“Things I Never Thought I'd Say” with Sam Crane
Host Sam Crane interviews women in music as her special guests. Each episode focuses on a different woman. Sam delves deep and the guests offer up personal testimonies about the challenges they face, their mindset, how they overcame adversity and reflect on what they learned to tackle future challenges.
“Things I Never Thought I'd Say” with Sam Crane
Episode 5 - Part 1: Sarah Jay Hawley, Platinum-winning Singer-Songwriter
Welcome to Part 1 of the fifth episode of the exciting new podcast, 🎵Things I Never Thought I'd Say🎵 with your host - singer, songwriter, performer and producer Sam Crane.
It's all about women in music and their mindset.
On today's episode, Sam is interviewing Sarah Jay Hawley, a Platinum-winning singer-songwriter, mentor, course creator & vocal coach. Sarah Jay Hawley's career spans forty years. She has a passion for teaching vocals, performance skills, and songwriting and shares her wealth of experience from a place of authenticity and integrity.
Sarah answers these three questions ...
- Who she is?
- What things she never thought she'd say that she is now saying?
- What challenges she is facing now and how she can apply that winning mindset to overcome them?
Listen to this episode to find out more about Sarah and why she does what she does.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
[0:02] Career and Challenges
[14:03] Journey to Join Massive Attack
[20:22] Sarah’s Journey Through Adversity and Growth
[29:13] Navigating Disabilities and Neurodiversity
Check out Sarah’s socials:
https://www.facebook.com/sarahjayhawleyallthingsmusic/
https://www.instagram.com/sarahjayhawley/
https://www.youtube.com/sarahjayhawley
Check out Sarah’s music:
Dissolved Girl
Screaming
Urge To Breathe
🎵Things I Never Thought I’d Say🎵
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Connect with Sam Crane:
www.samcrane.com
www.facebook.com/samcranesoul
www.instagram.com/samcranemusic/
twitter.com/samcranemusic
www.youtube.com/samcranesinger
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Sponsorship:
🌟 Proudly Commissioned and Sponsored by Every Bird Records CIC:
Things I could've done yesterday. I'm doing them today, things I never thought I'd say, things I could've I'd Say and I've got the absolutely fantastic Sarah J Hawley with me. I'm so excited to have her here and to speak to her and to finally meet her. And for those of you listening, thinking, sarah J Hawley you should know. But if you don't know, this lady is absolutely incredible. She has got an amazing story and an amazing in music. She's, I would say, kind of like royalty.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, sam, I'll'll have that, but I'm not sure you take that because the reason we're saying this is because she'll explain herself anyway. She sang on the song, the amazing song, dissolved girl by massive attack from the album mezzanine hang on.
Speaker 2:I wrote that song, I didn't just sing on it whoa.
Speaker 1:So yes, I know whoa, okay so, yes, I'm glad you put me right there. So this is why I say royalty singer, songwriter, performer, amazing woman in music. She's teaching, she's giving back, but yeah, she's got the pedigree. I've seen here that you've played at Glastonbury and so many festivals around the world. But me too, even when I watch Glastonbury, I'm like I want to be there. I've been a few times, but I've never actually played there. I want to hear about all of this stuff as well. So she's playing at Glastonbury, oh my goodness. She's had her music played in the Matrix, the film the Matrix, oh yes. So anyone that's thinking about sync licensing, this is your woman, like I say royalty. Anyway, that's enough of me, girl fanning over you.
Speaker 2:Everybody is sarah j holly thanks, sam, that was quite an introduction. I'm not sure I can live up to that sitting in my kitchen in sheffield, but hey, I'll give it a go cool, thank you.
Speaker 1:So I'm telling people in my words about you, but please tell people about yourself, who you are, what you've done, where you're up to now in your words.
Speaker 2:Well, you've just kind of said it really, and I'm going to be straight off up front, I have an ADHD, an autistic brain, and that is too big a question for me. There's fireworks going off in my head right now of paralysis, of too many things to say about that very, very wide, open question. So, yes, I am a singer and a songwriter and a vocal coach. Things that I'm really excited about at the moment is I've just finished a memoir called the Dissolved Girl, which is about my journey as a female musician in music been a've been a professional musician now for, dare I say, 40 years, and I've been making music for 50 years because I started singing and writing when I was about four, five. My parents were musicians and I can't believe that amount of time is coming out of my mouth. So there's something grandam feeling that's mid-menopause, it's like okay, so I've got to own this stage of life and this amount of years in this business. I can't believe I've even managed to stay in it this long. To be honest, there must be something the calling, the healing, the journeying, the process, the excitement, the crashes, the you know, the adhd brain that I have. There's something about the industry that attracts a lot of neurodiverse people. A lot of neurodiverse people also fall through the cracks which is something probably in another podcast to talk about with managing that kind of brain with all kinds of addictions. And yeah, you know, the book was originally called Zen, drugs and Rock and Roll, which is a stage show that I've written, which is a spoken word multimedia piece. I made all the films for it and the music spoken word. That's hopefully coming out the same time as the book which is out with publishers at the moment. So any publishers out there who want to have a look at it or female, you know, I'm all.
