We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 251. How to Break Cycles with Allison Russell

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Allison Russell, shares her incredible life story and teaches us how she healed from abuse through music, sisterhood, and returning to her body. This hour is a soul-stirring reminder of the life-saving, cycle-breaking power of truth telling, art, and love.  About Allison: Allison Russell has spent her career in multiple bands, including Po’ Girl, Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago. After a career spent as a gifted multi-instrumentalist, backing numerous other artists, she finally dared to release her solo project in 2021. She made her Opry debut and appeared at the Country Music Hall of Fame and performed at the 2022 GRAMMY’s Premiere Ceremony. In addition to her four GRAMMY nominations, she has earned three 2022 Americana Award nominations and a win for Album of the Year, two International Folk Music Award wins, a 2022 Juno nomination for ‘Songwriter of the Year,’ and her first-ever Juno Award win for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year. Russell received two 2021 Americana Awards nominations, won three Canadian Folk Music Awards, two UK Americana Music Awards, and more. She was recently nominated for Song of the Year and Artist of the Year for the 2023 Americana Awards.  TW: @outsidechild13 IG: @allisonrussellmusic To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome Pod Squad. Today we are delighted to tell you that we have the Allison Russell with us. After career spent as a gifted multi-instrumentalist, backing numerous other artists artists she finally released her solo project in 2021. She made her opera debut appeared at the country music hall of fame and performed at the 2022 Grammy's premiere ceremony. She has been nominated for four Grammys. She has earned three Americana awards. Her recent album The Returner is just, it's a real experience. You've got to listen. Alison Russell, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So excited to talk to you. I was just listening to your incredible conversation with Andrea Gibson and me being my beautiful literary agent, Meg Thompson sent it to me and just intuitively didn't know we were doing this, you know, and just sent it to me. No way. Yeah, she was like, you need to listen to this.

It's going to change your life. I will. Well, thank you for listening. And we've already started. So, hi. Hi. I love you, Alice and Russell. Wonderful to meet you all sort of officially.

I remember seeing y'all and seeing high, kind of in a dark green room at Red Rocks, but that was a while ago. So I was thinking about that in preparation for this moment. I think that you and I, the first time we met, we were sitting on the floor in a huge green room, back of Red Rocks eating in and out. I think there was like 400 boxes of in and out burgers.

It was at backstage after a brandy, Allison Russell, sister strings, everybody was there. Yeah. Show. It was midnight and I was so proud of myself for being awake and I was like, oh, this is what it's like behind the scenes at a rock star show, except that I don't think this is how it is at a rock star show because it was 500 cheeseburgers, 500 children. Yeah.

There was like, it was the wolf pack. It was the wolf pack. Yes. The barrel wolf pack, my daughter was among them. I know. I know. I know. I them. Ida. I know. Ida was next to you. Eva, Kath and Brandi's kids were running. Everybody's kids were running.

All that's what it's like behind the scenes at one of these shows. I kept being amazed by the love and family atmosphere. And also by the fact that everyone was still awake. Yes. Because it was like 12-year-old. For my children, so excited. they had all, you know, sung on stage and all the rest of it. But that is the magic that Brandy and Catherine create with their, you know,

their beautiful love in of it's not just a show, it's a family, and it's a foundation, and it's making music mean more, and it's uplifting everyone that comes into their magical orbit and circle, you know, that's just who they are, they're extraordinary, you know. I had to represent today. Oh, my goodness. Oh, it's wearing a brandy shirt. I mean, I think it would not be exaggerating to say that brandy and calf are two of the most important people in our entire lives.

Yeah. They are same. And you're same for you. Same. Absolutely. The same. I mean, it was that show. You know, that was actually our first concert, not only seeing you, but seeing Brandy live. I didn't know that. And it was the first time that, you know, everybody who's not in the music industry has a picture of what the behind the scenes looks like. And we, at the time, were like kind of thinking, like, what is Tish gonna do?

Is she gonna go into this industry? It's very dangerous. There's a lot of drinking and drugging, the whole thing. And then we get backstage at Red Rocks. And it was totally not what we expected. And so I don't know. I just think that, yes, Brandy and Caff, but also you to be able to like feel confident

in them to bring your child with you on the road and to watch you perform. I mean, Alison, you are magic. You are fucking magic. So sweet. They're so sweet. It means a lot to me. You're just, you're in our house all the time.

