A little about me. Starting from when I was young, I was a singer/songwriter. At 4 ½, I recorded an original song for my grandma. It isn’t great, so I will spare you from listening. But, it was a spontaneous, original song that I made up while recording a tape that would be sent across five states, a tape so my grandma could hear my voice. In this short simple song, I asked my grandma and grandpa to come visit for Easter. How cute! And, my grandma heard the potential in that simple ad-lib song. She wrote a note to my Mom, and said, "you might want to save this". I'm so thankful she did. That tape was discovered in my Mom's basement just a few short years ago! After decades!

Thoughout those decades, unbeknownst to me, my identity was under attack.

​I was raised in the church, but in college I didn’t recognize God’s value, so didn’t talk to God or go to church.

Even after leaving the church and God as a teen, and coming back to God at 33, I still hated my voice. I picked up my guitar that I had laid down in high school. Started strumming, and God started giving me original songs! Now, as an adult, I was getting origianal songs, but I had a problem: I didn’t think I could sing (sound familiar?)

I even purchased an expensive "Taylor" guitar. As I told the salesperson at Guitar Works in downtown Richmond, “at least if the guitar sounds good, maybe people won’t notice my voice sounds awful”

I found a sound engineer from my local church and started recording the original songs God had (for some odd reason) given me. After he recorded, he wanted me to listen to the recording. I told him that I didn’t want to listen to the recording that he had made, because I hated my voice. He flat out told me that I had to get over it. Huh?

Fast forward to another scene. My sound engineer, Leroy, playing Willie Nelson for me, and pointing out how much nasal was in Willie’s voice. Only, amazingly, people still loved his singing. Hmmm…. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t even about having a ‘perfect voice’? Maybe all that has to happen is for me to believe in myself… which brings me to… socks!

Yes, Socks. I could go on a tangent about how as kids, my cousin and I vowed we would never become our mothers. We were on a long car trip, while our mothers talked about socks for over 30 minutes! Why did they? 30 minutes? How could they? Talking about Socks?