Speaker 2:I'm a real pioneer for women in the business because, as much as it was pretty horrendous and wonderful, but also horrendous, being a woman in the music business in the 80s and 90s where a level of sexism and kind of, you know, borderline abuse was a weekly happening, arse pinching, boob grabbing, comments that if someone said them to my daughter I would knock them out, kind of my life in the music business, he just took it on the whatever and got on with it. So hopefully, you know, that's changing but it's not changing fast enough, it's not changing quick enough. It's still a very white, male dominated industry. Brilliant women like yourself and myself and other brilliant women that I know are having the narrative, hopefully to try and change that. But that's sort of where I am, that front line, pioneering these conversations to enable change to move through.
Speaker 2:You know, for me it was always. I really struggled lots of masking lots of persona that left me very vulnerable because I wasn't then in a good place to be able to speak truth, hold boundaries. Things I've learned as I've got older have left a lot of women very vulnerable, not only in the music business but in all kinds of business, but the music business particularly, I think, because it is rock and roll and there is this kind of alcohol fueled occasions where people's boundaries are slippery, shall we say, and it all gets really difficult.
Speaker 1:So there you go.
Speaker 2:I'm just kind of in everything or everywhere all at once, non-linear as my brain is curvy. Linear brain that I have is in this big mosh pit of happenings that is my life. So, yeah, the book's hopefully coming out, the theatre show is written and done, so kind of that's on the back burner. I've only got so much energy and whilst things I'd never thought I'd say which is one of the questions you asked me is I'm not really bothered about touring. You know, when my life was addicted to travel and busy and running around the world, it was a place settling. Maybe post-menopause I'll be a bit more who knows the other side of this.
Speaker 2:As my friend said, post-menopause is a bit like coming in onto the stage out of the wings. Feel like I'm in the wings at the moment, not yet ready to be on the stage, and the second act is not quite begun. So I'm just kind of like a squirrel, hoarding creative brilliance and things writings and music and making music and courses. I'm writing courses to help facilitate songwriters and courses for embodied voice, workshops for well-being. I mean, I've got so much going on. It's ridiculous. I need a team. So I also again anyone out there that wants to join in the the team of vocal peaks, get in touch and I need help. I need a community. I need a bigger tribe to help me get come up and move forward with all of these great things that I want to do that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I'd love to be on your team I mean from what you're talking about. But if there's anyone listening that would like to get involved, please I'll put all the details in the show notes. Get in touch.
Speaker 1:I'll put you in touch with Sarah J, but what an offer wow, yeah, so what you're telling us is I love the fact about your honesty, your authenticity, because people sometimes think let's get into that and it's shiny and it's exciting and it's fun and it is all those things, but there's a lot of stuff that it's not as well, and you tell it as it is. So, from a shiny, fun point of view, can you give us some of your highlights of your career?
Speaker 2:Well world tour with Massive Attack for the Mezzanine album. That was spectacular Really. I mean I'd always wanted lying in my bunk bed as a little girl in Skegness, where I'm from, with frost on the inside of the windows because we were skint. My daydreams, watching the clock tick, thinking, oh, thinking, oh, my god, get me out of here. My dream was to travel to see the world and had no idea how that was going to happen from that place, and when it happened, it happened through.
Speaker 2:Music was the vehicle for me to have an education and meet the most amazing people and travel the world in a kind of safe way, I suppose. Being neurodiverse, not knowing I was then, I'm not sure I would have had the well, who has the capacity to run around the world for two years and all the funding or the wherewithal, especially in the you know 90s, when there wasn't really social media, there wasn't sat nav, there wasn't any, you know, there weren't mobiles really, you know basic little Nokia things but didn't have that easy guidance system that my daughter now has when she's running around the world posting everything she's doing every five minutes, anyway. So that was quite an incredible experience and I studied at art college for five years. I'm a keen photographer my camera, I've got an amazing tour photo book which I'm hoping to publish alongside the book of 90 superstars, and you know our running around the world playing with the big boys and girls that I had that massive imposter syndrome. There was a lot of family crisis going off in the background so I was juggling quite a lot at the same time. But yeah, on the whole, and it's a whirlwind, you know. I mean you're on stage somewhere one minute and then you're off and then you're in another country the next day, tour bus mania. It's exhausting, it's exhilarating.
