“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 2: Sarah Jay Hawley, Platinum-winning Singer-Songwriter
Welcome to Part 2 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
[0:06] Personal Growth and Identity Evolution
[6:46] Navigating Self-Care and Resilience
[18:17] Embracing Change and Authenticity
[27:21] Inspiring Interview With Sarah Jay Hawley
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
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www.youtube.com/samcranesinger
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Sponsorship:
🌟 Proudly Commissioned and Sponsored by Every Bird Records CIC:
welcome back to part two of the episode with the amazing sarah j hawley. Let's continue. So we're getting into this part of the podcast that's about the actual things I never thought I'd say, and you have alluded to some already, sarah J, but what would you say if you've got a few examples that you can give us of things that now are just so it's happening? This is who I am, this is what I'm doing, this is the world I live in, but wasn't like that before things I'd never thought I'd say.
Speaker 2:Well, I have ADHD and I'm on the autistic spectrum. Who knew? Probably? You know. You know it's a brand new conversation that my daughter and her friends are having, but I'm a 55-year-old woman that grew up born in the 60s and grew up in the 70s where that conversation didn't happen. But there are an awful lot of insults. You know that used to be banded around for people with neurodiversities Some horrible, horrible things. So that's one of them. I don't miss smoking. Never thought I'd say that. Well done, yes.
Speaker 2:I'm hoping to get to a point where I say I don't miss drinking, but I'm working on that one because alcohol and women and alcohol in this society that's a whole other podcast.
Speaker 2:Okay, yep, big one is through writing the book. I forgive my parents and their neglect of me and the way they neglected themselves. That's massive. Yeah, really massive. They were clearly neurodiverse, undiagnosed. I mean, my dad was diagnosed with schizophrenia but he's clearly autistic when I look back. There were brilliant musicians, really messy, messy, messy, neglectful parents. So I had all the different, you know, and their ways of managing their own noise was with alcohol and drugs, and so I grew up amidst a very party house really and, yeah, there's a really lovely, warm place where I can be more I don't know more honest and more balanced. In my view of them, the anger's dissipated. You know, I'm not furious anymore. I'm not full of rage about the things that happened because of them. You know there's a wave of forgiveness, that's, that's come, which is profound actually so sitting with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been really important that's an incredible place to get to, and it's a place that some people are aware they need to get to. Some people aren't even aware that if they could work on that side of things, it would free them up so much more again.
Speaker 2:it's kind of the gift in the shadow which is what the stroke brought there's always gifts in the dark night of the soul and that enabled me to sit and write the book and revisit. It was like a time travel revisit those points in my life that were dark, the dark, nasty corners. Go in and sweep them out, you know, and really get on with I. I had nothing to lose. It felt like the preciousness of having a life-threatening incident. You realize the preciousness of life and there's that every day now I wake up with a oh my God, I'm alive, I'm awake, I'm alive, brilliant, just that whole new day thing that comes, which is great.
Speaker 2:Obviously, there's all the emotional stuff that goes on in it menopause I'm really struggling with at times, the, the um, yeah, like, a like, like you're probably focusing. It's like this very erudite mind of mine that I'm really proud of just goes. Oh my god, say the word banana when I actually mean something utterly different, or find the keys in the fridge, or you know, all the usual stuff that women are now talking about more freely exactly, and this is the thing.
Speaker 1:We're having more conversations about, things that have been just pushed down. If all these things happen to men I know neurodiversity happens to men, but certainly menopause and you know those sort of things if they happen to men they'd be talking about it all the time, but because it's, well, I think there's a real oppression of men.
Speaker 2:I think if you talk about their difficulties all the time, the world would be a very different place. I think men are very oppressed and there's a lot of younger men because I teach a lot of teenage, 18, 19 year olds and young. You know you are coming up and through with quite incredible new ways of looking at things, new conversation, new language, but there's also an awful lot of oppression. There's a masculine principle that is imprinted on them that they don't. They're struggling with this very fine balance of how they subscribe to or not, how they work out who they're going to be and the rate of.
Speaker 2:You know the mental health issues in young men and the rate of suicide in 20-something men is the highest in the country. You know there's a lot of work to be done there and as much you know I'm raised against. You know the old guard, the white, you know the rulers of the system and, however, there's still the oppression of man is something to be looked at. You know, as things look like they've evolved a lot more than they have and that's maybe something I never thought I'd say. You know this raging feminist who's now a bit more like oh men, oh, come on now.
