TONTS. - Part Two Matriarchy & Soulful Storytelling with Mietta

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Part Two of a conversation with the soulful indie folk singer songwriter Mietta - storytelling and creating on Boonwurrung country in Australia's Mornington Peninsula. At 22 years of age, Mietta is in a season of emergence. With deep connection to her home roots and her community she is also an education researcher, learning skills mentor, facilitator and designer of youth wellbeing and expressive writing workshops. Mietta has recently supported the beloved artists Pete Murray and Kim Churchill and has just released her first recorded single with producer and friend fellow indie folk musician Timothy Li. You can find her playing all over the place in her home community and surrounds. For updates find her @mietta.music on instagram.To listen to her beautiful song Slowly head herehttps://www.clairetonti.com/eventsFor more from Claire you can head to https://www.clairetonti.com or instagram @clairetontiOriginal theme music: Free by Claire TontiEditing: RAW CollingsSocial Media: Maisie JG Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Just before we get into the episode this week, I wanted to let you know that I am going on tour. I'm going to be in Ireland and the UK as we speak, actually, as this episode is released, I'll be on the plane. I'm doing a fun open jam session in Dublin on Wednesday night, the 12th of June at a place called Mother Riley's. And then I'm going to be doing mum talks on Friday morning where I'll sing a few songs and also be part of a beautiful panel discussion in Dublin at Cafe Unseen. I'm heading to Every Woman Festival on Saturday. That's June 15th. That's going to be in Cardiff in Wales. It's almost 2000 women talking and sharing about health and hormones and our bodies and what we need to know about

ourselves really and womanhood. So I will be there singing on the festival stage and then doing an afternoon workshop. I'd love to see you there. And then I am heading to Abergavenny to do a beautiful show with Lily Redwood, the poet. We are going to be reading poetry, or Lily will be reading poetry from her new book, You Make Me Think of Swifts. And I am going to be singing my full album. It's actually the only show I'm going to do my whole album. I'm in Abergavenny and I can't wait. That's at the Acoustic Lounge there. And then on the Monday morning, Lily and I are heading to a secret location in the forest to do a workshop called Mother Me, which is all about how to move through matrescence through journaling and song and getting lots of tips and advice and connecting

with other mothers. So that will be in a forest. For all the details of my events and locations, you can go to claretonte.com forward slash events. And then I'm heading to Exeter and we are going to be doing the Matrescence Festival with Lizzie Humber. I'm so excited. It's actually sold out and we do have a wait list if you wanted to put your name down for that. We're hoping to do more of them. It's a beautiful community-led festival. Children are welcome. It's really accessible. And some of the speakers, well, actually all of the speakers that are coming are just incredible. So I'm really excited to be coming to Exeter and then heading home after that. I also have a single launch with some new music coming out in Melbourne on the 20th of October.

I have a whole lineup of amazing guests. I can't wait to share them with you. Jamila Rizvi, Felice Millay, April the Bodzilla, Eliza Hull will be singing. My dear friend Flick Odgers is reading some poetry. Beautiful local mum, Moni LaRue is coming too. And I've also got Ariane Beeston, author and contemporary dancer coming as well. And Isabel Odenberg, who is going to be speaking into her book, Hard to Bear and the silence and science around miscarriage. I've also got comedian Bron Lewis coming too for the ride, which is going to be so awesome. She's so funny.

And then I'm doing my song, my new song at the end of the show with a beautiful contemporary dancer and friend, Bonnie Dulac. So that is all happening over at Mosh Tix at the Brunswick Ballroom on the 20th of October, and I'd love to see you there. All right, let's get on with the show. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak, and write today. They're a wondrous people of the Kulin Nation and pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. I want to acknowledge the people who have given birth on this land,

raised children on this land, connected to country and spirit for thousands and thousands of years. Hello, welcome to Tons, a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they shape our lives. I'm your host, Claire Tonti, and I'm so glad you are here. Each week, I speak to writers, activists, experts, thinkers, and deeply feeling humans about their stories. Now, this is the second part of my interview with the beautiful folk singer, Mieta. She has just released a glorious song called Slowly on all streaming platforms about self-forgiveness and love, and it's out now in the world. If you haven't already listened to the first part of this conversation, I really encourage you to go back into the feed and listen to part one from last week, True Wisdom, Connection

and Music. This is an extension of that conversation. And there's a really special treat at the end. Mieta actually sings an acoustic version of Slowly for me, and I just end up weeping. So it's all a bit of a mess by the end of the episode just because I was just so emotional and in awe of artistry and her heart and this is such a personal part of our conversation and I'm just so grateful for it. So I hope you love it just as much as I do. I think you really will. Here she is, Miera.

