00:20:19
know like sing or write song like lyrical songs

00:20:21
about Bob Marley or about whoever Tupac

00:20:25
and I tell you the minute

00:20:29
they were able to sing or rap their research

00:20:32
you would not believe the

00:20:35
vocabulary that came out of them and it's the the same thing for the songwriting

00:20:39
clients that I work with the amount of inspiration that comes because oh shoot

00:20:44
I actually have this opportunity to sing what I'm feeling it's a game changer

00:20:48
yeah do you work with all different age brackets and groups generally the youngest I work with,

00:20:56
actually I'm up until recently was 13 but I recently worked with a nine-year-old,

00:21:02
no 10-year-old she was about to turn 11 and just before her 11th birthday she

00:21:07
wrote wrote and recorded her first song called Scars about recognizing and honoring

00:21:13
the beauty in our emotional and physical scars.

00:21:17
So yeah, that's generally the youngest I'll work with. But the oldest,

00:21:21
not through adults, my happy place is generally teenagers though.

00:21:26
Yeah, very interesting. I have so many questions and I don't know if you can

00:21:30
share them, but like, what does that look like?

00:21:32
Like, how do you start to open that door for them and get them comfortable with

00:21:37
writing down what they're feeling?

00:21:39
Well, it doesn't often start with them writing down things. We often have conversations.

00:21:44
I'm very open and transparent when i work with teenagers in

00:21:47
particular because one of the things i've really realized about

00:21:51
the young people i work with is that they they're all

00:21:54
dying to be heard they just don't feel listened to

00:21:57
or responded when they're being listened to

00:22:00
and so you see

00:22:03
all the time kids end up yelling or cussing

00:22:07
as a way to kind of like shock people into

00:22:10
hearing them or that if that doesn't work that

00:22:13
manifests into physical expressions of

00:22:16
their frustration and if that doesn't work then that can turn

00:22:19
into crime and all kinds of other really negative and serving

00:22:22
things but what i

00:22:26
do from the jump when i'm working with young people is first establishing the

00:22:29
fact that i'm not their teacher i'm not even really you know their elder i'm

00:22:34
their big sister their coach their mentor their friend and thus when we're working

00:22:39
together everything we do together is safe space and And then I open up, you know, I talk about,

00:22:45
you know, the boundaries that I have with languaging. There are none.

00:22:49
But I also tell the kids, like, if you're going to cuss, make sure you use your cuss intelligently.

00:22:55
Because I know that you are intelligent enough to use other words to explain yourself.

00:23:00
But if you really, the only word you can use is a cuss word called at least rhyme it.

00:23:07
And nine times out of 10, I think in the last four years since I've been doing

00:23:11
this work, for this specific work, I've had one person cuss.

00:23:15
Wow, you should work with me. I literally was like, what would my song sound like? It's just...

00:23:26
No, that's a joke. But yeah, but when you empower them to be like,

00:23:29
oh, I'm smart enough. Well, I can use my words.

00:23:31
Okay, cool. I'll step up. Emma believes in me. I need to believe in myself.

00:23:34
And then, you know, we just have a conversation to start off with.

00:23:38
And so during that conversation, I'll open up a Google Drive

00:23:41
document that is open for them to see at the

00:23:44
same time time because you know open communication is

00:23:47
really important to me and then I'll take notes of the

00:23:50
conversation and they see it as I'm writing it down and

00:23:53
then from those notes we identify key

00:23:56
frame that's key theme sorry key phrases key words

00:24:00
and then take that down and write

00:24:03
you know develop that into a song I mean

00:24:06
it's really beautiful to be honest with you just hearing you say that like I'm

00:24:09
like shit that like you said it challenges it

00:24:12
challenges challenges what i thought could ever

00:24:15
be possible right so i i think a

00:24:18
lot of people i wonder a lot of people call it that stuff right

00:24:21
now like well that good but it makes

00:24:23
sense it's different yeah yeah like i'm curious now i think i'm gonna start

00:24:28
looking at people like i wonder what their song sounds like you know it's not

00:24:31
i don't know it's just really pretty it's beautiful i think it's you know i

00:24:36
wish that you know we'd i'd had that totally you know when i was growing up

00:24:39
right Right. Because I'm a boomer.

00:24:42
I'm not sad to say that. But, you know, I went through a lot of shit as a kid.

00:24:47
And man, if I could have put my words to music, I'd probably be a billionaire.

00:24:52
But like it would have probably helped me deal with a lot of the stuff I was going through, too.

00:24:56
And that's the beauty of what you do is that you help these kids. Yes.

00:25:01
Feel better about themselves and about the world about the world that's going

00:25:07
on around us because the world's just not a pretty place right now.

00:25:12
It's definitely challenging in many ways but i want to challenge you though

00:25:17
g-rex because as much as like you talk about you know what the things you needed

00:25:22
as a teenager or as a child,

00:25:24
it's not too late you're still growing even as a booer you're still growing

00:25:29
you're still like Like you're not dead yet. You're still evolving as a human being.

