🎶 Way Less Sad (And Loud As Hell): My Healing Playlist

Living Memoir Series | Jill Talks

There are some things too big for words.

That’s where music came in.

I didn’t go looking for healing through songs—it found me when nothing else could reach me.

After Cameron died, my grief had no language.

People were silent. Or shallow.
I couldn’t talk.
I couldn’t breathe.
But I could drive.

Windows down.
Sunroof open.
Bose speakers on full blast.
Country roads winding like my thoughts.

And I let the music do what people couldn’t.

🎶 Some days I sang.
🎶 Some days I screamed.
🎶 Some days I cried so hard the sound of the lyrics held me up.

Music became my best friend.
My hype man.
My therapist.
My shoulder to cry on.
My “you got this” voice when no one else showed up.

I found AJR during the hardest time.
And something in their weird, quirky, loud brilliance cracked me open. These guys changed my life. My heroes! I know “Who the hell I am!” 

Their song “Way Less Sad” hit different.

That was the first time I realized:

I can be sad and singing at the same time.

It’s ok to smile right now. It’s ok to be happy in this moment.

I can be healing and broken.
I can be falling apart… and still alive.

That song didn’t ask me to “move on.”

It said: “Yeah, you’re a mess. But you’re still here.” It taught me to stay in the moment. Well, the song and Brian. 
And that was enough.

It changed the way I listened to lyrics forever.

I started building a playlist—not just of songs I liked, but of songs that saved me.

Songs that understood me when no one else did.

Songs that screamed what I couldn’t say out loud to the people who needed to hear it—but never would.

I wasn’t singing for them.
I was singing for me.
Singing to stay alive.
Singing to find out who I was without all the masks.

I’m not a great singer.
But I’m a LOUD one.

So was Cameron.

And that? That’s all that matters.

Music didn’t just save me.

It reminded me who I was before the world told me to be quiet.

And every time I belt out a lyric with my whole chest,
I’m reclaiming a little more of her.

💭 Journal Prompt:

What song held you when nothing else could?
What lyric still echoes in your bones?
Make your own survival playlist.