The Music My Dad Left Me
This episode of Music Is My Mantra delves into the profound relationship between the host and her father, exploring themes of addiction, loss, and healing. The host reflects on her father's larger-than-life personality and the challenges his struggles with alcohol and drugs presented to their family dynamics. As she recounts the impact of his passing and her journey through grief, she emphasizes the therapeutic power of music as a means of processing complex emotions. The episode culminates in a grounding meditation, inviting listeners to take a moment for self-reflection amid the chaos of life. Ultimately, this heartfelt narrative serves as a reminder of the importance of mental health and wellness in the face of personal trauma.
Takeaways:
- Music can serve as a powerful tool for emotional healing and processing trauma.
- Personal relationships, especially with parents, significantly shape our identities and life choices.
- Grounding techniques and meditation are essential for mental wellness and self-reflection.
- The impact of addiction on family dynamics can lead to complex emotions like relief and anger.
- Creative expression through songwriting can help articulate and process complex feelings surrounding loss.
- Understanding the generational trauma from family relationships can aid in personal healing journeys.
Navigating the complexities of grief and addiction, this episode delves into the intimate reflections of a daughter grappling with the legacy of her father, a larger-than-life car salesman who battled alcoholism. The host shares a poignant narrative, recounting the journey from childhood memories to adult realizations, as she reflects on her father's impact and the resulting emotional turmoil from their tumultuous relationship. The episode paints a vivid picture of her father's charismatic personality juxtaposed with his struggles, providing listeners with a heartfelt exploration of how addiction can distort familial bonds and the painful journey towards understanding and acceptance.
As the host reminisces about her father's life, she reveals the challenges faced after his passing and the complexities of processing grief amidst unresolved feelings. The discussion touches on the harsh realities of his homelessness, the impact of his addiction on family dynamics, and the longing for connection that often goes unfulfilled. Listeners are invited into a space of vulnerability, as the host candidly shares her own struggles with addiction, her path to sobriety, and how her music has served as a vital outlet for processing her emotions. Through her songs, she weaves a narrative that not only honors her father’s memory but also serves as a form of healing.
Towards the end of the episode, the tone shifts towards hope and healing as the host leads listeners into a grounding meditation, encouraging a moment of reflection and self-care. This transition signifies the importance of wellness and mental health in the aftermath of loss, urging listeners to embrace their journeys of growth and creative expression. The episode is a touching reminder of the complexities of love, loss, and the transformative power of music in navigating life's most challenging moments.
Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of Music Is My Mantra, where we explore the intersection between music and wellness.
Speaker A:Today I'll be telling you all about a very important relationship that I've had in my life.
Speaker A:Then I'll end this episode with a little bit of a grounding meditation.
Speaker A: The year is: Speaker A:It's honestly hard to believe because my goal is to film these episodes every Sunday this month.
Speaker A:The Sunday that I'm meant to be filming this episode is January 19th.
Speaker A:I'll actually be helping out with an event that is meant to support people and Los Angeles process some trauma after the fires that happened the last week or so.
Speaker A:So I'm recording this on a Friday.
Speaker A:January 19th is one my uncle's birthday.
Speaker A: dad passed four years ago in: Speaker A: rs, because I feel like after: Speaker A:We were in such a strange time at that point in our lives.
Speaker A:This was still coming out of COVID so there was not a lot of resources for funerals or burials.
Speaker A:The thing about my dad was that at the end of his life, he was homeless.
Speaker A:And I want to say that it was a shock to hear that he had passed, but I honestly just felt sadness and equally relief.
Speaker A:So I want to talk to you about this relationship because it is a huge part of who I am.
Speaker A:Obviously, that's half of who you are is your parents.
Speaker A:And I'm not really sure where to start, honestly.
Speaker A:My dad was larger than life.
Speaker A:He had this super outgoing Persona where he was always just cracking jokes and making people smile, as most of my entire family on my dad's side did, or still do.
Speaker A:He was a car salesman.
Speaker A:He ran dealerships all across the country.
Speaker A:So you can kind of imagine this charming personality maybe now, unfortunately, what I still see to be pretty common is that sales is a really hard job and retail is a really hard job.
Speaker A:And it's long hours and it's working holidays and weekends.
Speaker A:Oftentimes when you have somebody, when you have that amount of pressure on yourself, it becomes really easy to fall into bad habits.
Speaker A:And I still see this because I do work in the car industry.
Speaker A:But, you know, people are trying to escape their families and their lives at home because they spend all their time at work.
Speaker A:When they go home to their families, there's oftentimes a lot of drama or they can't provide what they want to because they're so busy trying to provide money for their family.
Speaker A:As opposed to being present and giving the family the love and attention that they might actually want, want or need.