Speaker 2:The comedown was really hard to manage. Again that silence. After the cheers I didn't have a home to fall back into when I came back Very dysfunctional family background. So it was a real, really tricky time for me. And there was also this idea that investing in that and reaching that peak would fill the hole in my soul. And it didn't. It didn't fix me, it didn't do the never I'm going to be happy forever after if I achieve this. It made the hole bigger, in fact. So I started to then investigate okay, so this need I have for belonging, connection, community, I'm going to do this family really, I mean jesus, rock and roll, tour buses, brilliant, family, but maybe as dysfunctional as they come when it was wild. I can't really, I don't, you know, I'll be giving away. It was wild, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tokyo, mount fuji festival in its first year, but there was a hurricane so the stage, main stage, was blown off the mountain. That was insane. So, holed up in a tiny hotel with every rock star you can imagine from the 90s going mental, that was an unforgettable one. I know Iceland. I absolutely loved the gigs there. I liked the smaller gigs.
Speaker 2:Actually being on a stadium stage, as fabulous as it was. There's a real disconnection from the audience. You know as big as those audiences are watching Radiohead backstage. Who we were playing with? Again, I think it was Ireland. That's the other thing. Countries blur into each other. It all becomes a bit of a like again, a whirlwind, whirlpool, roller coaster blurred a little bit, you know. And then you land and and also I was singing the same songs every night, every gig.
Speaker 2:I got bored. Dare am I allowed to say that I got bored on world tour with massive attack Jesus, because I'm a creator and a writer and an artist and that was almost a session musician gig, and that time in my life I realized there were fundamental differences and what I got from the process of writing songs and making music I was at the beginning of realising was actually more valuable than what I thought I might get from fame, yes, which is my next book, which is titled I want to live forever, which is about why we artists, you know that search quest for fame and what is it and the why of it, especially these days with this pseudo-narcissistic overload of social media that we all have bought into. It's insane, literally. I think it's actually insane so, and how addictive all of that is. But yeah, some brilliant highlights, but you know some of mine also. Then I was on the road with um. I recorded some songs with Shara Nelson, who was another massive attack singer, with a house and dance music producer called Charles Webster.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of touring in Europe after with him and our more Northern tribe, which felt more family, it felt more connected, it was smaller.
Speaker 2:The gigs were brilliant. I mean it was like like I love electronica and it was a little bit more jazz and a little bit more artsy art, pop, art, rock, I mean I know massive attack, have that brilliant urban trip-hop vibe which is very roots, very dark, I mean the way they and I love that. You know I love dancing in the shadows but they kind of embrace. They embraced that and I think that was we met on. We met in the shadows really of of life, which is still where I play a lot, but there's kind of a time to come out of the shadows and I'm really I'm just looking back on my life and writing this book. It's really interesting to hear you and other people talk about what I've achieved, because I've sort of managed to have a career that's quite significant and magnificent in the music business, but not that many people have heard of me, so I've managed to remain kind of invisible. Yet millions of people have heard my voice, yeah, but isn't that good.
Speaker 1:So you can go to the supermarket, you can walk down the street and so, if you want the fame, you can get on the stage and people adore you. But you could go to your local Tesco in your slippers if you wanted to. I mean, I'm not saying that you do, but you know that I've been known, but you don't feel like you've got to put a face on and glam up and every move is being watched and you don't have that privacy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all the yearning for intimacy and connection, and it's one thing to be looked at, completely other thing to be seen, and I wanted to be seen and I didn't. Again, it was a process and I didn't realize it while I was stumbling through. You know, trying to stay thin enough, trying to work with all of the and I'm not naturally thin and I'm, you know, I enjoy having a bigger body that's more voluptuous. You know, rock star skinny is not me, it's hard work and I don't enjoy being that. Yet again, there's all that projection of it's got a little bit better, I think. But don't think so really. I think it's. You know, there's a lot of masking off these lip service that things have got a bit better, when really they I'm not sure they have got that much better. Women, the perception of women, the ideology, the idea, what's it called? Ah, menopause brains come now. I've lost some vocabulary from my incredibly vocabulary full brain.