Speaker 1:It's okay, it's okay, you know, I feel a bit more like oh man, oh, come on, it's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel a bit more like that. You know there is an oppression there. I read this brilliant quote once so you're the last in the lifeboat, yet the first to war. How do you feel?
Speaker 1:wow, yeah that. Yeah, that's a biggie, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 2:That's time. So there's a really interesting this whole now blurring and merging and this open conversation about gender and fluidity and that conversation of where actually the masculine and female principles of being now sit. I love it, yeah, I love it, yeah, I think it's brilliant. It's a massive part of, you know, evolution of consciousness, humanity, identity.
Speaker 1:I think it's incredible, the movement you know, and I think, as we go through the phases of life because when we're younger we feel quite powerful and sexy and young and cool and all those sort of things and then maybe as we get a bit older certainly for some women we see ourselves a bit more invisible, but we bring in so much more wisdom and experience. And how you navigate all those sort of things. It's a massive topic, yeah, it is A whole podcast in itself.
Speaker 1:Definitely. But getting back to the things you never thought you'd say, how would you if you were to take one of those points that you've made? How would you then help advise a friend who was going through something similar?
Speaker 2:from my perspective, it's about an internal process. It's who and what and how you can be, not what you can do and how you are seen. That's the most. It's a quieter process it's and because we are community animals, we do, you know, we are, we do function best in groups and in societies. You know, in lockdown taught us that that was, that was a really big shake up of you know and the fallout of it. We're still reeling, I think, from the fallout of that as an identity crisis globally. What humans, what we're doing, what's happening with the world I mean the cosmic big picture again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I would say that and and not not comparing and contrasting, not measuring yourself against others, like finding a finding and values, and where are those values, and values like kindness are actually more important than, I don't know, sexiness you know, but that's one of those things that you kind of learn as you get older, though, because if you I don't know about yourself, but if someone told me that when I was 20 I'd be like what you're talking about, we'd kind of need to go through life to understand this, of course, you know, that's the job of a wise old witch, isn't it?
Speaker 2:these are the things to impart to, and that's what I feel. You know this. That's what how I feel. I've been through an awful lot and come out, you know steel really, by this. But there's also when I was coming through being ill as well.
Speaker 2:I really got sick of the comment oh, you're so strong, you're so resilient, you're so this and I was actually yeah, I am, and I'm also very broken and very in need of not being strong and resilient. I would like to be on that list. Oh, you're so vulnerable, you're so, you know, your body feels weak right now. I this, there is this, this resilience, I get it, I get it, I am. You know there's, there's some real treasure in being resilient, but it also gives people and not just me, I mean again, in within community, people get isolated because they're perceived as being strong and resilient and actually there are times when we're not that and that has to be okay as well. You know, and I got, because I am Viking, I mean, like one of my nicknames, viking girl, which a few of my great friends call me, etc but there's, you know.
Speaker 2:Viking girl does want to lie under a tree and just be held yeah by a tribe when wounded, not left out.
Speaker 2:You're strong, you can handle it all on your own. It it's like, actually I can't, none of us can. And that expectation from strong women, you know, it's like, yeah, let's not leave those strong women out on the edge of society too often, too much. And outspoken women I am the most outspoken person in the room. Always Part of that's this I'm unfiltered a lot because of ADHD. I'm also brave unfiltered a lot because of ADHD. I'm also brave. I'm also willing to be not liked. I'm also, you know, and that's kind of something that I've learned through time. You know, I've got a very tight tribe of wonderful people who really love me and it's enough. I don't. I'm not.
Speaker 2:People pleasing oh my god, that's become my. The dark side of people pleasing it's something you know it's really really not good, so that's something else I would. I never thought pleasing some something you know it's really really not good, so that's something else I would. I never thought I would say you know what's the classic you can't please everyone, please some people some of the time and all the people like I remember how it goes. But that one, another one, yeah, that's a really interesting one for artists, for musicians, for women especially. There's a very dark side of giving people what you think they want and then not feeding yourself and then being resentful, and then gets passive, aggressive, and then before you know it, you're in a real mess of a situation or a fallout, and being people pleasing is becomes confused, so confused at that point you don't even know where it began. And it began with you saying yes when you meant no for me, obviously you know. So take, be discerning, take some time out before you give anyone an answer. Just give me a minute or I'll have a couple of days to think about it. That's something I never thought I'd say, which I say more and more often now. There's like a I'll have a think about that rather than yeah, I'll do everything, know which I used to do, and then find that doing everything was actually exhausting and overwhelming and ended up pissing people off and doing things badly because I take it on too much.