Speaker A:I've seen this firsthand in my adult life and as a child growing up.
Speaker A:My parents divorced at a pretty young age.
Speaker A:I was about five years old.
Speaker A:My dad moved out to Hawaii where my grandpa had car dealerships and my mom moved to Arizona.
Speaker A:The main reason of their divorce was that my dad had a drinking problem and a drug problem too.
Speaker A:With his larger than life personality, I, I can't help but look at his life, think that he must have been hiding so much.
Speaker A:There must have been so much unprocessed pain and emotions.
Speaker A:My dad's parents were both pretty stoic people.
Speaker A:Not a lot of love and attention in a sense of like physical attention or that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And there was always, always with my grandma and with my grandpa, a, a big focus on money and scarcity, mindset, manipulation and games.
Speaker A:I saw a little bit of that, you know, growing up, but I didn't really understand it until later on.
Speaker A:I can understand how my dad wanted to prove himself.
Speaker A:Just never felt good enough.
Speaker A:And that's a big story that I've had to work through myself.
Speaker A:But I think the, the most tragic thing about my dad's addiction is that he never wanted to really look at it.
Speaker A:He would always just laugh it off and say, oh, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a drunk.
Speaker A:There's a difference.
Speaker A:Growing up, I just thought that was normal and I would laugh and I thought it was funny.
Speaker A:Now looking back, I think it's.
Speaker A:It's really sad because he chose alcohol over his family, over my sister and I.
Speaker A:So a big part of my processing, if you've listened to the first episode or two, is music.
Speaker A: ave Yourself, about my dad in: Speaker A:That was the year that he and my stepmom got divorced.
Speaker A:And I knew that my stepmom had been enabling him not just in a way to fuel his addiction, but also enabling him to continue living the lifestyle that they had, which wasn't a bad lifestyle, but I just knew that without her, his life was going to fall apart.
Speaker A:I wrote that song on New Year's Eve.
Speaker A:It was a pleading, begging cry to my dad to stop drinking.
Speaker A:I started going to Al Anon meetings and that was the very first time that I was able to speak about my relationship with my dad.
Speaker A:You know, he never was physically, physically abusive, but he had said some things out of drunken slurs and whatnot that were hurtful and just, it was really tough to want to have a relationship with him.
Speaker A:So I wrote him a letter.
Speaker A:The letter basically said, you know, I can't wait to have a relationship with you when you get sober.
Speaker A:He ended up calling me a couple weeks or months later.
Speaker A:I forget exactly the timeline, but he just laughed it off, like I was kidding.
Speaker A:I asked him if he saw the letter and he.
Speaker A:He dismissed it.
Speaker A:And he always just would say, you can't.
Speaker A:Can't expect my old self to start new habits, that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But yeah, I did because I thought that maybe if he loved me enough that he would change.
Speaker A:The problem with alcohol is that while you're drinking, your reality becomes very myopic.
Speaker A:And so if.
Speaker A:Even if you have a mindset of a story that might not be real, the more that you see into that story, but you don't actually, it gets harder and harder to see the truth, and you start believing more and more the stories that you tell yourself and the stories that are negative or, you know, this like, negative selft Talk.
Speaker A: So in: Speaker A:And I thought I could be an example to him.
Speaker A:Maybe he would see how I'm changing my life and he would want to do the same.
Speaker A:Quitting drinking was hard at first, and then six months went by.
Speaker A:Ten months a year, two years.
Speaker A:In about two years, I had a little bit of family drama.
Speaker A:And I said, well, you know, it's fine.
Speaker A:I went two years without drinking.
Speaker A:I had some beers and I was with my family.
Speaker A:I was in a safe space.
Speaker A:But I really realized how it didn't make me feel good.
Speaker A:I wasn't even hungover.
Speaker A:I just felt like emotionally down.
Speaker A:And it was really even harder to get out of my own negative thought patterns.
Speaker A:So I just continued to not drink.
Speaker A:In July of this year, it'll be nine years of no alcohol.
Speaker A:And when I say no alcohol, I had some beer.
Speaker A:I had wine with my family at Christmas once.
Speaker A:I had a cocktail at a Pride party several years ago when I was performing.
Speaker A:And then I got a parking ticket, which I took as a bad omen.
Speaker A:So, you know, nobody's perfect.
Speaker A:But I don't.
Speaker A:If anyone asks me, I don't drink.
Speaker A:I don't ever.
Speaker A:I always just choose a mocktail or a soda water or something.
Speaker A:And a lot of that does stem from my dad.
Speaker A:I'll just realize that it doesn't make me feel very good.
Speaker A:As I've been writing songs and reflecting about his passing, I really started.
