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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Mary Gauthier

Learn

Misunderstanding

Ocean

" We can't see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I'm forever trying to figure out what my own truth is. "

" 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 don't ever want to tie a song in a little bow. Life doesn't work that way, and war doesn't ever work that way. "

" I think we're very much in a mystery here in this life and that artists try to pierce the mystery with their art. "

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

" 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. "

" A song is an emotional lightning bolt - a good one, anyway. "

" 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. "

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

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

" In my early years, I couldn't find a community. I couldn't find anybody like me. I felt so isolated. There was nothing but shame and loneliness. "

Mary Gauthier

Early

Loneliness

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

Mary Gauthier

Just

Much

" Creating something beautiful out of pain helps ease the pain. So, that's kind of how I got to songwriting - quite honestly out of desperation. "

" 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. "

" A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them. "

" 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. "

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

" What I've found at 48 years old is that there's nothing about me that's unique. "

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

" It can take me many months to write one of my own songs. "

" I'm a traveler and a vagabond and an observer, and the songs come through that. And that's just the way it's going to be. "

" Music and books, I think, were the two things I trusted the most as a child - songs and books. "

" 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. "

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

Mary Gauthier

Good

Need

" 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 don't know who my dad is. "

" 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

" Songs are here to help us: they build bridges from heart to heart. "

Mary Gauthier

Build

Here