Exactly a year ago, I released my first single. I remember being frightened. Real frightened. I couldn’t sleep the night before. What would people think? Was it good enough? Was it too political? Not political enough? All the things.

I released it on international ME awareness day, which is today, and I want to honour that day by telling you more about the song.

Salem is a metaphor for how women’s bodies have been neglected by medical science, how patients — including men, transmen and transwomen as well as non-binary people — suffering from diseases disproportionately affecting women were dismissed for being hysterical when in reality our bodies had become ill, and how patients have died without recognition of the true cause.

Buy/Listen here

All income for the first two years (possibly more) will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. You can support the cause by purchasing the music on Bandcamp or iTunes.

If you can’t listen to music, then here are the lyrics.

I wrote this song before I read the statistics and facts about how illnesses disproportionately affecting women such as ME/CFS, Long Covid, fibromyalgia, MCAS, EDS, POTS, migraines, endometriosis, etc., have been neglected and downright dismissed, creating a devastating stigma.

But I had an intuitive inkling that what I was experiencing as a person living with ME/CFS was sexist. How the doctors always said I was perfectly healthy, or ‘just stressed’, or had anxiety when I could barely walk. Or asked me about my mood, gave me depression and anxiety tests, asked about my relationship to my parents, my brother, how I experienced my periods — never asking me about my body. Also, no one knew what was going on.

It all felt sexist.

I had also learnt that people living with ME were being sectioned into psychiatric care, because doctors thought they were delusional, and gave parents (often mothers) a Münchhausen by proxy diagnosis without ever talking to them.

Some people had also died of ME without recognition of the true cause.

We were blamed (and still are) for being overly emotional, for being hysterical, for being science-deniers, for not being able to handle modern life.

It felt like persecution and a complete misunderstanding of who we were and what was happening in our bodies. Everything seemed to be twisted.

I later learnt that my intuitive inkling about sexism was correct.

Since the 1970s, feminist literature has pointed out three problems in health:

1. How structural sexism creates inequality in the way research funds are prioritised.

2. That it is most often the white male body and psyche that research takes as its starting point and defines as the norm.

3. And that women’s illnesses are disproportionately, and often incorrectly, attributed to social or psychological causes.

These three problems have been decisive for the historical stigmatization of ME/CFS patients, as well as other patients living with illnesses that primarily affect women (like Long Covid, fibromyalgia, migraines, endometriosis, and so forth).

For decades, psychological and behavioural research has been prioritised over biological research when it comes to ME (this is the case for other illnesses that primarily affect women, too). We are therefore left without proper treatment.

I felt, in an artistic way, that the misogynistic witch trials in Salem were the root cause of the neglect and disbelief we’ve suffered.

Salem was born in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I was angry at being dismissed and gaslighted by doctors and I started seeing women being burnt at the stake inside my mind. I felt a kinship to all those women who were misunderstood and blamed for being female and the words “I still carry their sins” popped into my mind.

Later, the following day, the words “no ashes to ashes or dust to dust” came to me. It spoke of how we were outsiders and weren’t recognised, even in death.

I started researching how women were treated during the Salem witch trials and eventually I had enough notes to start writing the song.

It was an easy song to write. It’s one of those songs that felt like I was born with it inside me, although I know it was created from hard work and a close collaboration with my subconscious.

I play the flute, Jonas Müller (my brother) plays the piano and David Hagen plays the double bass. It is mixed by François Perdriau, and mastered by Pete Maher. I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to have my song accompanied by such excellent musicians. They really brought out the vibe in the song.

All income for the first two years (possibly more) will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. You can support the cause by purchasing the music on Bandcamp or iTunes. You can also help the cause by sharing this wide and far.

Purchase or stream the music here.

Tell me…

What feelings are evoked for you when you hear the song (here are the lyrics)?

Have you experienced sexism — or the consequence of structural sexism — in any setting?

What are your favourite lines from the song?

I’d love to know in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Last year I shared my story with my old newsletter — but since a lot of you here are new, I wanted to share it again. It’s story time!

Between 2015 and 2019, when my illness was turning from mild to moderate and later severe ME (also known as ME/CFS), I wrote a whole lot of songs — enough for an album.

I’ve written songs since I was twelve, but never thought they were something I could share. I thought being a singer songwriter was something one was born to be, not something you worked to become.

When I got ME back in 2011 it changed my voice. At some point, it hurt so much to speak that I was in constant pain, even when I didn’t open my mouth. I loved singing, it relaxed me (except for the pain) so I sought out a voice teacher to get my voice back.

During a session she said to me: “You know, it seems like you have a lot to tell the world.” I did! She hit a nerve in me and I went home and started writing songs again.

They sucked at first, but I was having fun, and I started to go deeper into the practice. I created a lyric diary and started listening intensely both to external words and sounds as well as to internal words and sounds. I studied lyrics and poems I liked and wrote down why I liked them, and I started listening to music as a songwriter, not just an audience.

I remember the day I wrote the first song that I actually liked and was proud of. It’s called Where Cold Hearts Go To Pray and is on my album. I felt I had arrived and I produced more and more songs that I loved and felt were important.