Speaker A:It was really tough.
Speaker A:I felt a lot of guilt.
Speaker A:I wanted to plan a memorial service for him.
Speaker A:None of his family would get back to me about their schedules.
Speaker A:No one seemed to be to want to be involved.
Speaker A: And so two years later, in: Speaker A:That gave me a lot of closure.
Speaker A:I got counsel from this priest for, like, six months, mostly to talk through things about my relationship with my dad and how, you know, for the last five or six years of his life, we didn't see each other ever.
Speaker A:I talked to him, like, one time, and then he would randomly leave me voicemails on my phone.
Speaker A:When he moved back to California, he'd tell me how he wanted to come to my shows and all this stuff.
Speaker A:And I could just tell by the way that he was speaking that he was just completely wasted.
Speaker A:And I felt like I was protecting myself by not seeing him because it would have just hurt more to see him in the state that he evolved into instead of how I remembered him as, like, Superman.
Speaker A:A lot of songs have come out of that relationship with my dad.
Speaker A:And the day that he passed, I was on a mountain skiing in Big Bear.
Speaker A:It's the only time that I've been in my adult life.
Speaker A:Of course.
Speaker A:Apparently my family was trying to reach me.
Speaker A:They couldn't because I was skiing on a mountain with no service.
Speaker A:So it wasn't until I got home later that night that I got the call from my uncle.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was.
Speaker A:It was terrible.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:I was in shock, but also, I wasn't surprised.
Speaker A:I felt relief, but also so much anger and sadness.
Speaker A:The very next day, I wrote this song called you'd Favorite Thing.
Speaker A:That was my way of trying to process what I felt.
Speaker A:And I just.
Speaker A:I sat down, found a rhythm of chords on the guitar, and the words just were crystal clear.
Speaker A:They came out so quickly.
Speaker A:I've put this song on my Instagram a few times, but I haven't recorded it yet officially.
Speaker A:In a.
Speaker A:In a way, it hasn't been released.
Speaker A: hat I started recording it in: Speaker A:It was tough for me to want to put that song out, so maybe down the road, but I've performed it quite a bit.
Speaker A:That year, all of my friends and family that came to my shows, we all had a good cry.
Speaker A:I still have so much to say about.
Speaker A:About that, but I think that's just one of the reasons why.
Speaker A:Why I'm so passionate about wellness and mental health and the mind.
Speaker A:Because my dad had such a big Heart.
Speaker A:And he might have been a little narcissistic, but I really think that was just a coping mechanism as well.
Speaker A:We'll never know.
Speaker A:And there are a lot of really good memories.
Speaker A:So I wanted to share a little bit about that day when I was skiing.
Speaker A:There was a storm that was coming in later that day, so we didn't know how long we'd be able to stay on the mountain.
Speaker A:And I went with my roommate Trina at the time, so she was getting lessons.
Speaker A:I went up to the top of the hill by myself.
Speaker A:Most of the people there were snowboarding, so snowboarders really couldn't get to the top of this peak.
Speaker A:And I had the entire mountain to myself, which was incredible.
Speaker A:It was clear skies.
Speaker A:You couldn't.
Speaker A:You wouldn't imagine that a storm was coming.
Speaker A:It was just.
Speaker A:I felt so liberated because this was the first time that I.
Speaker A:I paid for skiing, and that.
Speaker A:That was a really big deal for me because on an artist's salary, $100 is a really big deal.
Speaker A:And it's the difference between paying your rent or your car bill or whatever it is.
Speaker A:So I finally decided that I wanted to do this for myself and go have fun.
Speaker A:And we ran up to the mountain.
Speaker A:I had the whole hill to myself.
Speaker A:And as I'm on the chairlift, this song came to mind.
Speaker A:And I grew up going to church every day with my mom.
Speaker A:Every day.
Speaker A:We weren't Catholic.
Speaker A:We were.
Speaker A:We were a Lutheran.
Speaker A:We would go every Sunday.
Speaker A:I sang in church.
Speaker A:We didn't have enough money to buy lessons because I always wanted singing lessons, but my mom would always say sing in church.
Speaker A:So I was in every single band that I could be a choir.
Speaker A:I grew up listening to a lot of Christian music.
Speaker A:This song that came into mind, it was a song by Mercy Me, and it's called I Can Only Imagine.
Speaker A:I can only imagine when that day will come.
Speaker A:It's a beautiful song.
Speaker A:I wasn't even thinking about the words.
Speaker A:It was just like such.
Speaker A:It was so loud in me that I just started singing, and I felt really joyful.
Speaker A:And I'm skiing by myself and having the best time.