Speaker 2:And I see this brilliant counsellor who's a specialist in neurodiversities, because it's quite a new part of my identity to engage in diversities, because it's quite a new part of my identity to engage in I'm just getting to know myself and the lifting of shame around all and unmasking and the very raw, vulnerable feelings underneath all of that. She's a brilliant woman and the education I'm getting from her masterful at seeing. She's also on the spectrum and takes one to know one and all that and she's extremely brilliant, professional and wonderful, insightful, lovely, warm, lovely, warm, caring person. I can be all of myself with unmasked, unhinged, unimpinged version. She's absolutely fantastic. There was going to be a point there. I just got off on bigging up my brilliant therapist See a therapist, that was the other thing I'd say. My brilliant therapist see a therapist, that was the other thing I'd say soon. You know we should all be given a therapist at birth as part of you know, maybe that maybe in early tribes it was called your wise old grandma.
Speaker 2:But we're kind of separation from our older culture and we're older women and older people who aren't included in our society and valued in a way for their experience and wisdom. Where's all that going? Just chuck them in homes and hope for the best. It's hideous, really. I find it revolting Really. I find it really revolting as a society that we do that, that that happens, that we're not, we haven't got this, this big picture and encompass.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm all about that. I mean I live a very, at the moment, very isolated and lonely life. A lot of my family died when I was quite young and built engaging in community and try attaching to bands and our family and then working out. Actually, they're not be discerning about that attachment styles I'm just learning about as well. I mean, I think I've learned more on Instagram and TikTok and some psychology, which, again, be very discerning about, but it's kind of interesting the way those conversations are rolling out. Again, I learned a lot from my daughter and her friends. They're magnificent, brilliant young women who are, you know really, yeah, really changing the language. She pulls me up every five minutes on some old school rhetoric that I'm coming out with. I didn't even realize. And, yes, please do enlighten me, correct me, I need, I want to learn, I'm open to evolving and please, people, evolve.
Speaker 2:You need to get better at that, I think yeah coming out of hiding it feels like from all of the things I used to be really ashamed about that's. I think that's the other thing that happens as you get older. There's a whole shaming in our culture, minimizing and shaming of people that are a bit different, that are that don't fit in. You know it's kind of not part of the collective herd herding and I'm a real, you know, spokeswoman for those people, the liminal people in our society.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is wonderful just hearing someone who's been there, done it, got the t-shirt, worn the t-shirt on big stages to come out the other side and the stuff you talk. It's very real but it's not. I like the fact it's not jaded. It's kind of like yes, we can do it. You need to navigate it and maybe be a bit kind of gentle with ourselves and other people and be aware that there's some dangers out there. But we can do it and it's ours for the taking. I think that's kind of the message I'm getting from you.
Speaker 2:Amazing sam. Yes, thank you. Very succinctly put. Like you, put that on a t-shirt for me so I can, and it's ours for the taking. I think that's kind of the message I'm getting from you. Amazing Sam. Yes, thank you. Very succinctly put. Can you put that on a T-shirt for me so I can condense this brain full of words, fireworks of words. That goes on. Wonderful talking to you.
Speaker 2:You've got such a, you have a, and listening as well. That's the other thing. I'd say Listen more, zip it. Listen as well. That's the other thing. I'd say listen more, zip it listen. Be open, which is part of discernment. I do it. I embodied listening. Quantum listening is something I'm researching at the moment, which is a brilliant book with Laurie Anderson and this other brilliant female writer whose name eludes me, done this brilliant book called quantum listening, which is listening to the way you listen to the way you listen to the way you listen.
Speaker 2:Very mindful person. I've started stood. I've got a qualified yoga instructor when I was a long time ago as part of my healing journey. I've got obsessed, obviously, like I've got adhd. I do something and if I like it, I then get the qualification in it. I just get super focused, do it to the max and then go right and do that next. So that was one of the things I did on the list of things.
Speaker 2:So meditation, that that big picture, spiritual conversation, the inside, outside and how they meet which is a performer again, is essential. And as a singer, how you hear yourself inside and then how the reflection comes back, it's all about projection and perception is really the fundamental of relationship. So, quantum listening. I've started getting really involved in singing for healing, vibrational healing, embodied voice workshops, which I've run a few of in line with Sheffield University funding.