Speaker 1:But while you're thinking about that, I'd like to know, and I'm sure the listeners would like to how did you even get into Massive Attack?
Speaker 2:I was running around London like a headless chicken. I'd moved to London with a musician and we were playing the scene and we played loads of great gigs. I'd already written quite a few albums before I even met Massive Attack, that I was looking to get signed with. Every record deal I got offered felt like some kind of prison sentence. I was commitment phobic in all my relationships and a record deal felt like do you mean I've got to sing hard rock for the next seven years, otherwise no. So I found it really difficult and I probably was saved by that. A lot of those opinion. I was brave enough to say no a lot of the time. But also, there's a fine line, isn't there, between fear and bravery, which I'm still, which we all manage to. Um, I don't know. It's a line to tread. I went to see a very lascivious agent in Crouch End with some CDs in my bag. He was looking to be an agent for me and my band members music and he just turned out to be a creep. You know, I was in that's the other thing On my own in this bloke's house. He got a bit weird, it's another story. So I left furious, went to the nearest pub to drown my sorrows and bumped into a really old friend from art college. We had an afternoon. Sesh got a bit hammered. I gave him a cd. We caught up. It was brilliant afternoon. You know.
Speaker 2:Got myself off home the next day Massive Attacks manager called me and I didn't know that this guy, jason, was a photographer. Well, I knew he was a photographer but I didn't know he knew their manager and he was doing some photos for them. They were looking for a singer that was a bit more rocky, if you like, because the 90s it was, you know, the kind of Alanis Morissette and Gwen Stefani and Annie Lennox, those kind of powerhouse women were coming up and out. So they were looking for that bit ballsy and my release at the time, screaming, was that song, yeah. So he called me and it's out of the blue. And just as I was miserable and thinking why the hell have I moved to london if streets aren't paved with gold? Oh, worries me, what am I gonna do? I'm sick of working in a bloody toilet to pay the rent, la, la, uh, yeah, that's just so that I was somehow on the you know just this constant. I think these things come up where you least expect them. But if you keep your nose down, eyes on the prize, things out of the blue will pop up and in. Yeah, and it was incredible, obviously massively excited.
Speaker 2:And they wanted me to write a song for the soundtrack for the film Welcome to Sarajevo, because Tracy Thorne was going to write it but had stepped off. I'm sure that she's got her own private story about that. They had a few days to deliver and I delivered and it was a film about the war in Bosnia. It was Michael Winterbottom's production with Woody Harrelson starring and it was an opportunity to die for. And I penned this song which I'm really proud of.
Speaker 2:Within three days I was living in a block of flats in Maida Vale that was full of Sarajevan refugees from the war and a guy I was living with called Zoran Tosik. If you listen, I'll send this to Tosik. Incredible, fine artist. We were living together, trying to sift through our mutual trauma, drinking far too much together and all the rest of it anyway. So it was really, it really was very alive for me, this situation in that part of the world, you know, where there were concentration camps. No one was really talking about it in the news here. It wasn't anyway, so it was a real pleasure. And then we went to Abbey Road with the Philharmonic Orchestra to record I know who knew it was incredible. And then to the opening, where I met Michael Winterbottom and the man who the film was about, who was a journalist, who rescued an orphan, adopted her, natasha, and brought her back to London.
Speaker 2:It was a really emotional, incredible time and from that moment on I was in. You know, it was like I'd gone from work, literally in a toilet at the Atlantic Bar and Grill. I was working as a toilet attendant on night shifts, with all the rich and famous people coming in and in the studio all day, barely sleeping, just trying to make it the making it myth. And then, um, yeah, within a couple of months, the release party for Sarajevo guess where? Atlantic Bar and Grill. So, my boss, I went from toilet attendant to A-list celebrity in months. It was like that has been one of the highlights of my life, which is like how the perception of those I'm gonna say arseholes, who treated me like the toilet girl, saw me at the door, you know kind of Ma, madam Champagne, madam, going like yeah, it's just highlight of my life really Really that shift?
Speaker 2:and how quickly it can change. But it can also change that quickly the other way. Yes, careful who you piss off on the way up, because you're going to see them on the way down, and now we've got cancel culture as well, so it's not just from the individuals.
Speaker 1:Society can be saying, oh, we don't like what you said 20 years ago, or we don't like the way you be in now, or whatever. So yeah, but that's something different, really interesting. What a great story.