Speaker A:And so it was maybe a day or two after the fact, and I was thinking about how that song came up.
Speaker A:And I looked in a little bit further to what that song was about.
Speaker A:The song I Can Only Imagine is.
Speaker A:Was written by a songwriter who.
Speaker A:Whose dad had passed, and he was writing it to try and understand what it must be like to meet God and to enter heaven when you die.
Speaker A:I just lost it Because I don't know where the last time I heard that song was.
Speaker A:The words just were still in the back of my mind.
Speaker A:It was like I knew that he was gone or something.
Speaker A:It was really trippy.
Speaker A:I think connecting with that song just allowed me to process everything on a different level.
Speaker A:Like I said, it was a little bit messy afterwards.
Speaker A:It took two years to actually finally have service for him.
Speaker A:It took me, you know, another year to actually want to forgive him for.
Speaker A:For dying.
Speaker A:Sounds so crazy.
Speaker A:But again, alcohol is a really tricky thing.
Speaker A:It is called a disease for a reason.
Speaker A:At some point, you just lose your power to it.
Speaker A:You lose your power in your decision making and your discernment because that myopic lens starts to take over.
Speaker A:I hope to one day put out a full record about my experience with him.
Speaker A:Because like I said, there were really good times too.
Speaker A:You know, whenever I hear Freebird, I think of him.
Speaker A:He was that guy.
Speaker A:He was when.
Speaker A:Whenever we'd see a live band, he would call out freebird.
Speaker A:And sometimes they would play it.
Speaker A:And he just loved that song.
Speaker A:He didn't get the joke behind it that people play that.
Speaker A:Like, people yell out that song when they, like, they want the band to end or it's, you know, just to be a jack.
Speaker A:But like, he loved that song and that guitar solo, and I just.
Speaker A:It still is epic.
Speaker A:He loved that song.
Speaker A:Kryptonite.
Speaker A:If I go crazy, then would you still call me Superman?
Speaker A:And like I said, I did think he was Superman.
Speaker A:I think we all want to see our parents in that light.
Speaker A:So it is pretty devastating when we realize that we might actually start to become wiser than they were or that we make better decisions that they did.
Speaker A:But also, it's really awesome because we are breaking generational trauma patterns.
Speaker A:So one thing that I learned from having somewhat unpredictable, spontaneous, larger than life, alcoholic dad was how to disassociate.
Speaker A:In other words, how to live in my imagination.
Speaker A:Because there were moments where my reality was just completely not what I imagined and I couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker A: d healing journey was back in: Speaker A:Actually, I was living in New York at the time, but I happened to meet with this psychic at this event, very la, and she told me that if I wanted to get into this work, I needed to ground myself.
Speaker A:At the time I had purple hair.
Speaker A:I had no idea what that meant.
Speaker A:I just remember thinking, like, what?
Speaker A:I am grounded.
Speaker A:Like, my feet are on the ground.
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker A:So it's taken a while to embody it, and this is a theme with a lot of the practices that I've come across is that logically you can understand something, but it might take a lot more time and effort to actually embody it and to let it become a practice and then even longer for something to transform your life.
Speaker A:But music helps.
Speaker A:So with that, continue on the new theme of January and the new year of the Gregorian calendar.
Speaker A:I would like to do a little meditation for us.
Speaker A:So if you're driving right now, I hope you can just pause this and listen to it later when you're in a more comfortable position.
Speaker A:But if you have the luxury of being in a place where you can turn off distractions, I encourage you to do that.
Speaker A:You can turn down the lights if you want.
Speaker A:You can lay down, you can sit up for this.
Speaker A:There's really no rules.
Speaker A:The only rule is that you take a few minutes for yourself.
Courtney:Hey guys, Courtney here.
Courtney:Sorry to interrupt myself, but I decided to remove this part of the episode.
Speaker A:So that I could provide a better.
Courtney:Listening experience for you.
Courtney:I've remixed the audio with live recordings of the ocean field sounds from nature and also healing instruments from Pure Sound Bath in Redondo Beach.
Speaker A:Check it out.
Courtney:You can go download it on my website at CourtneyMkenna Rocks podcast and there you can keep the MP3 so you can listen to it as many times as you need.
Courtney:Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Music Is My Mantra.
Courtney:I hope you found inspiration to help you on your journey of growth and creative expression.
Courtney:If you're enjoying these episodes, I would.
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Courtney:A review or share it with somebody who might benefit from these conversations.
Courtney:Your support really helps this podcast to reach more people, which has the ability to create an exponential ripple of healing and good vibes out into the world.
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Courtney:Until then, keep going.
Courtney:Go live your best life healthy, wealthy and wise.
Courtney:See you next Monday.
