When I was growing up, my dad would always be playing Motown around the house. He loved Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and got me into Dionne Warwick. It was the best music I'd ever heard. It was just that extremely deep, human, thought-out stream of ideas. You can always hear something new when you listen to that music.

I wasn't taken seriously being the only girl playing in band growing up.

Growing up, I had a natural love for women like Diana Ross, Mary Wells, Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got into Dionne Warwick, Nina Simone, and Patsy Cline.

I had to do so much self-searching and self-work and learning how to navigate in a world that seemed very mean.

One of the big ways in which I felt my own writing life shaped by recovery had to do with my relationship to other people's stories. And one of the things I loved most about recovery was the way in which, in meetings and through fellowship, you are constantly kind of paying attention to lives outside of your own.

Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people's lives.

I hang out with the right people, my friends that I've had since the beginning. We go to the beach, take walks, paint, see our family - just normal things that people who become famous lose sight of.

The strength of brand loyalty begins with how your product makes people feel.