I continued taking voice lessons with a different teacher over Skype — I wanted to be good enough to record — but my health and therefore my voice got worse and worse and had to stop taking lessons. I eventually became bedbound and at some point had lost my voice completely, only being able to speak in whispers.

With medication I got a bit better (some medication directly targeted my voice), enough to be able to do a minute or so of voice work from bed here and there. While I was able to recover parts of my voice, I had lost my belt (the powerful part of the voice) and my head voice had shrunk so much that I wasn’t able to produce clear sounds at the top of my voice. I had to change the expression in my songs to a lighter, more delicate voice, some I also had to transpose down, but it turned out for the better, because that delicate and darker voice really suits my songs.

In late 2020, Kara Jane (who died from very severe ME in January 2023, may she rest in peace) released a beautiful album, which she had created from bed. She spoke about how she had recorded one line at a time, and I was inspired.

With help from my brother (a professional musician) and my father we created a recording set-up that was doable for me. By early 2021 it was ready.

I have my recording gear set up right next to my bed, my microphone is on a stand with wheels so it’s easy to adjust and my wheelchair reclines so I can lie down while recording. All I had to do was place myself in the wheelchair (which some days was all I could do) and turn on the computer and sing that one line or one verse and then go back to bed.

All the prep work on the computer (like setting up the recording in Logic Pro) as well as any editing, rough mixing, scoring or keyboard work I would do on separate days in bed when I had the energy. A few more songs I wrote from bed using my ipad and an external keyboard.

I would then wait for a good day where I had energy in the morning to slowly warm up my voice while lying in bed and then record a verse, or sometimes just a line, in the afternoon using my recording setup with my reclined wheelchair.

Sometimes it would take months to find a good voice day. Most days I’m not able to produce a doable sound as my vocal chords are often very swollen or there is just not enough physical energy available in the body to push proper sound through my throat. I only have a doable singing voice for about two or three periods during the year. Sometimes I would record a verse and then have to wait half a year to record the next one.

Recording the flute was another story. The first time I recorded it from my wheelchair I got so sick that I didn’t play for a year after that. I had overestimated how much energy it takes to hold the flute.

Eventually, I found a way to play from bed, but I never managed it without crashing afterwards no matter how much I paced. My father would help me with the setup and my elbows were propped onto two yoga blocks and I was fully supported with pillows. I managed to record most of the flute this way. Honestly, it was so hard and painful and I’m not doing that again unless I get better.

In the past year my muscles have gotten stronger with medication and for the last couple of songs I was able to record a verse at a time while sitting upright in my wheelchair, and then immediately lying back down in the reclined position to avoid overexertion. I was even able to record the flute while sitting upright, with my elbows propped up on yoga blocks, but I had to be very careful to only record a single line and not for more than a few minutes at a time — and I still crashed.

My story is not meant as inspiration porn or as ‘you can overcome any limitation if you just set your mind to it’ message. I had long periods where doing this was completely impossible, and it was only because I got a bit better with medication that it was doable. I also still grieve the loss of my once powerful voice that always worked, although I have accepted the more delicate one. My message is that creativity is vital for many of us and should be prioritised if at all possible.

Making this album has also come with a lot of grief. I often feel 10% pride and 90% sorrow, because this was not how I imagined a recording process to be: All alone in a darkened room, waiting, often for months at a time for my voice to open up, not knowing if it ever will again, only to record one verse. I also grieve that I cannot market it in the way I would like, or be able to play the songs live, or even just online on a video.

I simply want to express that it was damn hard to create this album but perhaps there are techniques that might inspire you to create your own creative work. I can say for sure that chopping everything up into tiny pieces, mustering up an insane amount of patience, pacing like I’ve never done before, and finding tons of motivation to be heard was the only way I could do this. This was not done through hard work and pushing through! Also, without a deep, spiritual motivation, this would not have been possible.

And please be kind to yourself — there are just periods (some times excrutiatingly long or endless ones) where chronic illness or trauma or your body or mind prevents you from doing any creative work. This does not mean you are not creative or have failed in any way.

It was also made possible because of great privilege. I have a brother who is a professional musician who could play the piano for me and help me with other musicians. I also live with parents who have the resources to help me out financially and medically. I couldn’t have done this without medication or the professional-standard care my parents provide. Creating music is also expensive and I’m not earning anything from the album, all income goes to ME/CFS research through Open Medicine Foundation.

The songs seek to convey the experience of a broken body, deteriorating slowly with no sense of control. I explore the feelings and experience of when life becomes precarious, having to face stigma and discrimination, and of observing life differently when you are no longer a part of it.

You can listen to or buy the album here.

Listen to or buy my album here

Help support the cause by purchasing the album here.

Hi friend!

I got really triggered the other day by something a social media consultant said to me, and I had to sit with it for a bit to figure out what was going on inside me. And this is in no way to blame her, people are allowed to have opinions and she was very kind and complementary of my music. This is my own inner stuff coming up. She said to me that my themes were very heavy and she could only get through three songs because they made her sad. She suggested I also music that is lighter.

Fair enough, that’s her opinion, and she is not my audience. It would have been nice if I could have left it at that.