00:25:34
So what would it look like, you know, after our conversation today,

00:25:37
what would it look like for you to think back to your five-year-old self,

00:25:41
your seven-year-old self, your 10-year-old self, 15-year-old self,

00:25:43
and write a song to them as a woman now in 2024?

00:25:50
I'm going to write that song and then I'm going to send it to you.

00:25:52
I'm going to send it to you and Dirty Skittles.

00:25:56
Nice. I love that. And I ran that kind of exercise recently.

00:26:00
Recently, well, not recently, last April, there's a women's conference here

00:26:03
that specifically works with unhoused women and pregnant unhoused women as well.

00:26:08
And that's the exercise we did. We wrote a song.

00:26:12
Each woman who was in the workshop with me wrote a song to themselves at the

00:26:18
time that they first realized that they were traumatized.

00:26:24
So for many of them, they were like 14 to 17 years old was when their first trauma occurred.

00:26:30
So they ended up writing a song to that 14, 17-year-old self. And it was powerful.

00:26:36
It was, you know, we had women in tears sharing their songs.

00:26:42
And then I, you know, I took my guitar and actually sang the songs back to them.

00:26:46
And it was really beautiful, you know, because, again, it's music helps us tap

00:26:51
into a part of ourselves that we, it's not that we don't know that it exists

00:26:56
or that it's there. We just have a lost touch with our abilities to access it.

00:27:01
So interesting i love this it's so interesting because it's always i mean for

00:27:06
me it's one thing to you know be brave enough to share that right and to like

00:27:11
kind of because i mean for me it's like you're opening your soul like that's

00:27:15
how i'm imagining it right like these are words that,

00:27:17
you either never really thought to write down then you finally write it down

00:27:21
but then to go that extra mile and to hear somebody singing it back to you like

00:27:24
holy shit like i would be like I'm like, well, I'm going to sit back here for a minute.

00:27:29
And it's always an emoji melody, right? Like, so I just, you know,

00:27:33
one of my favorite pieces of songwriting advice was from one of the Berkeley professors,

00:27:38
Pat Patterson, who says, you know, a well-written song can be adapted to any melody, any genre.

00:27:45
So, you know, I can just pull something out of my butt and it's going to be

00:27:49
fine, you know, but that's the emoji, that's the emoji song as opposed to like

00:27:53
your song, Skittles, is going to sound very different to J-Rex's song.

00:27:58
J-Rex's songs sound very different to her wife's song, you know, whatever it is.

00:28:03
But the important thing is just being able to at least like get it out of your

00:28:09
head and onto paper and, you know, again, look at it cognitively in different

00:28:13
narratives, you know, and again, all of those are in my book,

00:28:17
but, you know, and be able to sort of figure out how to make sense of it all

00:28:23
in a way that actually serves your soul as opposed to what you think other people want to hear.

00:28:30
Yeah. Sheesh. I know. This is going to be a deep one for me.

00:28:34
I'm going to be thinking about this episode for a hot minute.

00:28:37
Oh, yeah. If you want to start this level, this was not the conversation to

00:28:39
have. No, I love this stuff. I really, I love learning.

00:28:44
And I love things that I would call different, meaning like anything outside

00:28:49
of what I could think of on my own.

00:28:52
So I will just sit and like literally

00:28:55
think about this for days and like love every second of it because

00:28:58
it's different and it's something that i wouldn't have come to on my

00:29:01
own you know so this is very cool for me

00:29:03
completely selfish sorry g-rex no no i'm

00:29:07
like totally like i'm digging this i'm getting your

00:29:10
book i'm going to write my song i'm going

00:29:12
to send it to i'm going to send it to amity and i'm going to

00:29:15
send three skittles probably going to laugh at

00:29:18
myself a little bit but like it's eye-opening because

00:29:21
like maybe if those words were played

00:29:24
back to me in somebody else's voice i might

00:29:27
understand them a little bit better right oh

00:29:31
interesting why that why i had that emotion what was

00:29:34
happening at that time in my life and there's times

00:29:37
during you know when i was in my before i

00:29:39
was into my teens in my 20s my 30s my 40s my 50s and even right now you know

00:29:46
in my 60s like there's just shit that happens that if i could put it to a song

00:29:51
i know know it might resonate different with me than if I'm just reading it on a piece of paper.

00:29:58
What can I ask because to touch on what she just said

00:30:01
when they hear their song back to them

00:30:04
is there anything like that like

00:30:06
I never thought of wondering if I would think of

00:30:10
it differently I heard somebody else saying it back to me do they

00:30:13
feel I mean I'm I don't know if you know but it's like how do

00:30:17
they feel afterwards i don't think it's at the i

00:30:20
mean sure okay so hearing

00:30:23
it back to them i think makes it more

00:30:26
real yeah and that's

00:30:29
not necessarily hearing about from me to them it could be them recording it

00:30:32
themselves and hearing it back i think the aha moments generally come from i

00:30:39
think the aha moments generally come from that permission that we give ourselves

00:30:44
to So I actually live in...