Yeah, Allison, just in every room, your music is so beautiful. So speaking of Kath and Brandi, I read this story that made me giggle so much because it reminded me of my daughter and me, but I read a story that, um, Kath once overheard Aida. So your daughter and how old is Aida now? She's now nine. She'll be 10 at the end of December. Yeah. Okay. So Aida was talking to Eva who is a branding Kath's daughter about how either your momies do the same thing, right? Because Allison and Brandy, both singers, artists, and I just said to Eva, no. My mom doesn't do what your mom does. My mom just sings sad songs about her sad past.

Exactly what she said. And Catherine was trying to die laughing, you know, just trying to keep a straight face and with her sweet, you know, decor, so, I, uh, your mom has got a lovely voice, you know, she's just been so sweet. And I had a cut through off like, yeah, my mom's got a good voice, but let's face it, she even makes jingle bells sound sad. Oh, I should have put a, I kind of put a, be in my bon my bonnet to write us some bangers for the record. She was talking about outside child, when she was saying that.

And she has become my greatest, greatest victory. You will appreciate this as moms was I was on the road. And I got a call from my partner JT. And she, the new record had just dropped, the returner had just dropped and she's all about Spotify and listening to Tish, listening to Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish and everybody. And Beyonce, she walked by her room

and she had the door closed or she often does when she's doing deep listening and she was listening to demons from the returner over and over again and learning the words and figuring out the chords on the piano and stuff. So yeah, that was such a triumphant. She likes one of the songs. I just know that Tish came to a couple of my speaking events a few years ago and we left. And I was like, what did you think? She said to me, I just, I don't understand why do you always have to start on the bathroom floor when you're addicted and you're pregnant and you're on drugs and you're gonna. So that's what I thought of when I heard your thing. But okay, Allison, here's what I think is so cool.

And I don't know if you're gonna relate to this at all. But when I hear that Ida says that to you, it makes me feel like it's a beautiful thing because the reason why they are like, oh, that's sad, is because sadness and pain is not the water that they swim in with us. Yes, exactly. So it feels like a difference to them,

which is a triumph for us. It's a total triumph. It's making miserable cycles for them in real time, in real life, and it's joyful, and you're absolutely right. And it's also, they trust us enough to tease us and to mock us and to know that there aren't going to be some sort of draconian repercussions for doing so. You know, they can be their full selves and have some backbone and have some sass and own it, you know, in this joyful way.

I love it. I mean, I kind of almost do a fault and sort of love it when I does a bit like, yes, a bit mouthy with everybody. I kind of love it. And when she's so calm, I was so cowed, my old childhood, you know, and like crumbled in. So to see her having more backbone, you know, at three, then I did at 30 is just joyful to me, you know.

And for them to be able to tease, like for them to be able to tease us about the kind of reckoning that we are trying to have with our own pain, them being able to tease us is to also allow them space to be playful with their own pain. Oh yeah. You're so, you know? And I think that, like we were all,

I'll speak for myself, I was shut off to not experience my own discomfort or pain out loud at all in my childhood. And what kind of human beings are they going to be that they're gonna be able to not only experience it, but also be able to laugh about it in some ways. What I do think that has the defining, I mean, the emotional intelligence of our young ones, of the Gen Zs like Tish and the Alphas,

like Ida and Eva and Eli have just learned that they're called Alphas, you know. If you're born, I didn't even know that. Yes, if you're born after 2012, you're in Alpha. That's cool. You're in the next whole cycle, you know, of the generations of humanity, you know, if we don't drive, if we don't drive ourselves to our mass extinction, but I have hope because these young ones

are so attuned and open to each other, listening to each other's emotions in a different way, that I've ever, certainly not with my, you know, I'm an ancient millennial, not in my generation, my partners in X are, you know, not in that ancient millennial, not in my generation, my partners in X are, you know, not in that generation. They are wide open in this really, really special way that I think is required for the kind of level of crisis that we're currently facing. That are human family, our species is facing. So people often ask me, parents don't know what to share with their children. I'm Jenna Axe.

Okay, so I'm like, wow. And a lot of, I think, our generation was taught not to reveal any of our past pain to our kids. We're supposed to hide it, we're supposed to. But what I love what you two are saying is, but when we do, what they learn is that we can survive. And that it's not something to hide all the time. And we can't hide it. It's impossible.

We can't. When we try to hide it, it comes out in toxic ways. I think. Yes. Yes. And they know because they know unbelievably brilliant and their empaths. And when we try to, I think that the message kids get

because they're getting a message. If our words are saying one thing, everything's fine and our bodies are saying another thing, trauma, I think that they're thinking there's something wrong with me. My mom's reacting that way because there's something wrong with me, because we haven't said to them, no, no, babe, it's just, there's nothing wrong with me.

