Songs That Define Me

1. Journey to the Past from Anastasia

https://youtu.be/fEL0EGnHdsk

Have you ever seen the movie, Anastasia? Well, I grew up memorizing every lyric to every song from this movie. On the surface, I loved the movie because it was me… If you don’t know the story, she was a Russian orphan, and yes, I was a Russian orphan too. I was adopted when I was four by an American family.

But on a deeper level, the song lyrics in my favorite song, “Journey to the Past” meant so much more. I remember listening to this song on repeat for years. It is a cartoon, but I didn’t care. Every lyric of this song had a special place in my heart at different given moments in my life:

“Heart don't fail me now

Courage don't desert me

Don't turn back now that we're here

People always say

Life is full of choices

No one ever mentions fear

Or how the world can seem so vast

On a journey to the past”

I did not go on an adventure to find my family, as my adopted family is my one and own, but oh boy how did this song made me feel. I remembered the countless times asking my heart to not fail me as I tried to figure out my own relationship with my parents and brother. How I asked for courage to not desert me when I took chances that sometimes I felt like I could only make alone. How it took me a long time to understand that life is full of choices, but that fear was the only thing getting in my way of figuring this world out.

“Somewhere down this road

I know someone's waiting

Years of dreams just can't be wrong

Arms will open wide

I'll be safe and wanted

Finally, home where I belong

Well, starting now, I'm learning fast

On this journey to the past

Home, love, family

There was once a time, I must have had them too

Home, love, family

I will never be complete

Until I find you”

There was a time in my life that one of the biggest questions I asked myself was “Where is my home?” I know that sounds obvious or even strange, as I had a family and I had a house, but I believe that home is a feeling, not a place. Though I was adopted, and I loved my family, often times I didn’t feel like I belonged. I too believed that years of dreams just couldn’t be wrong and that that I would finally find a home where I belong. When I thought of home, I thought of love, I thought of family and I thought of until I found my home, I too would not feel complete.

“One step at a time

One hope, then another

Who knows where this road may go

Back to who I was

On to find my future

Things my heart still needs to know”

The end of this song helped me often process through how I was going to figure our where my own road would take me; how I was going to find my own future. Like I said, I repeated this song to motivate me to do something and understand that just one small action, one step at a time, was the first thing I could actionably do. Deep, personal… but all true.

2. Chicken Fried by Zac Brown Band

https://youtu.be/p5ojO1Qbu3I

“Well, it's funny how it's the little things in life that mean the most

Not where you live or what you drive or the price tag on your clothes

There's no dollar sign on a peace of mind this I've come to know

So, if you agree have a drink with me

Raise your glasses for a toast

To a little bit of chicken fried

A cold beer on a Friday night

A pair of jeans that fit just right

And the radio up

Well, I've seen the sunrise”

Originally, I looked up the lyrics to put this song as my part of my life playlist because I remember making this the ringtone to my first cell phone. Funny choice, but it must have resonated with me because back thing having a personalized ring tone, let alone pay for a ringtone back in 8th and 9th grade. I remember it just being a fun song as I lived in Texas, loved the hot summers, and thought the lyrics were funny. I remember it made me smile when someone would call, and the few times it pops up on the radio, I think back on those times. Interestingly enough, looking deeper in the lyrics above, I see how the song could have subconsciously resonated with me. If you see the pattern by now, understanding myself and my purpose in life is a big theme for me. I couldn’t agree more that it’s the little things in life that mean the most, and that money can’t buy happiness, or peace. I know now that this song was subconscious to my idea of how I was living life then. I wasn’t poor by means, but my friends flaunted their money way more than I was able to. Though we did have money, we didn’t show it, and I too, remember that bothering me way more than it should. Interesting how lyrics can speak to you even if you don’t understand it in the moment.

3. If You’re Going Through Hell by Rodney Atkins

https://youtu.be/l50L4GYhpLc

“If you're goin' through hell keep on going

Don't slow down if you're scared don't show it

You might get out before the devil even knows you're there

Yeah if you're goin' through hell keep on movin'

Face that fire walk right through it

You might get out before the devil even knows you're there.”

Where some songs were subconsciously speaking to me, this song was straight forward. There were many times in high school after my parents moved me sophomore year from Texas to Kentucky that I definitely felt like I was going through hell. I take this song to heart as I am the worst at showing when I am scared, and I am the queen of moving on despite what I go through.