00:30:49
That moment. What I mean by that is, to your point, G-Rex, when we write things

00:30:57
down, that can be incredibly powerful.

00:31:02
The way that I look at songwriting, I've

00:31:05
kind of stolen this phrase a little bit from another

00:31:09
keynote speaker that I was speaking at an event for a

00:31:12
year or two ago and he had said

00:31:15
something along the lines of you know to meditate is to

00:31:18
pray is to talk to God and to

00:31:21
meditate is to hear that conversation or to

00:31:24
pray is to talk to God to meditate is to

00:31:27
hear what God has to say back to you the way

00:31:30
that I look at songwriting is the manifestation of that conversation so when

00:31:36
you allow yourself to sit in that moment sit in those feelings sit in those

00:31:41
those potential solutions and actually write down into song whatever's going on for you.

00:31:48
How is that going to serve you in the moment is going to be very different to

00:31:52
how the song serves you when you listen back to it.

00:31:54
And that's going to be very different

00:31:56
to how you listen back to it in two weeks, two months, two years.

00:32:03
I'll give you an example. My song Be Brave, I wrote that in the middle of nowhere

00:32:08
of Connecticut when I was working as the outdoor science education teacher at

00:32:13
an outdoor science education school.

00:32:16
And it was one piano in the entire place or no other instruments, just a piano.

00:32:22
And I decided I was moving to Washington, D.C. after Connecticut.

00:32:27
And that felt right to me that I knew that was what Source was leading me to do. But I was petrified.

00:32:35
I hadn't yet realized I was petrified, but I was petrified. Keep in mind, I'm from New Zealand.

00:32:41
There are four sheep to every human, three cows to every human.

00:32:45
It's a small country, population five million.

00:32:49
I was moving to the nation's capital and arguably the most powerful country in the world.

00:32:54
Okay. That was a lot for me to process. So I sat down at the piano,

00:32:59
I got into my zone, my prayer zone, which is songwriting, and I just started

00:33:04
playing piano, whatever came.

00:33:06
And then these words just came to me, whether it's, you know,

00:33:08
and in my mind, those words are messages from God.

00:33:12
So I wrote this song, Being Brave. And I tell you, that song served me so well

00:33:19
in my move to Washington, D.C.

00:33:21
That song served me so well in March of 2020.

00:33:26
That song served me so well when I went on my first U.S. tour.

00:33:32
That song served me so well when I ended things with my abusive ex.

00:33:39
That song served me so, like, has continued,

00:33:42
but the meaning of that serving serving has changed

00:33:46
and evolved over the years but the lyrics haven't

00:33:50
changed i've changed i've grown and the

00:33:53
song has just continued to evolve with me

00:33:56
because it's mine it's really pretty i i love this i love this i oh my god i

00:34:05
i'm so excited i'm gonna write my song yeah you are i love that so where can

00:34:11
our listeners find your book is it on amazon or It is on Amazon.

00:34:16
If you look up just Emma G on Amazon Books, there is also a link.

00:34:21
What is that? I will be setting up. I don't think it is.

00:34:24
I will set up a link on my website to all of my books.

00:34:28
This is my first interactive workbook, but my third technical book, my third actual book.

00:34:38
Sound like a chicken my third actual book is going

00:34:41
to be coming out in may this in time for my u.s tour

00:34:44
which kicks off in july in partnership

00:34:48
with the hard rock cafe which i'm very excited about

00:34:51
i'll be running youth empowerment through songwriting workshops around

00:34:54
the country which will culminate in performances with the

00:34:58
young people at hard rocks around the country so

00:35:01
i'm really excited about that but it's all amazon but people

00:35:03
can you know the best way really to stay in touch and updated

00:35:07
is to hit to my website m at g music.com and

00:35:10
sign up for my newsletter so that i update you as things

00:35:13
progress i love this thank you

00:35:16
so much emma this has been wonderful honestly oh yes like you

00:35:19
and my eyes you open my ears i'm so

00:35:22
excited about this you are fantastic you're you

00:35:25
are just you're badass thanks one to

00:35:28
no one yeah thanks true to no one thank you i

00:35:32
really appreciate it guys it's it's i know

00:35:36
this like it feels like a lot to a lot of people you know because when

00:35:39
i first moved here i was just emoji the musician the singer

00:35:41
songwriter and things have very much evolved but you know it's it this is the

00:35:46
hard work i love this i love it i love this you're fantastic i am so excited

00:35:54
to get this out for you bye y'all thank you so so much for listening to this episode. I'm G-Rex.

00:36:00
And I'm Dirty Skittles. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.

00:36:05
We'd love to listen to your feedback.

00:36:08
We can't do this without you guys.

00:36:12
It's okay to be not okay. Just make sure you're.

00:36:15
Music.

season 5,