It is such a gift you have given with your vulnerability to put voice to that song and in that moment. So thank you, really. Thank you. And thank you as well because that song, I remember we sat down together earlier this year we sat by a creek for hours so many hours so many hours and and spoke about i think from that really hot like from how do we communicate and honor tenderness and it's it's one thing to express tenderness in

spaces you feel safe and it's another thing to honor it and probably the most important thing to honor it and hold integrity for it in the spaces in which you know need need want and need heart-led heart-led contributions but make you feel unnerved and as i'd expressed to you recording was something that i felt incredibly unsafe doing but i remember meeting you and seeing this incredible woman, soul, storyteller, just this person who held so much reverie for the world and for seeing people as these amazing, almost like, I don't know, like the only thing I can think of is like these lanterns. Like people as like lanterns like like people is like

lanterns that just they've got this light inside of them that's lighting up and it's almost like you could you could just see all of that in people and you could you could see it in a space just the light that's coming through the cracks or coming through the little half opaque folds of the little lanterns. And I think where a lot of people would choose to protect themselves within that little confine, that little comfy, that comfy protection of the lantern. You were this person who just went, no, like I can shine warmly and I can shine brightly in a way that is true and honest to how I navigate the world. I'm referring to you. And hearing the intimacy of that in matrescence

and what you've shared forward in that project. And I actually sat, I wasn't sitting, I was standing, washing lettuce while I was on an internship. I was working on a permaculture farm and I was washing lettuce for four hours. And I listened to your interview with Holly Ringland talking about how you move through letting that tender part out because the world needs that tenderness. We all need tenderness that's how we

that's how we feed off of each other that's how we become more open and how we become more heart led because there's not always going to be times in our life where we are open and that's okay too because sometimes we need to protect this space and left of our chest but yeah like as for me personally but then also i think as well i look at the women who are so significant in my life fellow women who are navigating their 20s as well and also younger sisters or younger sisters in the sisterhood sense to witness women who have seasoned that period of life with such grace and such openness and expressed strength through honouring those tender parts of themselves is the most emboldening

and freeing thing ever. So please keep doing that. Thank you. Please. Oh, Mietta, thank you. That interview with Holly, I sometimes listen to that when I am having a really difficult time. I know it.

I made it. But she is so full of wisdom and beautiful storytelling. And I think also what I love about it is the humour with which she moves through the world while also carrying a huge amount of like anxiety. Yeah, she's amazing. It's amazing. She tells this story of how she just sits with a cup of tea and just moves things around on like a Hessian piece of fabric

and sea glass and shells. And when she was just trying to be and she's like, this was the most profound hour that I've ever spent. I remember just that sense of foraging and, yeah. And just noticing and she spends a lot of time just noticing the inside of flowers. I know we both just had to lie down at the end of that interview and just like sob for a bit because, or I went for a river walk

because it felt utterly magic, that conversation. And I sang to her in that and it was so scary to me because I hadn't shared that. I shared the song self that is the most, it's the song about probably one of the hardest things that's ever happened to me. And to sing it in a space where I hadn't, because I come from the backwards way, which is what I love about when we met because you have been performing your songs but hadn't recorded and I'd only recorded before I went

out to sing them. So I'd only done them in this quiet, really intimate space in a studio where I could get it perfect and have it sound exactly how I wanted, every breath exactly where I wanted and then let them out in the world. And so for me performing is almost a bit like how you feel about recording. It's like, oh, no, but what will happen? I can't control it. Oh, God, I won't sound perfect or it won't be exactly the intent I want.