Speaker 2:It's been amazing this year for women who want to get in touch with authentic voices, finding out where the edge of stuckness, that are afraid to be loud, they're afraid to raise their voices, the fear that comes up in the back brain, the primal brain, the societal brain, of don't be loud, shut up. You know this kind of I'm loud, I'm, like you know, could be the loudest person in a room singing. If there are 30 people in the room, I can get the voice to it. It feels like the voice, the instrument that is the voice to do that and I love that. I love the fact that some along my journey, which could have ended very badly a long time ago.
Speaker 2:I now can be the loudest person in the room, which is part of finding your voice as a person, especially as a woman room which is part of finding your voice as a person, especially as a woman. The fear it moves through and the boundaries in oneself it can, the blocks, and then how you can move into a freedom of expression, not only vocally but in action and in choices, and the courage that that can bring to your life. Once you break through that voice of this, you know, like a little like the muppet show, you know, afraid in the background. Yeah, I'm loving that, but that's really going there anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, what I'll do is everything that you're talking about. I'll put links in the show notes so if people want to find out more about you and engage with you and join your courses, then they can absolutely do that.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. Thank you, sarah jay. We're coming to the last part of this podcast things I never thought I'd say, which I'm so loving hearing about your take on things and how you've used music to save you and heal you, and it's like your best friend all that. I'm loving all of these concepts you're putting out. The last part of this is about what are you finding challenging for yourself right now and how can you use what you've already taken from previous situations and events to apply to now?
Speaker 2:Big one for me at the moment is I have all these wonderful ideas and all of this endless creation of stuff, this bank of songs, this book, these courses, and da, da, da, da, da. I need help, I need a team. I need to be discerning about who that team is, how I interview them, how I allow them into this inner circle of this very wonderful thing that I'm creating right now. That's a really massive one for me at the moment, that, and I'm finally learning to play the piano, which I've been tinkering about on. Yes, my dad was a genius pianist. Oh my honestly, his fingers could fly, fly, fly, fly.
Speaker 2:My voice has always been my main instrument, and words, lyrics, poetry, now moving into books, courses, that kind of structure. But no, I'm I've got my, my brilliant Nord keyboard and I'm partially sighted since my stroke, so I can't actually see that well. So it's become a real daily practice of just yeah, do some scales get down to basics? And I know something about music theory. I'd like to know more, I'd like to investigate the nuts and bolts of music, rather than the big picture of music. That's huge for me at the moment.
Speaker 2:I kind of like I've gone backwards but I haven't, because I see time is a spiral, not a straight line. There is no forwards and backwards for me, my curvy, linear, adhd brain, which is wonderful and difficult when you're trying to have a conversation with someone that sees things in a straight line. I had brilliant conversations about that and I'm more honest about you know people say to me oh, what did you do on Saturday? I go, which Saturday? 1972?
Speaker 2:No idea what you're on about and I can be really honest about that, rather than the hunting for a Saturday in my mind is really hard work, yeah, really hard work. There's no anchor point for it anywhere. And getting honest about that and, yeah, that's always been really hard for me and I've always been shamed by it, by forgetting dates and birth date, that's like a, it's like a time, a day, day, date time, dyslexia, almost it's just I've got no, there's no grasping of it, and I'm seriously shamed, often by teachers, often by men, really the older men, you know it's like you're stupid because you can't. Oh, what's wrong with you? Know that? That, yeah, which I now feel cross about because I'm not anything but stupid.
Speaker 1:You most definitely are not stupid. You're an incredibly, amazingly articulate and interesting and intelligent woman and I can hear that and see that from speaking to you and that our listeners can tell that. So if anyone calls you stupid, that gets me angry, like how dare they? It's that kind of thing. If you ask an elephant how to climb a tree, he'll think he's he's stupid yeah, that's a brilliant one.
Speaker 1:I've not heard that one before I'm gonna nick that but it is we're all doing, we're all amazing at different things absolutely so, finding the brilliant women that I know are out there.
Speaker 2:It can sit in the roles I need them to sit in within this company I'm creating to get all of these courses and books and out to the world to share my wisdom and ways of overcoming the things I've overcome. That's where I'm at right now. That's what I need to learn to do and how to ask and how to trust as well, how to let go of these very precious ideas and how to trust someone else with them. I really struggle with that. I can be quite controlling, like I don't want to let go of a thing. So yeah, that's. That's also a big one.