Can you talk to us for people who don't know your story at all? Tell us what you want to tell us about your childhood, the beginning. You have said that you don't think it's brave to talk about trauma. You just think it's part of survival. Tell us what you want to tell us about your young life. Well, I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. My mom is a Scottish Canadian, and she met my biological father when they were in high school. And they had a brief high school romance, and by the time she realized she was pregnant, he was already back in Grenada. He had been studying in Canada

from Grenada, and by the time her parents found out they were getting a divorce, and she didn't have family support. So as a teenager who'd been quite sheltered, she wound up having me sort of in a home for unwed mothers, kind of a version of the Magdalene laundry, so I think. Because this is Catholic, Catholic Quebec, in I was born in 79.

And she was a white mother having a black child out of wedlock. You know, we were called illegitimate children back then. And it was a big massive stigma to be an unwed mother. And she had a rough time of it. And by the time I was born, she had a social worker and a bit of a relationship with her mom, but you know, was living in government housing and was just didn't have support. And back then, the trend in social work was to just remove a child at the first sign of trouble and put them in foster care. Now, it's understood that social services try very hard

to keep a child within a family if it's all possible and to offer aid and try any number of things before they just remove the child. But in my mom's case, she didn't have anyone really advocating for her and she had pretty severe postpartum depression after I was born. And I believe probably her first psychotic break, my mom has suffered with quite severe paranoid schizophrenia

for most of her adult life. And it went undiagnosed and then misdiagnosed as manic depression for many, many years, which did not help. And she struggled with substances and going on and off of medication, which has not helped. And she was very, very young when she had me. And one of the things I've been reading about is the effect that it has for very young

people when they become parents when they're not ready, that it can kind of cause an arrested development. So I've always thought of my mom more like my big sister, really than my mom. And so I ended up being removed from her care in very early childhood when I wasn't quite too yet, because she was doing harmful things, because of, you know, the depth of psychosis and despair that she was in and lack of support. And so when I was removed from her care was under something called child protective services in Quebec, which means that the parent,

if they want to get the child back, they have to go to court and prove their fitness to be parenting again. And so whilst I was there, she was groomed and courted by a much, much older predatory man, an American ex-pat who was born in 1936 in a sundown town somewhere in Indiana. And he brought the abuses that he had suffered, both ideological and physical.

With him, I believe it's ideological abuse to raise children with violent indoctrination and white supremacy and kind of supremacy beliefs. And so he brought all that with him, you know, when he came to Montreal and he courted my mother and he went to court and got me back from child protective services after he married my mom and eventually adopted me and was my primary caregiver and a primary abuser for over a decade until I ran away from home at 15. So, the beginnings were fairly miserable, but I was very lucky because I was in Montreal, which is a city that is defined by art and defined by Bohemian community and has 24-hour cafes and has one of the most beautiful cemeteries I've ever seen in the world where I felt safe on summer night sleeping there sometimes after I left home, I felt safer sleeping in the cemetery

than I did in the home with the people that called themselves my family at that time. So I was very lucky and I went to an alternative high school mind moving in new directions. And I met some of my best friends in this world to this day at that alternative high school. And that just, you know, I slowly found chosen family and met my first love who I,

of course that's me. Of course that's me. To protect, you know, their privacy and identity. Oh, dammit, that's not her real name. It's not her real name. It's not her real name, but it was always how I thought of her because I would crawl in through her basement window.

And I was, you know, the nerdy kid that was into Greek mythology and every kind of mythology. And I thought I was felt like it was like a reverse thing where going underground, going to Hades was this like sheltering thing, you know, it was the most, it was the safest I ever felt, was when we fell in love and I'd sneak in through a basement window because her parents would have had a heart attack if they realized the nature of our relationship and we were both babies, we're just 15 years old

each of us, you know, and just learning what it meant to be loved consensually and to be thought beautiful and equal and worthy and all of those things. It's an odd thing to be a black child raised in a white supremacist abuse of family because there's physical abuse and your your body eventually heals from from that kind of abuse generally. But the it's of course it's always the psychological abuse that's more insidious. It's the colonizing of our minds. And I think we're all decolonizing our minds all the time because we've been raised in these toxic systems of hierarchy. Take us back to 15 because the Persephone song, it's so sad but it's so also joyful and beautiful. Adi and I as queer women are just like, yes, I mean, there's something about it that's so universal to the queer experience