Yeah, so I just love that we met in that way and then to hear after that the song you've recorded and recorded it in a way where I was saying to you it can be a sacred space, it can be the space of real artistry in a different way and it just sounds so organic and so heartfelt and just magical. How did it feel to record when you did it? It felt so beautiful. Like the human who I produced with is just words don't fully convey

how beautiful this human is. His name is Timothy Lee and he is a musician too, beautiful folk musician and i fell in love with this song called hot chocolate which i definitely recommend listening to she wrote about his beautiful wife and their story of how they fell in love and it's just so warm so so warm and on the day that i was listening to you and Holly talk on the podcast and I stood there washing lettuce for three and a half hours listening to both episodes yeah that's it was like I couldn't it was amazing oh thank you like but it's good because we have two parts of goodness

to listen to now but I finished listening to the second part of that podcast and I remember standing there looking out on the farm that I was working at and I texted Tim in that moment and I said to Tim, I've got this song, I need to record it with someone and I feel like you are the person I can trust in doing that. Like I feel safe sharing those stories and I feel like we could create something beautiful with it would you be willing to do it and he said yes and it was a spur on listening to the podcast and then to then have that chat with you around it

um as well sitting by the creek and just talking to you about how you can open yourself to creating a sacred space and recording and I think it's with all art forms and creating a sacred space to record or perform which is just about creating the little rituals and the time to hold space even like you recording the podcast like I need to make me feel safe I needed to put on that lamp and make a cuppa to calm my nervous system and feel open but I got to Tim's house and there's so much let alone the song like the song's one thing and it's great to have a song recorded but that 36 hours that was spent recording the song is held with so much gratitude and warmth in my heart.

Like I rocked up to Tim's place and he has a home studio and the song was made in between sharing stories with one another and his kids and cooking dinners all together with him and his beautiful partner, Immy, and on the track there's violins and violins came in through Tim sending a message to Immy's beautiful sister asking her if she'd pop in the next day to record some violin on a track. And it felt like a song that was made around the dining room that's what it felt like and I think that's what the beautiful thing is is that we can create beautiful intimate moments

wherever we are whatever we're doing it's just about what we prioritize and value within the space and that's what you taught me on that creek walk um yeah i could not have more gratitude for tim and his family and for the moment that was experienced in creating slowly so i think that's what i'll almost not almost it's what i definitely cherish more than the song itself yeah that's so profound it's something that's come up for me a lot recently that idea of life is the process rather than, which sounds kind of obvious on the outset, but, you know, we work so much through a process to then get to an end point

of like a performance or a song or a recording, but actually life is mostly process. Oh, no, that's like, yeah, It's just like moving in a right direction. Do you want me to fix it for you? We're in this beautiful place at Red Hill and we're just staring out at the trees. I don't know if you noticed but while you were speaking about some beautiful things to do with trust, the wind came through

and suddenly you could hear the rustling of the trees in the background and I just sometimes feel like, oh, someone's here. That's how I feel. It's like a supporting, like it oh, someone's here. That's how I feel. It's like a supporting, like it's like someone going, mm-hmm, I agree, I agree, and you can feel it in the room. And, yeah, just that idea of leaning into the process of something, which is what you get the most out of often. And then performance is also beautiful in its own way and can be profound,

but it's often so short. And, you know, that's all we've got in the end is like as artists particularly, if you don't like the process, you won't make anything. It's in the doing. And so the finding of people to do things with is really precious and you'll look back on that song because you're 22. You think who will you be at 44 and you'll have this beautiful capturing of a moment in time for you in your life.

And for Tim to look back on with his kids at that particular time in his life and his partner, Amy, his sister will be able to listen to that. And the joy of making art is, and I'm sure it's the same in gardening and I'm sure your pop would say this too, that art lasts and goes on. Rather than this sort of idea we live in where it's individualism and we're making things for us and it's in this sort of, we still make things for us but it stops with us.

But actually the planting of a tree, the making of a song, the painting of a painting can be 500 years. In 1,000 years someone might find Slowly by mieta and go i needed to hear this when i needed to even if it's not found the sentiment of what the sentiment of what creates i think this is what excites me about art is even if the remnants of what it was isn't there anymore like the sentiment around why it was created most likely will still circulate among hearts. Oh, yeah. Like that's the beautiful thing is that like I think of my pop's paintings.