But something inside me was triggered. At first, I felt like my entire existence as a person living with chronic illness was dismissed. Chronic illness is sad, it’s dark, it’s traumatic and no fun. That’s my life. It’s heavy. More than heavy. And while I’m an incredibly positive and effervescent person, nothing can change that chronic illness is a sad experience. Everyday, I feel like my existence is ‘too much/too difficult/too heavy’ for some people. And it probably is.

But then I was taken back to that little girl who quit doing anything creative because she always felt her natural expression wasn’t good enough. It was too dark, too deep, too emotional, too this too that. When I was younger, I could never find myself creatively and this was partly the reason.

I have for a long time had this feeling that I need to change who I am to fit in and be successful. I need to change my experience with chronic illness — or change how I perceive it towards something lighter. I need to write happy songs. I need to lighten up. Be more like all the others.

I’ve had this voice in my head for so long that I need to learn how to write upbeat happy songs so I can be more accepted (I googled ‘how to write happy songs’). And yes, I would like to learn that skill, but not for that reason.

In the beginning of this year, I made a commitment to myself to be honest about who I am and not hide myself. I’ve been hiding my entire life and it’s made me feel invisible.

That voice telling me I have to be someone else, has created so much tension and unhappiness inside me — it’s time to let it go.

I decided to truly love those deep, dark, emotional aspects of myself and start seeing them as a superpower.

I believe one of my unique artistic skill sets is to turn something dark into something beautiful. And one of the things I hope to do with my music is to get people feeling their feelings in different ways, and accepting them as they are — maybe accessing feelings they haven’t accessed for a long time.

And yes, maybe I will write happy songs in the future, but as a result of me wanting to express that side of me, not because I’m scared I won’t fit in.

Tell me…

Are there parts of you that you aren’t allowing to be seen and why?

Is it possible to love these parts of yourself?

Do you dislike ‘sad songs’?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Did you miss?

Mama, Why Won’t They Listen — DEMO

The nervous system-friendly way I access emotions for songwriting

Can’t Help Falling In Love With You [Cover]

Have you listened to There Are No More Heroes?

I wrote this song when I felt the world had turned its back on me. I felt doctors had given up, friends had given up, family had given up. I felt disillusioned with the world, but something grew inside me that helped me carry on.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.

Listen or purchase here

I wanted to share this new song with you as a rough demo. It will take a while before I get it properly recorded and produced and I was just too excited to get it out there in some way.

Mama, Why Won’t They Listen? is a song about not being heard by those in power when change is greatly needed.

I think anyone who is dependent on politics can resonate with this song. Or anyone who simply doesn’t feel heard by their loved ones.

One of my main songwriting techniques is to listen inwardly to things I am saying over and over again or feelings or mental images that keep popping up. This isn’t the most effective technique as I often don’t have much going on inside as not much is happening in my life.

But the line ‘why won’t they listen?’ has been there for a long time.

I live with a very stigmatised and misunderstood illness called ME/CFS. I won’t go into details about the political history of it, but in short it is a disease that disproportionally affects women, and because of that it has been thought to be a psychological illness — a reaction to modern life or hysteria of some sorts.

The majority of countries around Europe officially see it as a biological illness now (although the stigma still lingers), but in Denmark the official sentiment is still that it is a psycho-social disorder.

In 2020 I started writing opinion pieces that were published in national newspapers about this situation and how dangerous it is for us patients. I did a lot of advocacy back then and nothing happened. There is still a lot of advocacy going on and the needle hasn’t moved much.

On top of that I have a friends with ME/CFS who have no parents to care for them who are trying to get care from social services. They just won’t listen to their needs and they are getting sicker.

Mama, why won’t they listen? was my brain’s response to all of this.

The song is not very text-heavy, I felt like I have said what I wanted to say and I wanted to keep it basic so the main point is focused on.

Here are the lyrics:

Verse 1

I thought it would be

Blue skies today

I thought it would be

A different kind of day

Pre-chorus

A day of change

A day where we are not forgotten

Chorus

Mama, why won’t they listen?

Did I not say it right?

Mama, why won’t they listen?

Is my demeanour not polite?

Oooooh

I tried to tell them I matter and I still belong

Oooooh mama

Why won’t they listen as I sing my song?

Verse 2

When will our blood

Be cleansed of grief

When can we breathe

Again?

Pre-chorus

When there is change

When we are no longer forgotten

Chorus

Mama, why won’t they listen?

Did I not say it right?

Mama, why won’t they listen?

Is my demeanour not polite?

Oooooh

I tried to tell them I matter and I still belong

Oooooh mama

Why won’t they listen as I sing my song?

Sometimes I sit down at the piano and a motif or melody comes out of me immediately. This was not one of those times.

I have documented the process for you to see.

First, I tried out a few chord progressions. It took a while before I found the right vibe (but not the right chords):

I could feel the vibe in my body and began trying some other chords and the melody then came quite quickly, but I still had to faff around to get it right. That’s just how songwriting works:

I’m really looking forward to producing this one. I want it to be a sparse arrangement with just the piano chords and then have some background humming of sorts, maybe a very low flute drone. We’ll see what I come up with.

