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" By the time I got to songwriting, I had been faced with a lot of troubles as a result of my own collective of trauma. I was someone who instinctively figured out that writing songs about the struggle helps you with the struggle. "

Mary Gauthier

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" What I really like is this salted calamari - with jalapenos on top. "

Mary Gauthier

Top

Really

" The belief when your mother gives you away is that there's something deeply wrong. Mothers don't give babies away. There's something wrong with me, something unlovable, something seriously flawed in me. It's a fundamental thing; it's precognitive. You feel it rather than think it. How could you not? "

" I've always been drawn to the hard story, the trauma, because I think art can turn it around. "

" What matters is what happens in the soul of an artist when you're playing. "

" I got interviewed by one writer who started with the line, 'Mary Gauthier is a woman who clearly doesn't care how she looks.' I do too. It's just that I'm not very good at it. "

" I don't know who my dad is. "

" What I'm finding is there's an awful lot about adoption and relinquishment and the complicated nature of family that we, as human beings, haven't been able to have a real discussion about yet without a lot of censorship. "

" I try not to eat cakes, but sugar screams my name. "

" I keep seeing the headline on articles that says something like 'Mary Gauthier Helping Our Veterans.' It's troubling - and it's condescending. Whatever I'm doing as a songwriter to help them tell their stories, they're giving it back to me double, triple, quadruple. "

Mary Gauthier

Doing

Back

" I've got lots of problems. Being gay isn't one of them. "

" I'm grateful to songwriting and recovery to bringing me to a place of peace. "

Mary Gauthier

Peace

Place

" I spent my 18th birthday in jail. Charges were dropped as long as I promised never to return to the state of Kansas. My parents took me home to Louisiana. I lasted there a week. Then I ran away. "

Mary Gauthier

Long

Parents

" There's an ocean of misunderstanding. It's called the civilian-military divide. I had a lot to learn about our military - who they are, what burdens they carry. "

" I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth. "

" Being in recovery for a lot of years now, I've worked with a lot of people who've gotten sober and sat with a lot of folks who are suffering. Bearing witness is a really underrated thing; it's a big damn deal. "

" There's a universal inside of me. So if I tell my story, you're going to see parts of your story in it. I don't know which parts, but we all overlap. We're all very much alike. "

Mary Gauthier

Story

Know

" I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song. "

" Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose. "

Mary Gauthier

Songwriting

Purpose

" I think music is the highest form of healing. "

" I don't play everything I write. I mean, everything I write is not that good. I bring out into the world the ones I think that are really worthy of an audience's attention. "

" Songs have been my greatest teachers and continue to be really important in my life. "

" If I write for beauty and truth, the songs will find their way to me. Then, it's the songs that speak to the audience, and they can become part of the tribe that is into what I do. "

" I have such a good life. It's something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams. "

" I was in the orphanage in New Orleans until I was almost a year old. I don't think I ever got held by my mama, so that was completely and utterly traumatic. I think it was trauma from the first breath, and I think I've spent my whole life trying to heal from that trauma. So it shaped my brain. "

" When I became a songwriter, it was out of some sort of desperation. I needed to create something. I had to latch on to something, and the guitar was what I grabbed. "

" I'm openly gay, and I've got a major label record deal in Nashville, and it happened when I was 42 years old. It's not supposed to happen that way. "

" The world doesn't need any more pretty good songs. "

Mary Gauthier

Good

Need

" My experience is that the universal is the personal. If you can get past your navel-gazing into the deepest part of yourself as a writer, you find everyone - we're all there. "

" There's such a thing as a tribe - and family of choice. "

" I got issues. Boy, have I got issues. "