also while being incredibly personal to you about just finding safety. I love that you hear the joy in it because I was quite startled when I realized that a lot of people did hear it as traumatic in some way because I'm explicit in the beginning about what I'm running from. But to me, it's such a joyful song. It's first love, it's sexual reclamation and awakening. And I had never experienced anything consensual in my life up to then. I had never experienced someone really truly loving me

as an equal. And that was completely not just transformative, it was really truly life-saving and joyful and realizing that sex could be joyful and not some sort of torture was completely shocking and incredible and you know all the things that it is for people who hopefully haven't been messed with but is in some ways even more intense for people who have, you know. Mm-hmm. I felt that deep in my bones when we listened to that song. It's like every teenage queer kid who has been trying to fit into this one box, their whole lives, or stuffed into certain boxes.

And then there's like the tap, tap, tap and on your window screen. To me, like, I'm a romantic at heart. I just remember that first, like, experience with my first girlfriend. And I mean, that visual is like, yes. It made all of the confusion and pain and angst. I was like, oh, got it.

I love seeing this feeling. This skinny arms, get me. This skinny arms, get me, I don't know why. I'm skinny arms, this kid, because he's like, we're kids still in the room. Oh, the ones. We're growing up together and learning about love together and listening to Oni DeFranco and Tracy Tash

and the Indigo girls together, you know, for Senado Connor. You know, all of them. Like York. Oh my gosh. Okay. I need to talk about Senado Connor for a second. That's amazing. I actually have this on my list of things to talk about.

Okay. Because I personally had what might be considered to some people an outsized reaction to Shaneid's death and the public reaction to Shaneid's death. My therapist actually said to me, I don't know if there's anyone in the country who's talking to their therapist about Shaneidokhana or who doesn't know Shaneid anyone in the country who's talking to their therapist about Shanado Connor who doesn't know Shanado Connor as much as you are. We might have to wonder if what we're really talking about is you, Levin. I felt connected to you the day because I felt like you were saying on Twitter some of

the things I was feeling. I was so pissed that people, first of all, were celebrating her after she died, who were not at all when she was alive, but also this repeated refrain of, well, she really battled her own demons. Yeah. I love your demons song. And I just feel like demons should be something that if you're talking about them They should only be yours. You should not be talking about somebody else's demons who didn't claim them as demons because actually what Shanato is always doing was fighting real demons Outside of her

Remember your tweet. I remember your tweet that day and I remember reposting it and being like that is exactly it She was fighting real Demons real demonic behavior. I don't believe any human is truly a monster, but there are people who behave thoroughly, monstrously, and never stop, you know? Yes, yes. And what the Catholic Church has done and continues to do,

there's still a residential school for indigenous kids open in the Dakotas. Like, that hasn't stopped yet. And across Canada, we are digging up mass graves of Indigenous children, thousands and thousands and unmarked graves. And this was done by the Catholic Church and the Canadian government. And the settlers, all of us, my ancestors too.

Yeah. And people who are talking about it. People who like Shunid was right. She was right. She was right about everything. She was right about everything. Glenn, it's so interesting you can say this because in a my circle of close women

and actually Someone I hadn't known well until Joni jam who I met at Joni jam was anilinix We ended up texting each other back and forth just cheney deep cuts back and forth and different things She had said and talking about I mean I was on the floor. I was Supposed to fly to Prague and do a video for demons, actually, with my incredible childhood friend, Ethan Tobman, who is the creative director for the Ares Tour and is a total superstar and was the set designer for,

like, formation and the lemonade, those amazing lemonade movies, brilliant visual artist, a big part of it. There are moving through different worlds, and it's basically like re-birthing oneself, reclaiming oneself over and over again, calling oneself to courage in this visual narrative to accompany the words in the music.

And a lot of it was to do with hair, and but I was on the floor into the point where I just wanted to shave my head and not leave the hotel room where I was in New York ever again. You know, I just wanted to mourn in a physical like I wanted to do something physical like rended something on myself. Yeah. I do know it means. Ritual. I had to be talked down, you know, by Ethan musical. We're doing this video that involves black women's hair. So if you could wait till after that to do this, you know, he talked me down and my partner,

