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" I came to music and knowing a little bit about life, and I came to music knowing a lot about business - and that's a real advantage. By the time I came to music, I had purchased real estate, opened restaurants, and been in the business world, so the music business didn't blindside me. "

Mary Gauthier

Time

World

Business

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

Mary Gauthier

Songwriting

Purpose

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

" What I was told is that I was born to a mother who was a Catholic, while her boyfriend was not. They couldn't get married unless they put me up for adoption. "

Mary Gauthier

Her

Mother

" I knew I had that Cajun heritage, that Acadian heritage; I just feel it. And my gut says Irish on the other side. Irish and French, that's what I feel. When you're young, it doesn't matter so much, but as you get older, I would suspect part of the ageing process is to wonder about your ancestors - who were they? What were their lives like? "

" I love SongwritingWith:Soldiers. "

Mary Gauthier

Love

I Love

" I've learned our soldiers are so much like everybody else. They're just put into an extreme situation. "

Mary Gauthier

Just

Much

" 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. "

" War is hell. Sending young people to conflicts that are unwinnable and unresolvable - it puts them in a position where they're going to suffer. And yet their experience is that they're proud of their service, and they should be. Service freely rendered is a noble thing. "

" When I first got sober, I hadn't read anything for six or seven years. I didn't have even that much focus. "

" 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. "

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

" In a lot of ways, songwriting helped save my life. "

" I'm a big fan of Lou Reed, and I do a lot of talking through songs. It's more effective with my vocal limitations and also more powerful to slightly sing sometimes. It depends on the emotion, but I'm never going to try to compete with great singers. "

" I think I'll always draw from being a person that doesn't know how to have a normal life, whatever a normal life is. "

" Once I got my life sorted and started to get healthy, then I was able to focus on writing. "

" People who have been through trauma, their souls are hurting. "

" I got sober at 27 and started writing around 30 and started playing music in public around 32, 33. "

" 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'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool. "

" I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably be in therapy all of my life. "

" I think each veteran's soul has something that it needs to say. I know from my own personal traumas, it's very hard to know what that is. But when I'm watching someone else struggle, it's not as confusing for me, 'cause it's not my struggle, so I can help identify that. "

" There's a lot of vulnerability in songs - I'm not talking about pop songs - from people that are in the art of songwriting more than the commercial enterprise of it. "

Mary Gauthier

Art

People

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

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

Mary Gauthier

Peace

Place

" 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. "

" 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

" When I finally got sober, I moved towards what I might have been if I hadn't been destroying myself when I was young. "

" I'm sort of stuck in adolescence in many ways, like most artists, and march to my own beat. "

" I think, because of the kind of writer I am, I can't do it halfway. I can't do it without dedicating my entire life to it. I have to give it a hundred percent. "