Speaker 2:I know. So these are all in my book in much more detail and because I wrote the book as well, I had a stroke going to be explicit now, seven years ago. All my coping strategies from all of their traumas and everything I'd been through and my ADHD brain running on empty a lot, I had quite a big stroke. My world has pulled from under my feet. I was told I'd never read again and me, being me, was, yeah, that's not going to happen. And I got into studying neuroplasticity and music as a healer, as I know. It is what it's always been for me. The fundamental relationship I have with music is it's my best friend. My most consistent relationship I have with music is it's my best friend, my most consistent loving friend. Regardless of anything peripheral, it's almost a spiritual connection that I have with it. It never goes away. It teaches me something new every time I embrace it and engage with it. So this particular very dark night of the soul when my brain was very broken and I was abandoned by, as a lot of people who have big crashes in health in their life, by a lot of friends, by work colleagues, by rats leaving a shinking ship so I wasn't the shiny gobby Sarah J anymore. I was broken. Anyway, from that broken place, a song came into my head one day and attached to the song was the memory of what I was doing when I wrote the song. So, as music is, music is a time traveller. Like Alzheimer's patients, you can't remember their son's face, can remember a song they sang in the war or you know this wonderful thing that the brain can do. So I began writing the stories behind the songs, not as a book but just as a way to heal my brain and revisited songs and sang them and then the memories would pop and then I'd write, and in the beginning it was four or five words a day before I'd have a brain explosion and I'd have to go back to bed. After a couple of years it was more like 500 words a month. After I'd done about 20 of these, I realised this looks like a book because the title of each of the chapters was the song, and then written in present tense was the event that caused the song to be written. So that's the premise of the book.
Speaker 2:And then I went to a writer's group and met some, a completely different tribe of people who were very creative but not rock star musicians. It was a very different society, if you like, and I felt really at home there, like there was something that I not like recognized and I felt like I really fitted in and a lot of those people were, you know, a lot more introvert and I realized I'm actually an introvert and this extrovert Sarah that went on the road running around like a lunatic was a big mask. I started to really get to know myself. It was a wonderful, wonderful healing experience and a lot of those people have become over the last five, seven years, dear friends, brand new friends, bigger, you know, a new tribe, and then, through them and the lessons that I learned from the writers, yeah, the book has now evolved and it went out to publishers about a month ago. I managed five years, seven years in the making. So, yeah, so we'll see again the dissolved girl it's called, which is about that. I've gone back to the beginning of where we started. So this is what I'm really. I'm really excited about this being out at the moment and because I am really explicit, authentic and honest in it.
Speaker 2:These kind of conversations that often get dampened with the, you know, by the shot, by the spotlight, if you like. Glaring of the spotlight. I'd like to, with the you know, by the spotlight, if you like glaring of the spotlight. I'd like to open the conversations up to how vulnerable you can be within the music business, how this whole.
Speaker 2:Rene Brown, you know being vulnerable is the most wonderful place to be, but you need to be careful where you are vulnerable as well. You need to have boundaries and that safe place with it. So it's a real, there's a real navigation and especially still, I think, with women in the music business and all of the you know, fear and courage and imposter syndrome and all the things I've dealt with and moved through. I want to work with and write about and podcast about, evolve a wider conversation about all of those things. I'm very much here and now, as much as living the life of a rock star, and it was only a few years out of a quite an intensely busy, long life of not doing that. Obviously it felt like some kind of peak, but I don't think I've peaked yet. I think there's a long way. Many more peaks, you know there's a lot of kind of Alps, if you like, different peaks to travel.
Speaker 1:It kind of alps, if you like, different peaks to travel. It has been a highlight. I'm very proud of it. That's amazing because yeah, because some people do think I did that concert, I wrote that song or I had that experience. Will I ever capture it again? Maybe not, but you'll have something else that's even more incredible, or being impactful or meaningful to yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, as a musician I heard some Elton John say something the other day I'm only ever as good as my last gig. Once I've done it, I'm over it next. So I'm always in the process, and the process is where the beauty and the magic lies for me. And as a teacher, I realized that more and more in mentor and in the process of writing an online songwriting course to help upcoming songwriters really dig into the well of the subconscious and how songs can talk to you and they can become your best teachers if you can get out of the way and let them in and have that quiet conversation. I love songwriters. They're my favourite people Amazing, amazing people.