JT, talked me down. And it's funny that your therapist said that to you because JT said to me, could this be something about you and not shaming it all because you never met her, right? You actually, right? Like, we're like, oh, but I, but I know, she's part of my survival. When she made her stand in 92, it wasn't about ripping up the post picture. It was about singing Bob Marley's war, acapella, essentially, and making it about child abuse and saying that and naming that on the biggest TV show of the day. And I was I think 12 when she took that stand. I don't know that I would have gathered up the courage to run from my situation. I might have just simply died in my situation. Had it not been for these truth tellers, you know,

who showed me that there is a life beyond abuse and that there are powerful women who stand up to abuse and that maybe I could be like them like Tracy Chapman who sang behind the wall like Shenato Connor who sang war and made it about child abuse like Tori Amos who sang Barbados me and a gun and a man on my back, but I haven't seen Barbados. So I must get out of this. These were my path lighters that showed me it was possible to survive and thrive and get out of this. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And it just felt like all of those women are pointing out demons in our world like homophobia, racism, greed that kills religion that says it's one thing and then abuses children. And then we are calling that person who's saying those things crazy. And then everything that they said, and these are often women, everything that they're said is proven right, but the world has already done its damage to that woman.

And then the woman dies and we saint her. While having villainized her, her whole life, instead of even just pretending to honor that woman after death, we should just try to honor the next inconvenient profit in real time. Yes, we won't do that. We won't do that. We'll villainize them again and then saint them again after death. So I think it is about shanate, it is about Tori, it is that all these people individually is about Tracy,

but it's also about this rhythm, this pattern we see happening over and over again, to women. Well, I mean, it's been going on since the Witch Burnings, right? Exactly. And I'm sure before, it's the martyring of women. It's the demonizing, which really,

yes, they're witches. They sleep with the devil. Like it's literally demonizing. Yes. Powerful women. Strong women, healers. You know, and it's also like calling, you know, shanate her abuse as a child and then she had PTSD, right?

But like to call PTSD a demon is so fucking insane. That is a bodily physical reaction to something that the world has done to a person. Correct. Correct. Right. It's something that the world has done to a person. Correct. Correct. Right? It's something that the world has done to us, an inner demon. And also, when we label other people that, that's archaic religious language that has excused people for, yes, which for so long.

So we have to stop that shit. What's the first moment that you felt like I am a child who survived being raised by a white supremacist, psychological, sexual, physical abuser, to becoming what you are now, which I guess you're both things at all the time. But how did you fucking do this? Yeah. It's my question. My little brother and my niece and nephew. And a number of music, of course, art, of course,

the magic and the mystery of art, even with my mom, even though we had a deeply troubled and have a deeply troubled relationship, I was able to feel love through listening to her music. Like one of my earliest childhood memories was, I think I was on a visit from the foster home because I would have weekend visits with her. I can't remember if it was every weekend,

maybe it was every other weekend, but she wasn't allowed to be alone with me so we would go to my grandmother's apartment and she had this gorgeous upright piano with the kind of like very Victorian curvy legs of the piano sort of curlicued. And I remember sitting under there and watching my mom's feet on the piano and she was playing along actually, Joni Mitchell's her favorite artist, you know, in listening to Joni since I was in utero with my mom. No way. And she was playing along to ladies of the canyon,

and a deeper song called For Free, which is Joni's singing about a busker and how nobody's paying attention because they're not famous. And she's off stroking the star maker machinery, but really she just wants to go jam with this beautiful musician who's playing clarinet on the street for free. I slept last night in a good hotel.

When she's shopping today for Jews, the wind rushed around in the dirty town. Children let out from the school's gorgeous melody. And at the end, there's this beautiful clarinet solo. As she's, you know, I heard as refrain as the signal changed. She was playing me good for free. And she crosses the street and goes on with her life. And then this beautiful clarinet solo comes out of it. And I remember my mom singing along

and hearing the sound of the clarinet for the first time and being like electrified by that sound. Like what is that sound? You know, and my mom, I remember asking later what was that? And she said, it's a clarinet, that's what that was the clarinet. And that imprinted on me. And then all at the mystery and the magic of all those, full circle later of being invited by Brandi

into the magical circle of the Joni jam, and playing clarinet on stage with Joni and having her sleep. She saved me a cellist andessa? The most beautiful, clareffler ever, you know, just this sweet hyperbolic thing she said. So just in case you didn't hear it, Pod Squad, what happened is under the piano, she's holding Joni. Okay, and she hears the clarinet.

Fast forward to she's on stage at the Gorge was it. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge.

It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge.

It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. It was the Gorge. because she demanded that I take a solo during young at heart and you just, Joni asked you to do something, you do it. Yeah. And try not to mess it up, you know. It was so, it was just such a sweet, surreal moment.