And like recently he, on a time in which I go over to his and we have tea time and we sit and have tea or soup and he watercolors and I draw. We were talking about poetry because he was showing me his paintings and then he asked me to share some of the poetry I'd written while I was over in the Yarra Ranges and he said just give me a second and he went out to his garage and he came out and he gave me these like two big stacks of books and loose leaf watercolor paper. And he went, in the same way that you write poetry to document your life, he said, I paint. And so he said, these are, this is my life in journal form,

but they're all watercolors from, he said, from when he was traveling around Europe and when he was a young man living in Lakes Entrance and when he was travelling around the coastlines and around the Flinders Ranges as well and the Hawkesbury painting. And that's how he captured these really felt moments in life. Like we might write a song, that's how he captured them. What's so beautiful about those is that I'm in a cherished position now to be able to take them back to his house and sit with

him over tea and ask him about the stories of them but the also bittersweet but beautiful thing is is that you know 20 years down the track 30 years down track, where Pop may not be with me in person anymore, but he's with me with spirit, just even those drawings and paintings as they are will reveal so much about his felt sense of the world. Like the sentiments of that experience and that appreciation for the world continue to be there even if the direct meaning of it itself

and the story behind it isn't being told. That's so beautiful. And precious and so precious. And then because that's then a piece of his heart that you'll have with you always in his story too. I want to finish by asking you about your mum and your relationship with her because we actually met through your mum. Yeah.

We were both in the shower block having a shower at Seven Sisters, both like getting dressed, pulling our knickers up under our towel or something and just having a chat. And she told me about this glorious daughter that she had who was a singer-songwriter, which is so beautiful. And the night she's a silversmith. So I went to her tent afterwards.

And then I remember you kind of came in and I was like, oh my God, she's like a mermaid. She's like walking, just like this ray of sunshine. It was such a joy to meet you. But yeah, tell me about your mum and your relationship with her. She is – she's my best mate, first of all, and she's my human. She's just – we're each other's human. I think there's such a narrative around you put into this world and you meet your soulmate and your soulmate's your romantic partner

who you build your life with and everything like that like my mum I feel quite intuitively is that person for me and we have built a life we've built a life and we've gone through big shifts and changes in life that have required a lot of sitting together and going, how are we going to move through this? And what do you need? And I think that's forged such a deep and beautiful relationship between the two of us. And I have nothing but respect for her as a mother, as a daughter,

witnessing her in her relationship with her mum, my beautiful nan, as a partner, witnessing her in her relationship with her mom my beautiful nan as a partner witnessing her in that capacity as as somebody who's she's such an avid contributor to every community and space she can be part of and if i was to describe mom she is just like this emboldening just she's not just a ray of sunshine she is like she feels like the sun she's just she just lights people up and she she makes people and spaces feel like anything is possible and it's not just the idea of it the reason why it's possible is because she sees she sees the ability in people to be able to actually do it and make it happen for themselves and will support them to build up the warmth and

the courage and the energy to do it and i think that is such an amazing gift in the world to be able to galvanize and embolden in the ways that she does and i think what's been so beautiful about navigating these shifts of life together as I navigate coming into being a woman and into my own human and her navigating this next season of life for her and what it means for her it's been beautiful to watch her embolden herself in pursuing life the way that she actually wants to live it for the first time. And, yeah, she is a silversmith and that's how you met her at Seven Sisters while you were in the shower block, which doesn't surprise me

that she was meeting friends, even just going to have a shower. But she's taken upon that journey of she taught herself how to craft jewelry and craft beautiful sentimental items for people to share stories with the people that they love she taught herself how to do that she she felt that it was something that she wanted to learn for so long and she'd she'd done that when she was younger when she was in university and she put it away because she thought that it wasn't something that she could pursue. And so to witness her emboldening herself as much as she sees that want and capacity in other people is just amazing. But to walk life alongside my mum is the biggest privilege ever.

And, yeah, I'm just in awe of her constantly and i don't think yeah i i'm i'm at a loss for words for that relationship with her joy is what it seems to me joy and yeah yeah and just this really sense of depth and trust. Part of your tree roots. She is my tree roots. She is my roots. Yeah, there's a beautiful idea in retrescence, or it's not an idea, it's a fact, that the cells from your body are still in your mum. And that's with every pregnancy.

Women carry the cells of their babies or people who get pregnant. And I often think about that. You know, there's that lineage. And at one point you would have been inside your nan. And I think about that a lot too. It's that sense of lineage because a baby at a certain point has all the eggs they will have when they're still,

before they come into the world. So, you know, we're a bead on a string of beads, you know, and I get so much sustenance from that. When I feel really wobbly, I go back to that. It's our roots. It's, you know, the lineage of women who have come before us and then where we're going next. And there's, you know, a lot of healing in that, I think.

