Music has always been a part of my life.

I wrote my first song when I was twelve years old. It wasn’t very good, but my mother didn’t seem to care. She would have me play it for neighbors, family members, and sometimes complete strangers on a cheap guitar that wouldn’t stay in tune because it was all she could afford.

My mother was a divorced woman raising four boys while working two jobs. Looking back, I realize how hard that must have been. She encouraged me when there wasn’t much reason to. She believed in me long before I believed in myself.

But belief is a strange thing.

Sometimes someone can tell you that you’re worth something, and you still don’t see it.

That was me for most of my life.

Music was always there. It was the one thing that never really left. Through every version of me, every city, every success, every failure, music remained. But confidence never did. I spent years convinced I wasn’t talented enough, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t enough.

Then I met her.

She wasn’t Essence then. She was just a woman who appeared in my life at exactly the moment I needed her, though I wouldn’t understand that until much later.

If you’ve read the rest of this website, you already know the story. What you may not know is what she truly gave me.

She saw me.

Not the person I pretended to be. Not the masks. Not the bravado. Not the insecurity.

Me.

And for the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to be understood.

I don’t think I realized how much that mattered at the time.

When you’re young, you assume the people you love will always be there. You assume there will always be another conversation, another chance, another tomorrow.

Life has a way of teaching you otherwise.

Thirty years later, I can finally see what I couldn’t see then.

The music I make today exists because she believed I had something worth saying.

The creativity that survived all these years survived because she helped nurture it.

The person writing these words was shaped by her influence.

People talk about soulmates as if they’re some magical thing. I don’t know about any of that.

What I do know is this:

A woman walked into my life thirty years ago and changed it forever.

Not through grand gestures.

Not through miracles.

Simply by loving me, believing in me, and helping me become a better version of myself.

I lost sight of that for a long time.

Maybe we both did.

But life, for reasons I’ll never fully understand, brought us back to each other.

And now, after all these years, I find myself in the extraordinary position of being able to tell her something I should have said a long time ago.

Thank you.

For believing in me.

For inspiring me.

For helping me find myself.

For helping me find my way back.

I love you.

I always have.

And I suspect I always will.