And when you say, how do you get from there, there will, it's all of it all at once because we're always still, I'm still that little girl that loved just that sound and imprinted on me. And I was always, I feel like, in some ways, I think we all have a birthright, every human on the planet living now. We are the improbability of us being who we are in this time. The fact that we come from,

no matter what our heritage, what our lineage, what our set of challenges or privileges, we all come from long lines of survivors. And that is our human birthright is this resilience. I was very moved by a theme in the returner, which feels very much like part of my recovery, which is it feels like this big love story to embodiment. Nailed it. And I don't know if it's just because whatever I'm doing feels like everyone's talking about that. But can you talk a little bit about this song

all without within? Yes, I love that. That's by far the sexiest song on the record. Oh my God, I fucking love that song. And that's Wendy and Lisa, y'all singing with me. And they joined us, our rainbow coalition of chosen family that we've been growing together over the last two years. We made the returner in six days. And it was over. It was 15 women and one non-binary identifying gender-extensive, amazing, divine being, and three chosen brothers, ten songs, six days.

And we recorded it in LA at the old A&M studio, which is now Hanson Studio, presided over by Kermit The Frog, which gave me a lot of joy. But it means a lot to you. Yes. And so that is in fact where Johnny recorded blue. And it's where Carol King recorded tap history. It's where they did, we are the world. We are the children with Tina Turner and Cindy Lombard

blowing the roof off the place. Yes. You know, it's shock us made records. They're the good roof off the place. Yeah. You know, it's, shock us made records. The good ghosts in that place are just outrageous. So it was like a family affair all around. You can't make a record in six days without having complete trust with everyone that you're engaged in creative communion with. It's a trust fall exercise basically.

And it only works if everybody lets go and jumps together. You know, it falls together. You can feel that. You can feel that in terms of healing, because the first album ends with, I think, where are all the joyful mother fuckers, which is, which feels like a joyful mother fuckers. Joyful mother fuckers, right?

And it feels like you could play your records back to back. And it would be like, where are they? And then the returners, like, here they are! Here they are! I heard the joyful mother fuckers! Picked up on that because that's exactly right. Because this is the kind of nerd I am. I am obsessed with multi volume journeysume journeys in which it's true.

Yes, me too. And for me, an album is a journey. Like, I feel about an album the way some people feel about a film. I understand and accept that the vast majority of people will be streaming. And they will never listen to the record in the very deeply nerdy exact order that we agonized over. Yeah, access to playing. And playing over. But when people do, it's the greatest thing ever.

I will say that to anyone listening, and some of you may have never taken a journey with a record. And I understand that, and I don't condemn at all. But I promise you, if you do take the journey with an album that was written in that way because not everybody wants to make albums in that way anymore, actually, right? And some artists never did. Some artists were always more single driven.

But for nerds like me and Brandy Carlyle, for example, and Joni Mitchell and Prince and Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls, If you take the entire, and Odetta, if you take and Mavis Staples, if you take the entire journey with the record, it is so much more rewarding. When you have the time, because I also know how precious time is, it's so difficult for someone to sit down

for 45 minutes and do nothing, so to speak, right? Of course you do something very active when you're listening But I know it's hard for us to justify those those taking that time in our busy lives But I not only as the returner its own narrative arc although not linear It is connected to outside child, but anyone can take the journey with either album, but they are in fact I tell, but anyone can take the journey with either album, but they are in fact, oh, so child is volume one, probably the past, the returner is volume two, it's the present, it's re-embodyment, it's stealing joy from the teeth of turmoil, it's loving on your

people who love you back, it's loving on the people that don't love you back, but not allowing them to derail your joy. And it is just being here now. Okay. Two more things. You follow them up with JT. What a love bug. Everyone who meets JT is in love with JT.

Don't get Katherine Carlisle started on JT. But they have the most beautiful friendship. I love the relationship. I can tell, I had this secret idea of when women are queer women and then they marry men. I wonder if they just want to wear flags all day every day to signal to the world I'm still queer and then I swear to God, Alison is wearing a rainbow wristband. And I'm like, maybe they do. Because you want to have to.

My power wristband, it's my anti-bigotry wristband. It was on stage and it makes me feel strong. I live in Tennessee now, y'all. We're battling some medieval stuff over here. But we're winning. And Gloria Johnson is our next senator. Just put that out there. This is airing before election day.

I'm pretty incredible. We have incredible care about your get to the polls. Why should Tennessee show up for Gloria Johnson? Tell us that. She is who she says she is. She has been showing up for community since she was a teacher as a representative. She's risking her seat as a representative.

