Recently I’ve been exploring the healing power of meet-us-right-where-we-are, astoundingly powerful music made by female artists,

Ordinarily, I have wide-ranging music tastes: R&B, funk, gospel, jazz, classical, country, pop, house, hip-hop, hula, zydeco. Although I maintain several thousand tracks in my iTunes, I haven’t been making good use of my library, because I’ve …[this isn’t easy to confess]…been too depressed to break out my earbuds or headphones. Which is totally nuts, eh? Because we need music for our wellbeing as much as we need oxygen to breathe and protein to eat.

But enough is enough is enough.

After struggling interminably with overcoming slumps, I finally dusted off one of the most reliable tools in my personal therapy toolkit: music that reaches deep into my tortured soul and rocks me hard.

Which leads me to my most recent essay on Medium, “Why Sia’s Courage to Change song is my new anthem.”

In the essay I reveal how and why I’m struggling, and how and why the lyrics (and the vocals and the music) from that song is giving me a desperately needed kick-in-the-pants motivational boost.

Medium.com is a wide-ranging essay aggregator that allows freelance writers to publish stories on their own, or as part of curated collections. Barack Obama writes for Medium. The Atlantic publishes on Medium. And newbie, science-y writers like me write on Medium.

If you subscribe, follow, and like my essays on Medium you’re making it possible for me to write more.

In the meantime, the music world has some free gifts for you! Listen and watch video-story-songs (via Youtube) including 2020 inspirational favorites that map onto today’s messed-up reality and include Hell Yes! Calls for Action:

• Janelle Monae’s “Turntables” (“Got a new agenda/With a new dream/I’m kicking out the old regime”)
• Ani De Franco’s “Do Or Die” (“We can do this/If we try”)
• H.E.R. “I Can’t Breathe” (“Prayin’ for change, cuz the pain makes you tender.”)
• Beyoncé’s “Freedom” (“I’ma keep running/‘Cause a winner don’t quit on themselves”)
• Lady Gaga’s “911” (“My biggest enemy is me/Pop a 911”)
• Carla Morrison’s “Ansiedad” (“Quiero hablar y no puedo/Respirar y no puedo/Enfrentarlo y no puedo, no puedo”)

Espero que los desfrutes. (I hope you enjoy them.)