But I also remember how the song lyrics helped me in the exact moment. I was a swimmer, and I was a good one. That being said, I was on a very tough swim team, and I was working to get a swimming scholarship to college, so I worked my butt off. I will never forget how this song; these exact lyrics got me through a swim practice one Saturday morning. Oh, how I hated life, and how I wanted practice to end so much. I was racing against my biggest competitor, and I couldn’t look bad compared to her. This song was no joke on repeat in my head the entire 2-hour swim practice. So, to Rodney Atkins—thank you for making a song to mentally help me be tough.

4. Every time we Touch by Cascada

https://youtu.be/4G6QDNC4jPs

“I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me

I still feel your touch in my dreams

Forgive me my weakness, but I don't know why

Without you, it's hard to survive

'Cause every time we touch

I get this feeling

And every time we kiss

I swear I could fly

Can't you feel my heart beat fast

I want this to last

Need you by my side”

Similar to the Chicken Fried song, this song was one that just made me excited and happy when I listened to it in the moment and ended up being my walk out song every time I went to a swim meet and was seated first in the final heat. In the moment, it made me feel pumped up, it distracted me from the crazy noises and audience watching me, and it calmed my nerves as much as song could in the moment.

In those moments, it wasn’t even the lyrics, it was the beat, the slow start to fast-paced growth as the song continued on, and the girls tone at the very start of the song. The first verse, that was my favorite, though of course the whole song was good. Sometimes you can’t explain why you like a song, you just do, and this was one of those songs.

But when I look back now at the lyrics, again, it had to be some subconscious interest. At this point, I was going through the crazy boy stages. I had crushes, I had remembered those crushed, and I over analyzed my situations with those boys. I think my happy place is when I think about love, something so important to me, so this was a happy love song. During this time in my life, in high school, was when I met a guy that made me feel things that I had never experienced before—friendship, flirtatiousness and like love stories could be real. To this day, he is still one of the most important people in my life, despite us having entirely separate lives.

5. Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond

https://youtu.be/5JfU4PKgmJc

“Sweet Caroline

Good times never seemed so good

Sweet Caroline

I believe they never could

Sweet Caroline

Good times never seemed so good”

I had to add this song ultimately because I was named after this song, as it was one of my mother’s favorite songs. And from that day on, I have had this song sung to me, I have sung the song myself and when people meet me, I often hear them ask, “Oh so you know the song, Sweet Caroline?” or “Do you get tired of people singing Sweet Caroline to you?” I always say no… why? I mean, how could I not like people thinking I am sweet? And to this day, I try my hardest to live up to the songs name and believe in those good times—something that at times, I really have a hard time doing, especially 10 years ago.

This song is definitely a theme in my life because I felt like it defined me—and so I put it here, and not as my first song. I don’t really believe I started making a name for myself or defining who I was as a person until my college days. This was when I was becoming an adult, this was when I was taking real chances, saying yes to everything, and chasing my own identity.

6. You’re Beautiful by James Blunt

https://youtu.be/oofSnsGkops

“Yes, she caught my eye

As we walked on by

She could see from my face that I was

F-ing high

And I don't think that I'll see her again

But we shared a moment that will last 'til the end

You're beautiful

You're beautiful

You're beautiful, it's true

I saw your face in a crowded place

And I don't know what to do

'Cause I'll never be with you”

Without getting too personal, this song was the one that made me understand a hard lesson in life: just because you like someone, think you love them even, doesn’t mean you are meant to be with them. These lyrics above, in a literal sense, were some that I lived out in college and put me in a crazy, insecure and lustful infatuated time of my life.

The guy I fell for unlike any other up to this point first played me this song as if he too knew the lyrics defined our situation. I did catch his eye my first day of college, and he was always high. We did share some moments that I could never take back, and I know he thought I was beautiful because I was the only one, he could be vulnerable with. And yet, despite it all, we both knew, that he would never be with me. Not really.

This song defined a turning point in my life that it took me years to get past. People could say that I was the happiest in my life when I was in college, and I don’t hate this song, but on the contrary, it just exposes one of the worst times of my life.

7. I Lived by One Republic

https://youtu.be/pKt3o7WPYdo

There are some songs that “define” my life as a whole and some songs that “resonate” with my life in those particular moments. Where “Journey to My Past” is a defining song to me, this song “I Lived” is the other one. From the first time I heard this song, I loved it, but it wasn’t until my Senior Year of college Swimming Banquet that I listened to the lyrics and was like “yes, this is the one song that defines my life”. I say that in how I want to live my own life so that I could have this song play at my funeral and everyone agrees that I did just that. Yes, I want this song to be played at my funeral.

