"Remember Who You Are" is not a song I wrote from a distance.
It was born from my own bones, after years of trying to survive a life that did everything it could to make me forget I existed.
When I sing about an ancient spark and a flickering holy flame, I'm not being metaphorical. That flame is the only reason I am still here. This song is only the first of the album, and the full album Remember Who You Are will be out soon. Each song tells a story that so many of us can relate to in one way or another.
When Other People's Voices Become Your Own
For a long time, I did not know who I was outside of what other people told me I was.
I lived through years of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse at the hands of people who said they loved me. Over time, their cruelty and their distortions moved into my head and started talking to me in my own voice. I learned to call myself the names they called me. I learned to believe that my needs, my intuition, my longing were dangerous or "too much."
In the first verse, I tried to capture that feeling:
"I've been walking through the shadows,
Carrying ghosts I never chose.
Every memory feels like an echo,
The only voice my mind knows."
Those ghosts were the expectations, judgments, and traumas that had been handed to me. The echoes were the repeating patterns — of abuse, of silencing, of shame — that made it hard to even remember what my own voice sounded like.
The Parts of My Story I Used to Hide
I didn't write this song as a sanitized "overcoming" story. I wrote it knowing what it feels like to hit bottom more than once.
Pieces of my reality include:
Being systematically broken down emotionally, verbally, and physically by people I loved and trusted.
Developing PTSD and severe mental health struggles as a result of that trauma.
Reaching a point where I didn't recognize myself anymore because my entire identity had been shaped by other people's pain and power.
Surviving a drug overdose where I died twice in one night, and my family was asked to come identify my body because they didn't think I'd make it.
Waking up in a hospital bed that I was never supposed to wake up in, seeing my mother break down in tears because I was still alive.
Being homeless after leaving the hospital, trusting someone who offered help, and discovering he was a pimp who trafficked me.
Escaping that only to fall in love with a man who became abusive, marrying him, and having seven children in the middle of all that chaos.
Using substances to cope with the pain and the terror.
Experiencing the state stepping in and taking my children because of the abuse and the environment we were trapped in.
Watching my husband arrested and deported, and finding myself physically alone for the first time in my life, with a nervous system built on co-dependency and trauma.
Finally starting to get on my feet, only to be diagnosed with cancer and having to fight for my life all over again.
None of that is easy to say. For a long time, I could barely admit it to myself, let alone write it into a song. But all of it is part of why these lyrics exist.
The Little Voice That Refused to Disappear
Through all of that, there was a strange, stubborn part of me that would not give up.
Even when I was numb, even when I was using, even when I truly believed that maybe my life was already over in every way that mattered — I could still feel a tiny something inside me that refused to accept that this was all there was.
That is the "ancient spark" I sing about:
"Within me lives an ancient spark, a flickering holy flame,
That burns with a power so great, that only I can claim."
I wrote that because I have felt it.
I have felt that little flame whispering in the middle of panic attacks, overdoses, violent nights, and hospital rooms: Hold on. This is not the end of your story.
It was never loud. It was never dramatic. It was just persistent. It kept me alive when I did not think I deserved to be.
Learning That Survival Is Not Identity
One of the hardest truths I had to face was that I had built an identity around surviving.
I shrank myself to fit other people's demands and called it "love."
I tolerated things that were killing me and called it "loyalty."
I abandoned my own body, feelings, and needs and called it "strength."
In the lyrics I say:
"I've been shrinking just to manage,
Calling survival 'who I am.'
But beneath the ache and damage,
Lives a light that never ends."
That was the moment I realized: surviving is something I did. It is not all that I am.
To remember who I was, I had to let myself grieve the years I had spent disappearing. I cried for weeks at times, hiding in my room, letting memories surface that I had pushed down for so long. I let myself feel the terror, the rage, the heartbreak.
It was ugly, and it was holy. That grief made space for my own voice to come back.
The Day My Bones Started Listening
There's a line in the bridge that is very personal to me:
"My bones they begin to listen,
To the voice they all now fear.
I am not the weight they gave me,
I am the fire that was always here."
For most of my life, my body carried the weight of other people's stories. I carried their shame, their violence, their secrets. My nervous system was wired around danger.
When I say my bones began to listen, I mean that at some point my body started recognizing my truth instead of automatically obeying everyone else's. I slowly began to understand that:
The fear I felt was not proof that I was weak — it was proof of what I had survived.
The anxiety and hypervigilance I lived with were trauma responses, not character flaws.
The part of me that kept saying "this is not right" was my own wisdom trying to reach me.
That was the beginning of my sovereignty: the moment I chose to trust my own inner knowing more than other people's narratives about me.
Rising as the Flame
My life did not suddenly become easy after that. I still had to rebuild almost everything. I had to face the pain of losing my children and learn how to live with that reality while still fighting for my own healing and their well-being. I had to recover from cancer and from the years of compounding trauma that came before it.
But little by little, I began to stand on my own two feet.
I went back to school.
I started studying psychology because I wanted to understand the systems and patterns that had shaped my life, and to help others who were walking through similar fires.
I began writing, creating, turning my story into something that could hold light instead of just pain.
The final declaration in the song is:
"So now I rise, I remember
I was never theirs to cage or name
I do not break nor bow in shame.
For I am the Eternal Flame."
That is not me claiming perfection. That is me claiming myself.
I am not the labels that were forced on me.
I am not only what I lived through.
I am the part of me that survived it all and chose to keep loving, keep creating, keep showing up.
Why I'm Telling You This
I wrote "Remember Who You Are" from the inside of the experience, not as an outside observer. I know what it is to lose yourself so completely that you honestly don't know who you are without the pain, without the chaos, without the person who hurts you.
I also know what it is to slowly, awkwardly, painfully begin to remember.
If you hear this song and feel something in your chest tighten or flicker, that's for a reason. I believe there is a flame in you too — a part of you that has never agreed with the story that you are worthless, broken, or beyond hope.
You may not be ready to shout yet.
You may not be ready to leave yet.
You may not be ready to tell your story out loud yet.
That's okay.
Remembering who you are can start in very small, quiet ways:
Admitting to yourself that what happened to you was not your fault.
Letting yourself feel one emotion you usually bury.
Allowing the possibility that you were meant for more than just surviving damage.
I can't tell you how your story will unfold. But I can tell you this: I have walked through abuse, trafficking, addiction, the loss of my children, cancer, and more nights of despair than I can count. And I am still here. I am studying, writing, creating, advocating, and reclaiming my life one step at a time.
The flame in me refused to go out.
The flame in you is just as real.
Remember who you are.
"You are not the weight they gave you.
You are the fire that was always here."
"Survival is something you did.
It is not all that you are."
"The flame in you never agreed with the story that you were beyond hope.
It has been waiting, quietly, for you to remember."