She is a she went to win again for Knoxville as a representative, she's risking her seat as a representative. She is a shoe in to win again for Knoxville as a representative in the house. But we are in a crisis situation in Tennessee. We have essentially a hijacked people's house here. Only 32% of registered voters voted this so-called, so-called GOP, so-called supermajority. I say so-called because they're not behaving in any way like small government Republicans,

which is what I used to think the GOP was. Here in Tennessee, we have bad actors in office trying to unlawfully expel lawmakers because they are young and black and standing up for their constituents, like Brother Justin Jones, representative Jones and representative Pierson, representative Jones from right here in my writing in 52nd District here in Nashville and representative Pearson from Memphis.

They tried to expel Gloria too, but she pointed out since she was a white woman, one of the openly racist Republicans, you know, allowed her to stay with one vote. And, and of course, both representative Jones and representative Pearson were reelected by a landslide. And they've become known now nationally as the Tennessee three because they were standing up for our kids, for our community, for all Tennesseans demanding a sensible response, any response to the carnage of gun violence. I have thought of you so much in your activism for sensible gun reform. When I think about your story and about being a kid where school was your safe place,

I was a teacher. And so I know that my classroom for a lot of little ones was the only safe place that they had. They came to school for safety. They did not go home for safety. They came to school for safety. It was the one sanctuary that they had. And so when I think now about how that is not even true anymore for children, school was a sanctuary for you. It was a good, correct sanctuary. And you have touched upon something here that I've been trying to explain to people

and to explain to people back home in Canada who keep asking, when are you coming home? In the next wave of legislative terrorism rocks us here in Tennessee. And I just tell them we can't, I can't show my daughter that I'm running away from fascism. We don't run away from fascism. We stop it. We surround it with love and we overwhelm it

and we vote it out. That's what we do. Because we still do have a democracy. And when I think about exactly what you said, Glenin, of that my child, I've been able to break cycles of abuse in our home, in our personal lives. And yet, my daughter, wakes from nightmares, has a lot of the trauma responses that I experienced from my abuse of home as a child. In her case, it is from fear of being shot to death at school.

It is from the active shooter drill where they didn't tell the kids or the shooters that it was a drill because they've determined they'll save more children when, not if an active shooter gets into the building, when, because for almost three years now, the number one cause of untimely death for our babies, for our children and youth, is gun violence. And to have blanket inaction here in Tennessee where we just lost six beautiful humans in our community at the Covenant School, we watched the absolute grotesque mockery of a special session where these lawmakers who claim to care about families and family values mocked Covenant moms,

the school was called Covenant, where this horrific gun violence took place, mocking those moms. These are women who are white, Christian, seemingly straight. Most of them have voted Republican their whole lives. These are who they're supposed to actually care about, right? And they were mocking them, saying the most horrific. I mean, it can't be unseen. Right. And as awful as that is, what I have realized and why it is so important that people vote because that does not represent Tennessee. There are people who are having their religious beliefs

manipulated to fear their neighbors that they don't have to fear. They don't need to fear drag queen story time. If they don't like drag queen story time, they don't have to go, but they don't need to fear it. I must be so interesting for you as a child who was raised and abused by a white supremacist steeped in all of this shit, saved by a queer girl to now be fighting religion claiming that the queer people are the ones who are abusing. It all goes back to Shenato Carter. It all goes back to this thing. And it is the same projection and demonizing of the actual freedom fighters truth tellers profits in our time. That's right. Gloria is a truth teller.

She is exactly who she says she is. I've been lucky enough to know her for about three years now. I met her actually through the music world because she just shows up in the community. She shows up to concerts. She shows up to volunteer drives. You see her at the supermarket. You see her at the supermarket. You see her in the park. And I think probably on some level,

the last thing she wanted to do was have to run for Senator, but she's doing it for all Tennesseans. As we end here, as someone who is healing through re-enbodyment, through landing in my body for the first time, to feeling everything that is without, finally within, to understanding, like, feeling a touch or feeling even hunger or feeling rain as like a freaking resurrection.

Yeah. Like just experiencing life in my body for the first time. I have so many friends who don't get to or don't feel yet, like they can have that returner experience because of trauma, because of abuse, because all of that is what's in their body and disassociation has been their survival mechanism for their whole lives. Because you have so much trauma in your background and you are experiencing through your music, it feels very much like you're experiencing re-embodiment as healing. Oh, well, for me, I think it took a long time. And motherhood helped vastly in my case.

That was the first time I ever loved my body. And I was tear, I never thought I would be a mother, never, never, never. Certainly never thought I would bear a child. You know, maybe if I fell in love with a woman who had a child or, you know, I could do that. But I never thought I would physically do that. And Ida was a miracle. You know, I was on birth control. She's a birth control pill.