“Hope when you take that jump

You don't fear the fall

Hope when the water rises

You built a wall

Hope when the crowd screams out

It's screaming your name

Hope if everybody runs

You choose to stay”

As I go through life, I have made more adventurous and spontaneous actions. I want to know that I did everything in my life to just live, and that I always took that leap of faith. I also want to leave a legacy—I want people to remember me when I am gone. I play this song on repeat when I have made those choices—changing career paths, quitting my job to travel overseas, moving cities, breaking up with a long-time relationship, to name a few. These were all moments where I definitely chose to jump rather than fear that fall, and I would have not had it any other way.

“Hope that you fall in love

And it hurts so bad

The only way you can know

You give it all you have

And I hope that you don't suffer

But take the pain

Hope when the moment comes you'll say

I, I did it all

I, I did it all”

To know me is to know love is the cheesiest and yet most important thing in my life. I love love, I write about love, and I especially love to love and be loved. Ask anyone, I am a hopeless romantic and my friends say that “I fall hard and I fall fast”. It is true, and so this verse couldn’t speak to me more. I could listen to this verse at any given moment of any given day and feel each word as if they were my own. I don’t fall in love often, as I am picky about who I like, but when I do fall in love, it often hurts. And yet I can’t stop myself from doing so. My friends give me advice about taking it slow, or let them chase me, but at the end of the day, the way I love is the only way I know, and I can’t change that. But what I have learned from the way I fall, is that I would much prefer to have loved than never loved at all, despite how much pain it causes. I think pain helps you grow, and when I take that chance, no one can tell me I didn’t try—I didn’t do all I could.

“I owned every second that this world could give

I saw so many places

The things that I did

Yeah, with every broken bone

I swear I lived”

On a literal note, these lyrics define me—I take life head on now, always going for what I want and getting the positive outcomes for living in the present moment and not worrying so much about the future. I have now been to 19 countries, having seen and experiencing so many different cultures, and, funny enough, I have literally broken my bone in a foreign country. I love this song because I almost feel like I could have written it myself.

8. Genom Eld & Vatten by Sarek

https://youtu.be/Vot_yizcWr4

“Jag ska följa dig genom eld och vatten

Över land och hav

Jag ska älska dig tills hjärtat slutar slå

Från det högsta berg

Till de djupaste av dalar ska jag gå

Genom tid och rum

Ja, alla mina dagar ska du få.”

Now this is a fun one… can you read the lyrics? As I mentioned above, I took a leap of faith in 2019, quite my job and became an Au Pair in Stockholm, Sweden. I actually only came back early because of COVID-19, but this song, it was the most common and most played song in Swedish when I went out to my friend’s parties. I tried to learn Swedish, but this was the only song I could sing along to (almost).

I actually went to Sweden three times. A girl on my swim team in college was from Sweden so the first time I went to Europe I went and saw her in the summer. I heard this song for the first time, saw how everyone just jumped around happy and belted this song out as much as we belt out “Mr. Brightside” in America. I then went back that next December to see how it was in the winter before deciding to be an Au Pair.

“I will follow you through fire and water

overland and across the ocean.

I will love you until my hearts stops beating.

From the highest mountain

to the deepest of valleys I will go.

Through time and through space.

Yes, all of my days you will get.

And when the winds play on the plains,

I will dance with you.

If the sun burns, I will cool your skin.”

Here are the lyrics translated into English. I can’t say the words themselves resonated with me since I only knew a few words here or there, but this song will always, always remind me of my fun, cold and dark days I spent across the ocean. It was an incredible and eye-opening time of my life that I had to add a song in my milestone album to commemorate it.

9. Charlie Boy by The Lumineers

https://youtu.be/BlFu0O0KsTg

“Charlie boy, don't go to war

Firstborn in '44

And Kennedy made him believe

We could do much more.”

For some reason, this song was my song after COVID-19. I listened to this song on repeat as the world was shut down. I had just come back from being overseas, and I was with my parents for almost 3 months in lockdown. I would go outside and run around the block or just sit outside in the yard to get out of the house and away from the news and listen to this song.

I remember laying down in the sun after a run, with the grass touching my skin and really soaking in the lyrics. There was one specific version of this song I listened to though, the one where in the beginning they would share the story behind the song. The lead singer wrote this song about his uncle, who sacrificed his life at a young age to go to war. I don’t know if it was because of all that was going on, or what, but the lyrics and tune of this song made me feel at peace in a time that seemed like no one had peace at all.