Enjoy!

Tell me…

What do you think of the song?

Do you resonate with it?

Do you sometimes feel like they don’t listen?

I’d love to know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Hi friend!

I discovered songwriting when I was living with a much milder version of the illness I have (ME/CFS). At that time, I could still go outside, I could (with difficulty) do my own shopping and cooking and I could take care of myself.

I started songwriting when my voice teacher at the time told me “I can see you have a lot to tell the world.” It was like I was given a permission slip to be creative.

I went home and started writing songs, just like that. They weren’t very good at first, but then I started paying closer attention to songs. I studied Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Irish Sean Nos, Ayub Ogada, Geoffrey Oryema, Miriam Makeba and many others from different parts of the world.

A favourite technique of mine at the time I call ‘Mumbling,’ where you find a melody and then start mumbling sounds as you listen to it. Eventually words or even whole sentences emerged. If they didn’t, I would at least have caught the vibe of the song.

Allowing the melody to guide you is a great way of tapping into the subconscious and I was always surprised and in awe at what came out. At that time a lot of grief came out. It was how I learned how affected I was by my body breaking.

Another favourite technique at the time I called the ‘Dali Method.’ I would lie down with my eyes closed, a pen and paper in my hands, and relax my whole body, and then I would begin to notice any images inside my head. I would then immediately write down the descriptions of these images or any other words or sentences that came to me.

But illness has changed this.

Because of inflammation in my brain and neurons moving slower (yes, they move slower in an ME/CFS brain), I cannot do these exercises anymore.

I cannot produce images in my mind anymore — it’s called aphantasia. If I see something it’s either an outline or a really glitchy, fuzzy image and I can’t hold it long enough to describe it. Also, no words pop up, I don’t think my brain can produce fuzzy images while coming up with words.

The ‘Mumbling’ exercise rarely works for me either, as my brain just doesn’t produce words, but I do it anyway to see if I can catch the vibe of a song.

So the techniques I use now are very different from when my brain was better.

Today I use an exercise I call ‘Word dumps,’ where I take different texts (a poem, a newspaper, a book etc,) and find one word per page, never more than one word. I do this intuitively and fast. Eventually, I have a list of words and I start either combining them or making my own sentences. In this way, it feels like I bypass the brain a bit (I know the brain is still working, but it feels easier).

I also have a notebook next to me where I can write down anything I hear (which isn’t much as I’m just lying in bed) or anything that pops up in my inner dialogue (which is often the same stuff).

I do miss the flow and the awe of my brain producing images and words and stuff, but I have accepted that that is how things are right now.

For chord progressions I used to study world music songs as well as jazz and folk traditions. I can’t do that anymore. Instead, I either play around on the piano for five minutes or I take a song I like, figure out the chords and then make it my own. I might change the mode of the scale, or add chords or change the version of the chord or change the chords altogether.

I do miss finding inspiration in other traditions. It felt fun, expansive and exciting.

I’m incredibly grateful that I can still write songs, even though the process feels harder and less intuitive.

I’m working on a song called Mama Why Won’t They Listen? right now. I’ll share more at a later stage. I managed to record a lot of the process, so I’ll be sharing that with you too.

Tell me…

What’s your creative process like right now, if you have one?

Has anything changed?

What’s your favourite way of creating right now?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Did you miss?

Fish and Bird [Tom Waits cover]

Behind the song: Lonely Birds

The nervous system-friendly ways I access emotions for songwriting

Have you listened to There Are No More Heroes?

I wrote this song when I felt the world had turned its back on me. I felt doctors had given up, friends had given up, family had given up. I felt disillusioned with the world, but something grew inside me that helped me carry on.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.

Listen or purchase here

I want to introduce you to one of the songs on my album. It’s called Lonely Birds and is about the western loneliness epidemic.

I wrote it when I had become mostly bedbound by chronic illness and was isolated and lonely myself, but I started noticing how lonely other (able-bodied) people were too. I noticed how they isolated themselves without needing to — or, more precisely, how our society created isolation.

Purchase or stream here

All income for the first year (possibly more) will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. You can support the cause by purchasing the music on Bandcamp.

If you can’t listen to music, then here are the lyrics.

I grew up in East Africa where everyone says ‘hi’ when walking past you. A brief moment of connection, but connection nevertheless. Or where people show up on random occasions at your house — something I have never experienced in Denmark.

I also noticed how no one had seemed to notice I was gone. None of my old friends checked in on me and I felt how structural loneliness had become. Our western (or is it more northern) societies are facing a loneliness epidemic.

In Denmark, the number of people who feel lonely has doubled since the year 2000. In 2021, 27% of men felt lonely, while 34% of women felt lonely. It was especially the elderly above 75 and young people between 16-24 who felt lonely.

Lonely Birds is the last song I wrote for my debut album. I wrote it using only an iPad and crappy headphones. I was lying in bed and was not able to get to a piano, so I used GarageBand on my iPad which has this programme where you can tell the app which chords to play when and in what rhythm (it has four rhythms to choose from). So I plugged in the chord progression (it’s basically an Andalusian cadence) and I started humming into the microphone of my crappy headphones. It sounded absolutely terrible, but I started to hear a melody.

