Listen to Me Too

Transcript:

THE MAKING OF ME TOO – PART 1

When I dropped my first single of the year, Me Too, back in March of this year, after 40+ years of silence, I was speaking about sexual abuse that I experienced twice in my young life.

Me Too would be my first self-released music in 10 years, so I was scared. And an added layer of discomfort was starting with a song that demands vulnerability from me, which is something I don't enjoy feeling.

One night I was working on the song that is now Me Too, and the melody or top line started to form as I played the track over and over again. I grabbed my headphones and went to my computer to record the melody and then went off to bed. In the wee hours of the next morning I woke up thinking about what happened to me when I was 7 or 8 years old, and there was the first line of the song ... 'That night I remember, at my age so tender.'

That night, I was sitting on the front porch with my sister who was in high school and her boyfriend who was also in high school, and on the football team. My sister went into the house, I can't remember why, and during the few minutes she was gone, her boyfriend pushed his middle finger up to my panties and then push his finger and my panties into my vagina. Honestly, I can barely type this.

I immediately shrank back from him and then I put my head down on my lap. There it was. The feeling of shame, which gave birth to the lyric 'with just your finger, you left your shame, was I to blame?' As my sister was returning to to the porch, I jumped up and ran into the house. Even as young as I was, I knew that what he had done was wrong. I can't even remember his name.

Fast forward to now. Immediately after I wrote the song, I started doubting whether I should even release it. I wondered if I should tell my story, when so many others have suffered worse abuse than I have. But then I thought, if what happened to me was so minor, why haven't I ever told a soul about it? Not my sister, who I used to tell practically everything to. Not my best friend who I tell everything to. Why was it time to tell this story now?