10. Austin by Blake Shelton

https://youtu.be/bb1DTsxBOfE

“If your callin' 'bout my heart, it's still yours

I should've listened to it a little more

Then it wouldn't have taken me so long

To know where I belong

And by the way, boy, this is no machine your talkin' to

Can't you tell, this is Austin, and I still love you.”

This album would not be me if I didn’t have a few love songs. This song is so specific to one monumental moment in my life, but I will never be able to listen to this song without thinking about that moment. I have had many crushes, I even thought I was in love a few times here or there, but it wasn’t until the man associated with this song that I actually realized that I was IN love for the first time. I realized in 2020 that before that, I loved boys but had never really been in love.

This song technically wouldn’t even be the song that ‘defined’ our relationship, but it makes me feel the most about our situation when I hear it. I left to move for Austin right after meeting him and meeting him changed me. It changed what I thought about men, how I thought men should think about me, about my future and what love meant to me. After I returned from Austin because it didn’t work out the way I wanted, I told him, and he reached out to hang out with me again. Long story short, the next two years was a roller coaster ride of not wanting to commit, of the cat and mouse game, and of actions speaking louder than words. I knew I belonged with him, but he was afraid of love.

This song is so important to my life album because there was one night after a long time apart that we finally rekindled, and he sang this song on repeat. He would play it and look at me directly on at the moment the words said, “if this is Austin, I still love you.” I didn’t ask him to play the song, but for the timing, him remembering and all we had gone through, it was just the reminder that no extension of time could go between us to change how we really felt about the other. In other words, it is my defining heartbreak song.

11. Same God by Elevation Worship

https://youtu.be/GO1gwohd_zs

“I'm calling on the God of Moses

The one who opened up the ocean

I need You now to do the same thing for me

For me, for me

O God, my God, I need You

O God, my God, I need You now

How I need You now

O Rock, O Rock of ages

I'm standing on Your faithfulness.

On Your faithfulness.”

I chose this song because it is the song I go to for the best reminder when I think I am losing my way. I had to add one song that was faith based since realistically on a daily basis I listen to Christian Rock. This song has a weird way to come on the radio station at exactly the times I need it. The repetition of the words “I’m calling on the God” reminds me that I need to do just that. The repetition of the lyrics “O God, my God, I need You” remind me that I will always need him, no matter what I do.

This song, these lyrics, are not only so powerful in its message, but the way it makes me feel when I listen to it is why its detrimental to my milestone. I have always had a tough relationship with my faith, having gone through what I personal seem as emotional turmoil in my life, but I will swear on everything I own, His word, even if it’s through lyrics, is what I go to through both times of good and times of bad.

12. From The Ashes by IILLENIUM, Skylar Grey

https://youtu.be/iIz17uVwkVU

“I've been here before

If you want, go ahead, start a war

It's not that I'm brave

It's that I would rather die

Than for things to stay this way

Losing means nothing

If there's nothing to lose

What do you want from me tonight?

You wanna burn down everything in sight

I'm not afraid of a little fire

So light your matches

And I will rise from the ashes.”

I tried to pick a song that related to the most present moment of my life. I am at the end of my milestone life, and this song is the one that comes to mind. Not only do I listen to it pretty consistently, it has two very special meanings. One, within the lyrics in itself, I feel like it concludes where I have been to where I am now. When I listen to the lyrics, I feel accomplished and powerful because I too think that my past could be like ashes, in which I have been brave enough and fought to rise from. I think that with all the dark days I have had personally as well as what the world is going through, I have been able to really see the light in everything.

On the flip side, this song is one of multiple themes for a novel I am writing about dreaming. The album cover, the theme of the song and the feeling it makes me feel when I listen to this song and write my fantasy novel is exactly what tells me this is where my story is headed. I really use a lot of music to inspire my writing as words are words, no matter in a song or another book, so this song and the songs by iLLENIUM have helped me stay on track and focused on my one dream: finish the story that no one has written yet so I am telling it myself.

Why is that important to land as the song of my milestone album? Because my home is in my writing, because my future is my novel and what I have come to learn about myself is that one of my greatest get aways is when I am writing this novel, using my creativity and getting lost in my own imagination—the imagination that I have had since I was a child. Plus, the story is of an orphan girl who too has to learn about finding herself, being brave and rising through her own ashes, even if it is in her dreams.