This is what my first go at the melody sounded like:

I also did a technique I love doing very much, called Mumbling, where I sing the melody and mumble whatever sounds come to me. Eventually I had the first line: See them swim into murky caves | Looking for the light or rainbows and with that mental image I immediately knew what the song was about.

There was something very lonely about swimming into murky caves to seek happiness — knowing, as the writer, that they would never find it, but instead disconnect themselves from others — swimming away from them.

This song is a great example of how limitations can create magic. I didn’t have the energy to create a new chord progression for the chorus, so the chords stay the same throughout the song, except for the bridge. I think this gives the song that lonely, slightly monotonous (but in no way boring) feel. Had I had more energy, it would have been a completely different song.

My favourite lines in the song are They never look into each other’s eyes | They shield themselves from harm | Away from storms | And the minefields of their hearts. We would rather avoid intimacy and connection than be vulnerable. I’ve struggled with this myself and it has created a lot of loneliness within me too.

Jonas Müller (my brother) plays the piano and David Hagen plays the double bass. François Perdriau has mixed the song and Pete Maher has mastered it. I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to have my song accompanied by such excellent musicians. They really brought out the vibe in the song.

All proceeds for the first year (probably more) will go to Open Medicine Foundationfor vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. You can support the cause by purchasing the music on Bandcamp and by sharing as wide and far as possible.

Purchase or listen here

Tell me…

Have you felt lonely of late?

Do you have a loneliness epidemic in your country, too?

What are your favourite lines from the song?

I’d love to know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Thank you so much for reading this post. If you know someone who could benefit from this, then please share this page with them. You are also more than welcome to share it in your Facebook or other support groups.

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Tom Waits is one of my biggest inspirations. He is a marvelous storyteller and I think Fish and Bird, a song from 2002, really attests to that.

As I’ve said before, I’m not very good at writing love songs and I rarely do it. But I love singing them. And this one has such an existential ache to it — it’s right up my alley. Sometimes love just isn’t enough to cross that big cultural (or physical) divide.

I hope you enjoy listening to my little rendition of this song.

Tell me…

Have you ever had a love that wasn’t possible in the real world?

What would you like me to cover next?

I’d love to know in the comments!

Leave a comment

I’ve been wanting to make covers for a while now and I finally made it happen — and captured it on video!

A few months ago I upped my dose of a certain medication and it has given me more physical energy, which means I can actually sit at the piano for a whole song — on some days. It hasn’t done much for my brain capacity unfortunately…

I still can’t sing most of my own songs all the way through in one sitting as the range is too wide — my voice falters half way through.

But I found a few songs that I can sing with the energy level and range that I have right now and this is one of them.

It’s a traditional English folk tune from the 18th Century and it is a dialogue between a person who is leaving and the lover and best friend they are leaving behind. It’s called Ten Thousand Miles.

I first heard it sung by Nell Ní Chróinín with Danú and it is such a beautiful tune.

I find it stirs a lot of old emotions for me singing this song as I lost two best friends who couldn’t handle this illness that took over my body and life. They weren’t lovers, but I find losing best friends can be equally, if not more disheartening, than lovers. I still do miss them.

It’s nerve-wrecking for me to send this out because it is very raw (it is unmixed and unedited, I’ve only added a tad bit of compression so the vocals aren’t swallowed by the piano). And, as many of you know, it is not possible for me to practice my craft or songs. So this is just me, unplugged, unpracticed, un-everything. And the first time in a long time that I’m singing a song all the way through in one go. Phew!

I also cannot memorise songs with the brain I have right now, so I do need to look at a chord sheet with lyrics. This makes me nervous and slightly emotional, because it feels so much safer to have internalised the song and know it by heart.

My friend told me it would be better with a video that showed my face more, but I couldn’t find an angle where I didn’t look immensely tired and I was too self-conscious — something for me to work on perhaps.

I so hope you enjoy this song, I certainly enjoyed making it, even though it was physically tough to do.

Tell me…

Have you been left behind, or left someone you loved behind?

Do you have a favourite traditional folk tune?

What creative project are you working on at the moment, if any?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below!

1. Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking about this song for a while now. I wrote it back in 2015 when my world was slowly crumbling due to illness. I felt like something out there had stopped listening to me and I pictured this drunk, fallen angel, who was so upset with the world that he had given up and had begun to unravel. Maybe he didn’t feel listened to either?

I’m not sure why it didn’t make the album — perhaps I thought it was too simple. But I do love the lyrics. I’m sure, with my brother’s piano playing and a good double bass it could turn into a good one.

Here are the lyrics:

Verse 1

Birdman walks across my grass again

His wings are soaked in ethanol

Birdman walks across my grass again

His head craving Tylenol

Verse 2

His feet they feel like two balloons

His hands creased from wiping tears

I watch him dance around in circles

With two fingers each in one ear

Chorus

Ooooooh

I’ll sleep with the lights turned on tonight

Ooooooh

No moon shining bright

It was the day birdman stopped answering my calls

Verse 3

The basement floor is white with feathers

He shed them all, his coat now pink

I try to calm him tell him stories

No use he says my world is going to sink

Chorus

Ooooooh

I’ll sleep with the lights turned on tonight

Ooooooh

No moon shining bright

It was the day birdman stopped answering my calls

I’d love to know what you think? Should I release it one day or leave it in the vault?