Speaker 2:Interested in releasing the soundtrack to the gig theater shows, end drugs and rock and roll. And I've done a reworked version of dissolved girl on that, with a three minute spoken word intro about my experiences heroin, chic and rock star skinny addiction, glamorized. Just ain't that pretty. I'm so proud of of it which this french producer reproduced, dissolve girl with this brilliant show stopping, I feel, soundtrack kind of um sound design wrapped around that classic bass line which carried that song through, which was in the matrix and the jackal and god knows how many other things. So reinventing that, recoloring it, restating. It's like me looking back at that girl on the tour bus which now feels like a million years ago and having a conversation from here. It's, it's been astounding, it's an astounding stage of life.
Speaker 2:So any of you women out there that feel like you're getting old and you're getting past it and you're there I'm allowed to say bollocks to that. You can definitely say you're coming into your own. I feel like, oh wow, I'm free, I'm unencumbered. I like not thinking about is anyone going to fancy me if I wear this? Brilliant, I don't have to think about that ever again. Brilliant, oh my god. The freedom in that is exhilarating. Almost definitely. You know so good can be real, more integral, more authentic, more more viking, more loud, more passionate. I've got time to piss about. How much life have we got left? We could could all be dead in a minute. Get on with it. Northern mantra, my dad used to say oh, just get amongst it, girl.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of T-shirts that we're going to be creating, isn't it? Anyway, this is amazing. So what I'm going to do now is basically just wrap up this podcast, because I've had an absolute ball talking to you, listening to you. We could have gone on for a few more hours. Unfortunately, that's not how long the podcast is, but if at some point we do another podcast, I might get you on another one and hear a bit more about yourself and your life and your viewpoints about things. You know that would be incredible, but on behalf of our listeners and behalf myself, sarah j, thank you so so much for doing this and being so honest and open and sharing your thoughts.
Speaker 2:It's been brilliant thank you for listening you. You're an amazing listener. Your well of listening allowed me to pour all of that in. If you weren't as good a listener, sam, I would not have been able to be as free in finding that diatribe of whatever has come out of my mouth, because I've now forgotten. But I will listen back to you know how it is in the moment.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, so thank you. Thank you for being such a brilliant listener and allowing me to be free with all of whatever I've said.
Speaker 1:It was brilliant what you said, but I appreciate you saying that. And also, have you got any final things that you want to impart to myself, to yourself, to the listeners? What do you want to finish off with, you know?
Speaker 2:I think just there's this idea of just keep going. The best way to do things quickly is slowly. We're hungry and hunting for this, most of us, for the thing that we want to get, and that isn't the thing that all those old cliches that you hear old sages say you know. It's not the destination, it's the journey. Absolutely true for those of you that are wanting to online social media, stop counting your followers and start getting in touch with the people that really love you, that want to follow you. This is something I've recently realised, and my daughter as well, who's an up-and-coming artist. It's like you know, if you have 10 followers or 10 people at a gig that absolutely are touched and moved and really you know their life is enhanced by what you do, is more important than 100,000 Instagram followers who have just gone bleh and have no idea what. So it really is quality, not quantity, in whatever it is you're doing and the people you surround yourself by.
Speaker 2:Be really careful of that. You are the sum of your collective circle. Look around you. You are the sum of them, them, so that's a really good one as well. Interesting the shift in, like I say, my collective circle after my stroke, the shift and the dark night of the soul that came with what felt like an abandonment, but actually it was a recalibration, because I became quite a different person that shone from a different side of the diamond we're all diamonds and there was a different facet of me that reflected a whole new world back at me. That I'm, you know, it's just wonderful and that keeps going. So allowing I think allowing that Don't get stuck. Be brave enough to change and move and experiment and experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Never take no for an answer it. Thank you so much, it's been fantastic so have you.
Speaker 2:I've enjoyed myself immensely good, good, wow.
Speaker 1:Thank you. What an incredible episode. How wonderful to listen to the thoughts, experience, challenges and wisdom from Sarah J Hawley. I love her honesty and openness in sharing her life and views about the music industry. Let us know what you enjoyed about this episode. Subscribe to find out more about the podcast, which is sponsored by. I'm your host, sam Crane. Enjoy the rest of your day. Hey, hey, hey. Things I could've done yesterday I do them today. Things I never thought I'd say hey, hey, hey.