I watched you sing a beautiful song about your mum too at Seven Sisters. Ah, yeah, from your daughter. Yeah. Is that about your mum or is it about – it is about your mum, isn't it? Yeah, it was a love letter to my parents and to mom and at seven sisters it took on it took on a deeper sense of meaning for me and even what you shared then around those beads and the connection recognizing that in the same way that we are i mean i haven't experienced motherhood.

So all I know is my frame of reference is being a daughter. But at Seven Sisters, singing that song and witnessing it shared among a space of women and also witnessing my mom as well and how we were navigating our relationship and the shift in our relationship was this big thing of also feeling for the first time and it was because of the chorus of the song which is she'll buy books she'll never read and dream of places she's yet to see but just because she won't stay long doesn't mean you're not her home just before we had left for seven sisters we stopped by my nan's house and at my nan's house nan has in my nan's house, nan has, in the same way Pop

has all of his paintings everywhere, nan has all of her books on a wall. And I was looking through her books to find something to read. And she's usually quite protective about her books because she's like, oh, I've got to read this one for book club. But I picked up a book and I went, oh, do you reckon I could borrow this one? And nan went, oh yeah, that's fine. You can have that one. That was your mum's one's one I went when did she leave that here and she went oh probably had that in the library since she was like 23 and it was and in that moment I kind of laughed and then when I was performing it at Seven Sisters I went oh my goodness like I was always empathetically aware of obviously mum you know

it was just this moment of just that shift of going all the fears that I feel as a young woman my mum's a daughter too and she's still figuring out all this stuff for herself and most likely the things that I'm feeling now as a 22 year, she's still feeling as intensely if not more intensely at periods of time because there would have been a time in which she was looking after a little human while figuring out how to look after her human. And it's just this like sense of trust that in the same way that I can and it felt so visceral and it felt so real in that moment. Like I felt like I could feel all of it within my mum at that point in time.

But to know that my nan most likely feels the same way, well, not most likely, definitely does, and that her mum did, and that her mum did. And it's just this beautiful lineage of experience that, like how fortunate are we to be able to tap into that? Totally. like how fortunate are we to be able to tap into that totally to gather together to recognize that not only within our lineages but from just a sisterhood of just being among women yeah yeah we talked about that that the magic what what happens when women come together the sisterhood because it does it's not necessarily

in a direct relation to you as your mother it could be a friend or just that idea of women collectively coming together something magical happens right i can't put it into words can you it's i i it's it i think it is it I don't think it needs words potentially. Like it's, as you kind of mentioned before, when in community and in communion with and in company of sisterhood, which has been really poignant recently and recognizing sisterhood exists not only among women of your age, but it's actually it's women of all ages and the wisdom that you can learn from younger sisters and older sisters

and older sisters. It's incredible. But to be in that company and that communion feels very much, the visual I continually get is that sense of a tree. Like it's that sense of being deeply rooted but also so openly expansive at the same time. It's, yeah, it's just the most beautiful thing. It's a phenomenon.

It is. And it allows so much i think there's a permission giving or i see you feeling for me like a like a sense of oh it's the same it's like being with trees it's being outside this sort of inner sense of support, yeah, and acknowledgement. But, yeah, also ephemeral and hard to put words around. The idea of circles and women's circles, I think they're popping up everywhere and I feel like that's a really deep need from us to have those and intergenerational circles and i think it's a it's a rising need from the earth really for it for more feminine divinity and wisdom to come back into

being i'm going to ask you to sing a song, but before I do and before we finish, I wanted to ask you about matriarchy. What does that mean to you, that idea? That sits quite interestingly within me because I feel like in many ways I was raised in a bit of a matriarchy if I think about it but what matriarchy means or what a matriarchal way of being for me feels like the word that comes up is a sense of honoring the matriarchy and the sense of matriarch is a sense of honoring rather than controlling and how I feel by that is that I think the beauty of of honoring the feminine within ways of being is that the feminine will move through the way that it needs to and that's its power and that's its strength and sometimes it can be soft and sometimes

it will feel like a tidal wave and so unruly but that's part of it and that's okay but the way of the feminine in that sense and its power is to recognize that if we don't honor both or many of those spectrums of expression or experience or story and we try to control it, I think in that sense of control, we kind of start to separate ourselves from one another and from place. Whereas honoring and accepting it for what it needs to be and letting it move through and holding it accountable, I think that's what the matriarchal and the matriarchy way of being feels like for me. I think to call it only by its, and I think to call the harsher parts of it not beautiful would be dismissing it.