Tell me…

Have you ever felt like something out there stopped listening?

Should I release this song or leave it in the vault?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below!

Leave a comment

Hi friend!

Yesterday, I sat down to record a cover of Fragile, by Sting. It’s one of my favourite songs and I felt like I had the energy to do it, after months of not feeling that.

The vocals were decent, the piano playing meh, but I decided to not be a perfectionist about it. I then added a bit of compression and re-listened to the song and discovered that it was completely unusable. I had recorded it with a MIDI piano to get a Steinway sound, but the real piano had leaked into the vocals and it sounded deranged. I should have just recorded it without the MIDI piano.

This would not have been an issue had I just been able to re-record it like able-bodied people can.

Then I noticed my body react, I felt a nervous system reactivation — it feels a bit like PTSD, but in a smaller way. And my solar plexus hurt. From experience, I know that when my solar plexus hurts it often has to do with self-blame and lack of self-trust.

I asked that part of me that was re-activated what it wanted to say and it started talking…

See, there is something I haven’t talked a lot about here, mostly because it has been fairly difficult for me:

When I was recording my debut album and was ready to hand everything to the mixers, my mixing engineer noticed that the sound was distorted in many places in a lot of the songs. I had noticed this myself and was irritated by it, but thought that it was just what a home-recording sounded like.

It took a while, but we found the culprit: I had added a plug-in to my recording chain which my too-old computer couldn’t handle, and that was what distorted the sound.

So I had to re-record many parts of several songs. It was the most stressful thing I have ever experienced. I blamed myself for not catching it at an earlier stage.

Also, I originally had ten songs on the album. But one of those songs centered the flute. It was a kind of call and response song between the vocals and flute — a gorgeous song really. But because I had to have the energy to get through all those flute parts, I didn’t have the energy to warm up and tune my flute, I also didn’t have the energy to actually listen to the tuning. And it was almost half a semi-tone out of tune.

Again, I blamed myself.

And that self-blame had gotten stuck in my body and was reactivated when I noticed the recording for Fragile was useless.

I had to spend time, with a hand on my heart and solar plexus, talking to that part that felt blamed. Calming it down, telling it how proud I was of her, how awesome she was for managing such a difficult thing under inhumane circumstances.

I did manage to calm her down and I think I have healed the damage done from all the self-blame.

I am working on self-trust at the moment, and it starts with becoming a friend to yourself that you trust with your darkest and deepest secrets.

I hadn’t been that friend to myself. Imagine if I had come to my friend, crying about having to re-record when in this difficult body and my friend said: “Suck it up, it’s your own fault, you should have been more diligent.” I don’t think I would trust that friend with anything else — I’m not sure we would even be friends anymore.

P.S Here is some of my artwork I have done recently, I’m really enjoying this abstract art thing:

Tell me…

How are you treating yourself at the moment?

Do you feel you are your own best friend?

Can you trust yourself with the difficult stuff?

I’d love to know in the comments!

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Have you listened to Did You Not Know?

I wrote this song when my body was breaking from ME/CFS. I had lost friends and people around didn’t understand what was going on. I felt abandoned and alone.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.

Listen or purchase here

Hi friend!

For me, emotional honesty is one of the most important aspects of my songwriting. And that requires I have a good relationship with my feelings. It’s hard to write about feelings I don’t know anything about because I’ve suppressed them or refused to explore them.

During times when I’m emotionally numb, I also feel creatively numb.

So “feeling my feelings” has become an important practice for me, not just for personal reasons, but also to enable my creativity.

But “feeling my feelings” is tough on the body and nervous system while doing it.

The more ‘traditional’ ways of “feeling your feelings” includes crying out loud, punching a pillow, screaming into a pillow, dancing or moving the body, throwing a pillow, or other physical stuff.

My body can’t do that. If I do give myself a good cry, I become completely depleted and my symptoms go haywire the next day. It’s not sustainable or nervous-system safe.

Instead, I have other practices to keep me emotionally honest and open.

Breathing in the feeling

I make space for my feelings in my body by breathing in the feeling, and aiming my breath at the place in my body where the feeling is situated.

So if I feel anger, I’ll say “I breathe in anger,” direct the air to where the anger subsides in my body, and then say “I breathe out peace.”

In that way, I allow the emotion in my body, but without creating contraction or stress in my body.

Separating the feeling

What is often very taxing for the nervous system is when we identify with the emotion we are feeling so much so that our whole body is shaking with that feeling.

I therefore like to separate my feelings from myself by saying “oh, this or that part of me is feeling sad today.” This could be my inner child, or any other part of me. I don’t even need to identify what part. Simply saying “a part of me is feeling xyz” can often do the trick.

Sitting with it

When I’ve separated myself from the feeling I’ll sit with it and hold space for it as if sitting with a child who is crying. I’ll stroke my arm or pat my heart and say “it’s ok to feel this way.”

