The art of healing

What is healing?

September, 2024. We’re on stage in Yokohama tonight. After just recording José’s new album (!), this band is essentially a Maserati on open road with no speed limit.

What is healing?

(An overarching question of late)

Elusive
Ephemeral
Pushed in a monetary way that makes my stomach turn
And also essential

What is healing?

The Magic of Doing Nothing

February, 2024. When I first leave the hospital it all seems crystal clear. Healing is now my full-time job.

And, if you remember, I pursued my last job with such dedication that it landed me in said hospital.

(So I’m ready to COMMIT to this healing thing, okay?!!)

I pare everything to bits. A medical leave auto responder goes up, and Rainbow Blonde basically shuts down around me.

It’s not my favorite, but I appreciate the binary nature of this new healing process. You cannot reach me, I cannot respond to you. My only goal is the complete restoration of my kidneys.

(After that, I figure, I’ll return to work in a way that doesn’t destroy me)
(There will suddenly be balance - I’ll run Rainbow Blonde from a serene, spa-like office where stress rolls off me like water off a duck’s back)
(Whipping up hit records and chocolate cakes in the same breath, all while casually lounging with my feet up)
(Oh, and of course I’ll have mastered the art of balancing egos, being a good friend/family member, music business nonsense, managing contracts, creating Grammy-worthy songs)

You feel me? I’ll be the picture of health, with absolutely no need for those pesky doctor visits. I’ll have kidneys that have somehow developed superpowers.

(A girl can dream, right?)

What is healing?

March, 2024. It works. It works. It works?! It’s incredibly difficult, but a few months in the doctors tell me I’ve achieved full remission.

(It’s probably the coloring books?)
(Or the miraculous power of not having to deal with anything stupid for a change?)(Who knew all it took was zero nonsense and some well-placed colored pencils?)
(Lesson learned: Live a completely distraction free life and you’ll be fine)

Until, of course, you’re not. Because life doesn’t work like that.

Mastering the Balance Game

June, 2024. Relapse #1. I learn to redo life … again. Learn how to integrate, learn how to balance, learn how to, to use a painfully LA phrase, protect my peace while still being a living human being on an imperfect earth. The good news is that with the stakes so high my body now lets me know right away when something is wrong.

(I learn that chronic illness is like that - you actually cannot make space for things that don’t work if you want to stay upright)
(Either you make other people happy or you stay alive - your choice)

I choose staying alive. And I learn, in the process, that the real magic isn’t in doing nothing; it’s in figuring out how to mix the nothing with something. When to push forward and when to pull back, a wild silly dance where I am both the DJ and the dancer.

(Healing isn’t a one-time thing like that, it isn’t even a few months thing, it’s an everyday present tense reality)
(I put these all around my house)

What is healing?

Redefining What "Productive" Looks Like

July, 2024. Relapse #2. Balance is important. I’m grateful to find it. But balance also means doing way less, which makes my brain my new enemy. She is confused.

(I am fighting against a lifetime of “productive”)
(Fighting against a brain that considers staying still a weakness)
(I am not good at living in the gray, and healing is no longer my full time job, so what the fuck is this new thing?!)

August, 2024. At some point I break down and tell my friend Molly through tears that I am trying my best. Molly gives me the most helpful advice I’ve gotten this entire time:

“You need to stop trying.”

So I follow Molly’s advice. I stop measuring productivity in quantity, and I also stop looking for a gold star for my excellent relaxing abilities. I stop trying.

Before I was a songwriter who also showed up with a fully decorated cake and ran the record label on breaks from the couch. These days I show up and take naps legitimately while in session.

Before I was the president of this record label while also acting as the label manager, marketing team, video editor, graphic designer, accountant, artist, string arranger, songwriter, even my own photographer. These days I am simply the record label president, and I am a record label president recovering from a rare kidney disease.

So I send about three extremely important emails a day. Sometimes I field a call. And the rest of the time I am healing.

I write down on the wall, per Paulina’s advice, “Is this job for me?” And I pay attention to the answer to the question. If it is not, we hire someone for whom it is the right job.

What is healing?

Taking medicine, whatever that means

Most times the doctors are right and are angels. Two times now, though, I have told my doctors I’ve been in relapse and been told my blood/labs were “perfect” and I’m imagining it. I had to prove it myself the next week that my body wasn’t lying.

If the medical establishment isn’t willing to accept humility (fair enough!) I sure the fuck am. This disease is exceedingly rare and therefore unique to me. That means I have to learn it so that I can teach the people around me how it manifests in this body.

For now I take their new and increasingly difficult medicines, while keeping an eye on the holistic moving forward. There are no rules anymore.

What is healing?

Living your fucking life/Laughing Through the Recovery

And since there are no rules, since the world is upside down and topsy turvy and unpredictable, I learn to move and enjoy the funhouse that is now my life. Sometimes my body is prednisone enormous, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes I’m delightful, sometimes I’m horizontal for a week. No rules means unpredictability, but no rules also means adventure. I learn, for example, to say yes to shows that may not happen, and then dream of Japan regardless until I can return.

(I’ve held Japan in my heart ever since the first time I stepped foot here in 2014, 26 years old and on a whirlwind world tour)
(At that moment in time I was wild, insane, difficult and sometimes a whole lot of fun)
(The era of Instagram filtered squares)

September, 2024. I return to Japan.

I’ve been hiding from Instagram for months, unable to look at let alone present this wild new swollen to ridiculous proportions prednisone face/body.

Healing can be realizing I don’t have to put any pictures of myself up but can still post, connect, dip in when I feel like it.

(Which, oddly, is what I wanted out of that platform the whole time?)

Healing can be dropping $300 at Itoya Stationery in a full on spending blackout.

(At first my brain panics when I see them ringing up all those pens and cards)
($300 is a LOT of pens and cards)
(But then I remember that these days the world is a topsy turvy funhouse where I am often relegated to my home for massive periods of time)
(Where the mail / pony express are my sanctuary and window to my loved ones)
(And that means I will, indeed, mail every single one of these cards very soon)

Healing can be taking time for myself
It can be western medicine based
It can be fish oil based

It can be at one of the many shrines I’ve visited here in Tokyo, where I’m instructed to pick the green paper and write my wish down, hang it on the green line

Or it can be simply time for myself.

Healing won’t look the way I thought it would
It won’t be what I wanted
It will be what I needed

And in this strange, unpredictable dance, I take solace in finding the rhythm of chaos, trusting that it’s okay to keep learning the steps.

(I am healing, after all)

More next week.
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