Scars and Second Chances: Why I Wrote a Song About Stopping the Fight With Your Past
My new single, “Scars and Second Chances,” came from a strategic writing session, not a diary moment. But the truth snuck in anyway. It always does.
My third single of 2026. It took a co-write and 17 years of therapy to get here.
I want to tell you something about how this song got made, because it's not the story you'd expect.
Last year I made a decision to stop writing in every direction and start writing with focus. My sound — Southern Soul, a little swampy, a little dark, stomp and clap and soulful Americana — has a specific home on screen. Yellowstone universe. Landman. Tulsa King. Shows with grit and landscape and characters who've lived something hard. I have sync reps in L.A. pitching my recordings for exactly that world, and I needed catalog. So I wrote strategically. I came into rooms with titles, concepts, references. I was building something, not processing something.
That's how “Scars and Second Chances” started.
I came into the session with co-writer Devin Powers carrying a title, a chorus lyric, and a melody. My reference was ZZ Ward — specifically her track from the Cars soundtrack, “Ride.” That raw, gritty energy. Devin started playing guitar in this cool alternate tuning. Jangly, open, strummy. A little Fleetwood Mac. Honestly, it took it away from the ZZ Ward thing I'd walked in with. But it turned into its own thing. And it's cool. Sometimes the song knows better than you do.
What snuck in anyway
What I didn’t plan on was the through line.
Nearly every song I wrote in that focused, strategic year has redemption running through it. I wasn't writing from my diary. I was writing for sync, for catalog, and for the sound. But when I look back at the lyrics across all of it (“Scars and Second Chances” is one of the clearest examples) my actual life is in there. You can't keep yourself out of your own songs. I've tried.
The second verse is the one that gets me personally:
Tell me why we never change / Takes a breakdown before we find our way
I've needed breakdowns for real change in my life. Not metaphorical ones. Real ones that give you a wakeup call. I've been in therapy for about 17 years. Not crisis therapy — the kind where you do the slow work of making friends with who you actually are. And I can tell you from the other side of a lot of that work: the breakdowns were not the enemy. They were the door.
The chorus is where I land now:
There's no hiding where I've been / You can judge / But in the end / I'll sing Hallelujah / Redemption's sinking in
No judgment. No regrets. I wouldn't be who I am today without every single thing I've been through, including the parts I'm not proud of.
And I really like who I am today.
That's not something I could have said at every point in my life. Redemption's sinking in, indeed. It will, if you let it.
Who this song is for
An image from my photo shoot with Nathan Chapman. This was almost the cover artwork.
“Scars and Second Chances” is for the woman who has stopped running and started looking. The one who's put in enough work (therapy, prayer, time, hard conversations, quiet mornings) that she's starting to see her past differently. Not as evidence against her, but as the thing that built her.
She's done explaining herself. And she's proud of every scar that got her here.
If that's you, this song is yours.
“Scars and Second Chances” is out noweverywhere you listen to music. If you want to get closer to the songs — the ones still in the vault, the ones that never made an album, the ones written in little rooms that nobody else ever saw — that's what the Inner Listening Room is for. One unreleased song a month, with the whole story behind it. 10 songs and their stories are already in the archive, and it grows every month.
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