I have found that resistance to feelings — trying to get rid of them — before they are felt in some way require a whole lot more energy and can be excruciatingly taxing on the nervous system.

I’m not saying these are surefire tested ways to feel and allow your feelings without overtaxing the nervous system and the body, they simply help me.

I’d love to know what you do to feel your feelings?

Tell me…

What do you do to feel your feelings?

Do you feel there is a connection between your openness to your feelings and creativity?

I’d love to know in the comments!

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Have you listened to There Are No More Heroes?

I wrote this song when I felt the world had turned its back on me. I felt doctors had given up, friends had given up, family had given up. I felt disillusioned with the world, but something grew inside me that helped me carry on.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.

Listen or purchase here

Hi friend!

I don’t write love songs. Not out of principle, but because the times I have tried the lyrics that I create just make me cringe. Perhaps because I haven’t had the greatest love experiences. I do write about relationships — and I add relationship angles to many of my songs without making them directly about relationships, but I find this a different thing to write about than love.

So instead I look for other people’s love songs to cover. And one of my all time favourites is Can’t Help Falling In Love.

It is based on a French song from 1784, and then written by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss, and released and made famous by Elvis Presley in 1961.

I like it because of its simplicity. It says a lot in very few words.

As someone now living with chronic illness, the words have taken on a different meaning than when I was younger.

“Take my hand” — speaks to me about reaching out for support, asking the other person to truly be there, and “Take my whole life too” speaks to me about asking the other person to accept every single part of who I am, and my life living in a broken body.

I managed to record this cover last year in February. I had an exceptionally good week and this was one of the things that came out of that week. I didn’t have the energy (or the thought) to record it on video, so this time you get an audio. As always, this is a raw, unedited cover.

Here is my cover of Can’t Help Falling In Love:

Hope you like it!

Tell me…

Do you have a favourite love song?

Have you been lucky in love?

What is the most important thing for you when it comes to love?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Help support the cause by purchasing the album here.

Hi friend!

I’m doing a lot of work on visibility at the moment. I have a lot of visibility wounds that I have been working on ever since I released my album back in May 2025 and stuff just keeps coming up for me as I’m marketing my music online.

But one huge thing that I have been dealing with for some time, but am close to shaking, is the feeling that I need to wait to have a more ‘palatable’ body before I can be truly seen.

And by ‘palatable’ I’m talking about what the music industry deems palatable, not what I think about it.

A disabled — and especially a sick body is, to the music industry, not considered a palatable body. It can’t dance, it can’t move around on stage, it has no stamina, it can’t produce fast enough, it can’t sing on command, it can’t create on command, it can’t practice for hours and so forth.

Also, according to society, you’re not supposed to express yourself when sick, you’re supposed to be writhing in pain behind closed doors and you’re definitely not supposed to do anything joyful because you are receiving a pension (if you’re lucky and live in a welfare state) and other people have to work for their money.

As I have been marketing my music online, I’ve noticed an energy within me that felt small and contracted and shameful.

I have carried a lot shame from being in the new age world, where illness is often seen as misalignment and as if something is broken within you. I’ve worked on this and am close to being on the other side of it.

But I didn’t realise how much shame I was carrying as a disabled and sick artist. I didn’t feel I was allowed to be seen.

I’ve been working on letting go of that shame and telling myself that I don’t need to be palatable to be seen, I just need to be honest and real and know that my voice is powerful exactly as it is.

Rules are being broken every single day in the music industry and I want to break some rules too.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to heal, I want that miraculous spontaneous recovery which is possible, but statistically highly unlikely, and I believe that the body can heal (a controversial thought, I know). But I don’t want to wait for it to happen before I get my music out there in a bigger way.

I’ve been reading/skimming Victoria Song’s book Bending Reality. It takes all the best from the self-help world and forms it into accessible language — without the toxic positivity (Victoria is all about feeling your feelings).

Most of the techniques I know from my own coaching practice, but she makes one excellent point: You can either be in a state of expansion or in a state or contraction.

A state of expansion is where you feel hopeful, like things will work out, you feel you matter. You feel light and calm in your body.

Contraction is when you’re full of worry, feeling small and shameful. You feel your lungs tighten, you might feel irritated, your body feels tight.

There is nothing wrong with any state, but the inner state of expansion allows for more creativity.

She doesn’t ask us to force positive thoughts or gratitude, but to work through our stuff and work on our self-concept so we can eventually be in the state of expansion for longer periods at a time.

When I released my album I was in a state of contraction. I felt small, worried no one wanted to listen, felt I wasn’t allowed to take up space, I didn’t feel ‘palatable’. I’ve worked through a lot of stuff and I’m starting to step into that embodied feeling of expansion. Not from forcing positivity, but from having worked through a lot of inner stuff and having felt all my feelings. I feel more hopeful, like my work matters too and that I have a place in the world. Honestly, it’s a nicer place to be than in the constant state of contraction.

I’m excited as to where this state of expansion will lead me, but most of all, I’m just happy I’ve found a more comfortable inner state, since I do spend a lot of time with myself.