I think all of it is beautiful, but I think it is about honor. It's about honoring. It's about respecting it's about holding stewardship for all of the dimensions of yeah of being and not trying to control it but move alongside it yeah you are very wise beyond your years and it is very curious to me. I feel like you've lived many lives somehow or have a lot of wisdom in your being and I want to really honour that and say thank you for this conversation and thank you for every conversation I have with you.

Yeah, and thank you for the conversations that I hope will continue to happen. Yes, I know. And it's also so incredible to sit with you and experience the curiosity with which you engage with people and stories because it's you so deeply listen. And that's what I really respect is that you listen and you reflect back to people and i think that's it's it's so important and so beautiful yeah thank you for holding the space to be able to explore this conversation um i think i'm gonna have to sit on some of the things that you've questioned on and i'd love to learn more from you over over our friendship too i feel like

i feel like i'm learning from you constantly so i think that's really precious thank you for saying that i really appreciate it i listening is my favorite thing other than talking and singing. Yeah. I just, yeah, it's such a joy. And podcasting is this special space where, yeah, you create a space where you can just listen and sit and it's amazing. I find it so present, which is interesting because, yeah, it's a special kind of, it's a funny word for a thing I can't really describe.

You know, podcast sounds like a thing. It's just a word someone made. Yeah. You know? So this has been such a gift. So, my friend, Mieda, are you going to sing us a song? What song will you sing us? What do you think?

What feels good to you? I think I want to sing. Actually, I might sing slowly. Oh, yay! I would love that, yes! Oh my gosh, what a privilege. I would love that. Loving is a fragile art When you don't know how to start Slowly mending up the pieces Revealing scars Slowly mending up the pieces, revealing scars. Loving is a cherished word, something that I've seen and heard. But giving love and in return, it takes time to learn. It's hard, But I'm trying

To give To her And slowly I forgive The old Me I forgive the old me Who used to live in your place The places she once was was and I give her

all the patience she craves for the loving she deserves more I tell her that she's home.

Never mind the weight I let go of shame and give grace to all the mistakes I've made. I give thanks to life and I see the light that is all around me And slowly I forgive the only who used to live in your name The places she once was And I give her

All the patience she craves for the loving she deserves more I tell her that

she's home And I hope that She knows that I know that she is not alone Slowly Slowly Slowly Thank you so much. Oh my God. Thank you so much. Thank you. thank you so much what a beautiful gift thank you oh i really love you that was so beautiful thank you all right well we might just finish the show with that thank you so much for singing that song

that was so beautiful it was such a privilege to sit here and there's a bird we haven't like really heard it it just like popped in with you. I can't wait for this song to be out in the world for other people. But what a treat that I got to hear you sing it just then. Thank you. It feels like such a privilege to be able to share in these conversations and spaces with you. It really does. Yeah.

I feel that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, well, I'll press stop. You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonti, and this week with indie folk singer Mieta. For more from me, you can head to clairetonti.com forward slash events

or over on Instagram at claretonte. And for more from Mieta, head to atmieta.music on Instagram or find her on Spotify and all the streaming platforms where you can listen to Slowly. It's such a beautiful production as well by Timothy Lee. And I really do think this song is going to change things for a lot of people. All right. As always, thank you to Roar Collings for editing this week's episode and to Maisie for running our social media. My name is Claire Tonti, and I am so glad that you are here to listen to these stories. I feel so grateful every time I get to turn the microphone on. Okay, time's out. This cage you want us in no longer fits our crowns

Cause we are fire and we can be free We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be Cause we are fire and we can finally breathe We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be We can be free We can be free And don't forget that bodies can break They want us hungry and humble, thinking our worth isn't our weight

Thought if we starved ourselves to fit their box and fit their mold We'd lose our fight, stay small, wait to be told That we are fire, and we can be free We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be Cause we are fire And we can finally see We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be We can be free

We can be free We're gonna rip it up We're gonna rip it up We're gonna eat it whole Hear my voice now We're gonna take it all We're gonna rip it up We're gonna eat it whole Hear my voice now

We're gonna take it all Cause we are fire We're going to take it all. Because we are fire and we can be free. We can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be. Because we are fire and we can finally breathe. And we can unlearn all the things That they told us we should be We can be free We can be free

We can be free We can be free We can be free We can be free We can be free