Yeah. I heard that. For seven years. And they never failed me. And I never skipped one either. Anyone listening with a uterus. Birth control pills are not 100%. They are 99.99 and I does that point, zero, zero, zero, one, one, one, what have you.

And it was shocking at first, you know, JT and I had been together for seven years at that point. And I was just so terrified of paying for it any of what I lived. And I felt that somehow I would be doomed to do that. But because GT is so stable and has such a strong, gorgeous, intergodis and a beautiful, happy family that's not abusive, I just thought, well, if I'm completely undone by this, I know that he will be there for this child. And it was the most miraculous thing of all of the kind of self evisceration that I was in the habit of doing

of just continually being cruel to myself because that's what I was used to. You know, and I've talked about this with a lot of other survivors. And I feel like, you know, an eating disorder is just part two of after you've been sexually abused. Like that, it just inevitably follows. And, you know, so I had done, I had had various disordered eating patterns my whole life. It all just stopped when I was pregnant with Ida. It was like this miracle of

happy endorphins. And I don't know, flood of oxytocin and joyful feelings, and love for this little alien that was growing and also fascination, but I felt connected. It was like my mitochondria woke up and said, hey, you're part of this unbroken line of badass bitches who just make life on earth. Like, you're fine, you're fine, you're okay. in line of badass bitches who just make life on Earth. You're fine, you know, you're fine, you're okay.

And that was the beginning. That has helped me move through some of the trauma in my body, dancing, playing music, being in community with other women has been so important for me this year that I feel safe with. When I was 16, I moved in, I ran away from home at 15 and was kind of, you know,

I tenure at hiding in Persephone's basement and the cemetery and the staying up all night at the Quasen Réal, on Célo Ren, playing chess with the old guys are, you know, going and hiding out in the Marie-Rachane Dumonts, cathedral, little cathedral that was close to my alternative high school that was across the street from McGill. And going there in the winter

and sitting in a pew and falling asleep. And, but when I was 16, I got this terrible, terrible marketing job. And I moved in with three other women that I went to high school with who are my dear beloved friends to this day. Allie and Shavon and Kim and and our friends and all of our other, you know, friends just learning how to live in the world would would come by and we called the apartment the womb, you know,

and it was that was such a healing time. They were the first people other than Persephone that I just closed to. You know, they we just learned so much from each other. What love? Yeah. What love? To feel loved. We did that for each other. We became anything. That is such a universally, I think for everyone I know who identifies in any way as queer has had a version of that, where you at some, except the very, very, very lucky few who were fully, fully accepted by their families. But I don't, I don't know

many people who identify as queer who were fully accepted by their families in those developmental years. We know a couple, but they're our children. Yes, they're our children. Yes, I should say that caveat of people over 30 now. Right. And it isn't that beautiful because we're healing again, it goes back to breaking these cycles of trauma. Well, Pod Squad, if you are in need of a beginning of returning to your body. I do recommend Allison's latest album, The Returner. I feel like it's an anthem to that, to that reclamation of being here now, of feeling of knowing that you also have the right, the God-given birthright of experiencing joy and love and peace inside your body. In this brief, corporeal experience, and I think about what Andrea Gibson was talking about,

brief it is, and that's the beauty. And we will be, I won't say waste so much time, but we are embroiled for so much of our lives. I think so many of us in not feeling okay in our bodies or needing to escape our bodies and the joy of returning to our bodies and accepting all of the pain and the scars and the the history written there is beautiful who fooled us into thinking that the unmarked page was more beautiful. You know, yeah, oh

Who did that beautiful? I just want to say I Stunned by your music. I'm stunned at just how profound you are I just am so grateful to know you. I'm so grateful that our Tishie got to eat dinner with you She's incredible. Y'all if you don't have Tish's new singles, you've got to get it. It's so beautiful. Produced by our beautiful Brandy Carlyle as well. Well, she came home and said after that weekend in Nashville, I said, so tell me your favorite part. And I thought she was going to say the red carpet or whatever. And she said, I think my favorite part was talking to Alice in it, dinner. Oh. Oh, that's like, oh, that's the best award I'll ever be given. Thank you.

Oh my gosh. Oh, we love you. We love you, Alice, and Russell. We will see you backstage next time with some burgers and fries and Ida and Tish. And you just keep going. For your point of forever. I love you all. I'm so grateful.

Thank you for having me today. Same, same, same. Bye, Pod Squad. See you next time. Bye, Pod Squad. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things, first, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page

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