Tell me…

Who are your favourite disabled artists, whether musical or visual or other?

Do you feel you’re mostly in a state of contraction or expansion — or somewhere in between?

What inner stuff are you working on at the moment?

I’d love to know in the comments!

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Have you listened to Powerful People’s Anthem?

Powerful People’s Anthem is a song in 5/8. It portrays the inner turmoil of powerful people and how they really need therapy rather than microphones.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.

Listen or purchase here

I want to give you a big, warm welcome to my new newsletter, The Genius Within. And a happy new year! I hope you managed to celebrate it somehow in a way that suited you, your body and mind. We had my aunt and uncle for dinner and my dad (with my mom as food consultant, as we call her) made the most amazing meal and then I went to bed at 8 pm, like I do every day.

The Genius Within is actually a name that came to me intuitively back in 2015 when I started writing songs again. I had mild to moderate ME/CFS at the time and had a small, online coaching business at that point and was looking to pivot into creativity coaching and wanted a new name. I had felt my own ‘inner genius’ wake up as I was writing my songs. I felt like there was this thing inside me that could magically create these wonderful melodies and lyrics — and it felt both separate and a part of me.

I was also looking for my ‘zone of Genius’ at the time and I finally found it when I began songwriting again.

By ‘genius’ I do not mean the traditional definition of the word — as in, someone with exceptional intellectuel or creative power. I do not consider myself a genius in that way, I want to make that perfectly clear. I’m talking about ‘that thing we do best and most joyfully.’ That’s the Genius Within.

A lot of people, especially songwriting coaches, see songwriting as a craft you learn, and I completely agree with that.

But there is also a component that is magical and mystical to me, something I cannot explain. Sometimes I can sit down at a piano and a perfect melody or motif comes out of me, or I’ll be mumbling something and suddenly a lyric comes out of me that I didn’t consciously create or piece together. Sometimes it will take me years to understand what that lyric means, and it turns out it was almost prophetic.

The best feeling in the world — and the reason why I love songwriting so much — is that magical feeling when a song just falls into place. Yes, it takes work, and yes it takes craft, but magic is present in the most beautiful way.

I feel connected to myself and to something bigger than me — to Spirit — when a song comes together. Like a co-creation of sorts. And it’s a very humbling feeling to know that I’m not the only one in charge.

This isn’t how every songwriter feels or works. But I know of others who feel an even deeper sense of mysticism.

Paul Simon once said:

“It will be words, or music, and it flows very freely from a source that you can’t identify. It has a natural quality to it. And sometimes something more to it. I realised years ago that I had been experiencing those moments for much of my life”.

He has even spoken about music as a sort of spiritual dictation, where he is only a conduit.

When I first started writing songs I didn’t know much about craft, everything was very intuitive. I felt like I already knew the craft somehow — perhaps I had learnt it in a past life? That’s what I felt at the time, and actually still do.

Or maybe it came from years and years of paying attention to songs and music. I started playing the flute when I was seven years old and have been musically trained throughout my young years. And I loved songs and what they could do to your inner state.

I loved everything from Pink Floyd to Carol King, to Joni Mitchell, to Nick Drake, to Kim Larsen, to Ayub Ogada, Miriam Makeba, and Geoffrey Oryema and Björk and so many others.

All incredible songwriters.

And perhaps I intuitively, sub-consciously studied them.

Something woke up inside me when I started writing songs again back in 2015. I felt a purpose and I felt my ‘genius within’ emerge.

I’m so glad that you have chosen to join me on this journey as I share my creativity with you. My word of the year is ‘visibility’, supported by the words ‘connection’ and ‘strength’. I look forward to what all that brings in the new year.

Right now, I will be sending out newsletters on an intuitive basis — I don’t want to lock myself into a system just yet. But you can expect a post roughly every week, depending on my energy levels. To those of you who don’t know me, I live with severe ME/CFS and while I’m quite stable there could be weeks or longer periods where my body needs a break.

I hope you will enjoy my content!

Warmest wishes,

Madelleine

P.S I’ve created a playlist over on Spotify with the most beautiful chamber folk songs. Chamber folk is folk, but often with the use of chamber instruments like strings or woodwinds. Here is the playlist!

Tell me…

What do you feel is your ‘Genius within’ — that thing that you do the best and gives you the most joy and fills you up like nothing else does? Or do you not feel like you have/need one?

What is your word of the year?

How did you celebrate New Year?

I’d love to know in the comments!

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Have you listened to I Can’t Run When I’m Dreaming? It’s a song about medical trauma

Ever since I got severe ME/CFS I lost the ability to run in my dreams (and in real life). I would maybe start the run inside my dream, but immediately remember that I’m sick and that it’s not something my body can do. I would then fall down, unable to move.

I can’t run when I’m dreaming is a song about the trauma of losing your body and about being hidden from life by a debilitating neuroimmune illness (ME/CFS) and contemplating life and childhood memories when pain feels like an eternity.

All proceeds will go to Open Medicine Foundation for vital ME/CFS and Long Covid research. Please consider purchasing on Bandcamp to support the cause.

Listen or purchase here