Speaker 2:And Elton said the same thing. You know he's, as soon as his records come out, no matter how many billions it's sold, his imposter syndrome comes back and he wants to do the next thing. It's always about the next thing, which is a real driver. And it catches you and it says there's another wonderful phrase where you're after that next thing, where you're trying to catch a tiger by its tail, but you know there's a thing there and you know this is chasing me. You can't quite grasp it yet.
Speaker 1:yeah, I love that expression, brilliant so yeah, so here with Sarah Jay talking about her life in the music industry how fascinating is this. And we haven't even got into lots of interesting things. I'm sure she could share but she's keeping that for the book, so you're gonna have to get the book when that comes out. Can you just remind us of the title of the book, please?
Speaker 2:title of the book is the dissolved girl. Yeah, it's out for publication. So any publishers that are keen to have a look, have a sniffy, see if they want to release it. I've had a couple of refusals, which I'm really grateful for that. These people have actually bothered to get back in touch and say not right for us right now. And I'm seeing those door. It's interesting because at this stage 10 years ago, that would have been crushing. They don't want me, but now it's a good signpost. To see it a bit like a ping pong ball no, no, no, as we hone into the goal.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's where it needs to go, she scores, that's brilliant that way of looking at it, because a lot of us certainly myself included, and people that are listening they might be thinking when I get a no, that means I'm not good enough or it's not going to happen. But it just means it's not happening with that one. It will find its home with the right one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let it happening with that one. It will find its home with the right one. Yeah, yeah, just gotta let it go. Sometimes I mean, you know it's flight that, like I say, I've already sated by the process, really saved me and has transformed me and my relationship to myself and other people. So it's almost like the work is done, the work in itself. So getting it out there is, you know, I don't know there's that that relationship with needing the validation, external validation. I'm not as hungry for that anymore again. So that's the other thing that disenables. Like you were saying, the no is crushing. If you feel that, then you're. Then your validation coming from an external place is not healthy. I know we all go through that phase, especially younger people. Well, every people phases of external place. It's not healthy. I know we all go through that phase, especially younger people. Well, every people faces of it. But it's not. You know I've stopped doing that, which is great. Good, you know I'm really buying.
Speaker 1:That kind of puts some perspective on things and that's the thing when you can look at the situation and go what can I do about this, what can I learn from this, how can I save myself, how can I heal myself. And then from that, you've written this incredible book that will help other people. Would you have thought of writing a book if it hadn't been for that?
Speaker 2:it's always been on my mind. But I, because I was just running, constantly doing, running, busy, engage, you know really manic life, sane life. Then look back at it, my God, I was living the life of about five people all at once. You know it's in crackers. I always said, yeah, I'm going to write a book, because just my childhood experiences alone and my family experiences were crazy, crazy, crazy story. There was enough in that to make a book. And then hitting the ground, having had a stroke, gave me time to write it. I suppose I was forced into a place of stillness. I had no choice. I couldn't do. I just couldn't do. I had to just learn to be in a very different way.
Speaker 1:And how is your health now?
Speaker 2:Much better, much, much better. Yeah, it's still. You know, I have a brain injury. My stroke has left me partially sighted, so I need help.
Speaker 2:That I am now disabled, so I come upon ableism, and which is, you know, and as you probably realized, I'm an outspoken person. I call things out you do good on you doesn't always serve me, but, but also it does because I can't. Again, that's that thing of working out. Oh, should I not be this, should I not? It's like you've just got to be who you are. My mantra this week is, though the fundament of that kindness needs to lead, because I can be quite calling things out with kindness. Awesome work lands more I don't know usefully than calling things with judgment. Again, that adhd I say it as it is because it's just too complicated, not to life's too short, not to say things clearly.
Speaker 2:Language I struggle with messy language. Words coming out of people's mouths not congruent with what their face is saying. You know people's mouths say stuff that their face isn't that very autistic. I don't understand what you're saying right now, because there's no congruence in your body, language and words. So there's a lot of passive, aggressive stuff that comes with that. There's a lot of gaslighting. There's a lot of way vulnerable people can get used and abused with that misunderstanding. It's easy to fall trick and manipulate, which I was full. Tricked and manipulated quite a lot in my childhood and through my teens because I had this neurodiverse brain that I didn't know, you know, I didn't know, you don't know what you don't know, you can't see what you can't see. And as you get older you know the allowing of oh my god, this, this fourth window is opening up, of wow, is that? That's a constant, this doors of perception that just keep opening if you're willing to keep looking so much insight and wisdom from our brilliant guest, sarah j Hawley.
Speaker 1:Join us on part two of this episode to find out more from this inspiring woman in music.