The Album That Brings Me Back to Myself

The timeline we are living in is designed to distract us from ourselves.

We are surrounded by spiritually polished gurus, performative healing, perfect aesthetics, curated awakenings, and people promising that if you just follow, like, buy, manifest harder, think better, and become more "high vibe," you too can look healed, rich, desirable, untouchable, and followed.

That is not what I mean when I talk about healing.

That is not what I mean when I talk about remembrance.

I mean the real things.

The things that grab you by the nervous system and say:
No.
Don't float away.
Come back here.
Come back to what's true.

For me, one of those things has always been John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band.

And I know that might sound strange if you've never had an album feel like a confession booth, a mirror, and a survival tool all at once. But that is what this record is for me.

It doesn't entertain me.

It returns me.

There is something about the rawness of it that bypasses all the masks. It doesn't try to be pretty. It doesn't try to make pain palatable. It isn't dressing the wound up pretending it's found enlightenment.

It just tells the truth.

And sometimes that is the holiest thing art can do.

When I listen to this album, it brings me back to my original self because it reminds me of the pain i survived in order to become myself.

There are things we revisit because we are still addicted to the wound. And then there are things we revisit because they remind us that we made it through.

This album does the second thing for me. It takes me through the ache. I tear up just talking about it because I love it so much.

Im not talking casual, "this is my favorite album" kind of way. The Plastic Ono Band album found me when i didn't fully know how to find myself.

I was given this album when I was 22. So for over 25 years, this record has been with me.

As a witness. I've never treated it as background music or as some nostalgic/ cool cultural reference.

It's always been my here & now present life, ongoing life theme album.

It brings up all of the feels for me… All of them.

The grief.

The rage.

The loneliness.

The stripped-down child-self.

The part of me that didn't want a performance.

The part of me that didn't want a doctrine.

The part of me that didn't want another person telling me who God was supposed to be.

I want truth.

And that is why this album has stayed with me.

It is not clean.

It is not comfortable.

It is not pretending to be healed.

It is a man standing in the ruins of what he was told to believe, asking what is actually real after the illusions burn down.

And honestly?

That is spiritual work.

Not the fluffy kind.

Not the aesthetic kind.

Not the "look how enlightened I am while I bypass my own humanity" kind.

The real kind.

The kind that makes you admit what hurt you and question what shaped you.

This music forces you to stop worshiping concepts and start telling the truth about your pain.

There is a line that always hits me in the center of my chest— "God is a concept by which we measure our pain"

As humans what do we do?…

We build concepts around everything we cannot hold.

We create names. Systems. Religions. Idols. Stories. We try to measure the infinite with the broken ruler of our own suffering.

And sometimes what we call God is not God at all.

Sometimes it is fear.

Sometimes it is programming.

Sometimes it is authority dressed holy.

Quite often it's our pain looking for a place to kneel.

This is not me rejecting the sacred.

This is me refusing the counterfeit. The older I get, the more I understand that truth doesn't need to be dressed up in control in order to be divine.

Real truth liberates.

It doesn't shrink you or shame you into obedience or demand that you abandon your own inner knowing.

It will never ask you to become less human in order to be holy.

And that is what I hear in Plastic Ono Band.

A man becoming human again.

Not perfect.

Not polished.

Not sainted.

Human.

And maybe that is why it reaches something so deep in me. I have spent so much of my life trying to understand the difference between pain that defines me and pain that initiates me.

There is a difference.

Pain that defines you says—
"This is who you are now."

Pain that initiates you says—
"This is what you survived. Now tell the truth."

That, to me, is the initiation of this album.

It doesn't let me forget myself.

It grounds me. It roots me. It reminds me of my strength.

There is another fragment that always lands for me—

I BELIEVE IN ME.

I think this is the most radical prayer a person can speak after they have spent their life being told who to be, what to believe, how to feel, what to obey, what to fear, and where they are allowed to find God.

I BELIEVE IN ME.

Not the ego-me.

Not the polished-me.

Not the version of me that performs wellness or spirituality or goodness so other people will approve.

The real me.

The original me.

The child-self beneath the shame.

The woman beneath the roles.

The soul beneath the distortion.

The one who knew before the world taught her to doubt herself.

That is what real remembrance is.

It is not pretending the pain didn't happen or searching for "ascension"

It is sitting in the truth of what shaped you and saying:

I see it.

I survived it.

But it does not own me.

That is the place this album brings me back to.

The original self.

The one beneath the indoctrination.

Beneath the fear.

Beneath the roles.

Beneath the good-girl and bad-girl cages.

Beneath the systems that tell us we need permission to know what we know.

And maybe that is why it feels so aligned with everything I am learning and remembering right now.

Because so much of this path, for me, is about stripping away distortion.

Not adding more noise.

Not collecting prettier beliefs.

Not building a spiritual identity that looks good online.

Stripping away.

Returning to the body.

Returning to the voice.

Returning to truth.

Returning to the inner child who knew before the world taught her to doubt herself.

That is what John Lennon's music does for me.

It strengthens me.

It reminds me that beauty does not always arrive softly.

Sometimes beauty sounds like someone finally telling the truth after years of swallowing it.

Sometimes beauty is the scream and sometimes beauty is the silence after the scream.

Beauty is realizing you are still here.

Still breathing.

Still feeling.

Still capable of love.

Still capable of wonder.

Still capable of becoming.

And I think that is why this album will always matter to me. Twenty-five years and counting, and somehow this album has kept growing with me. Or maybe I have kept growing into it.

When I was younger, I felt the pain of it.

Now, I can see the fuller picture… I can see that it helped keep me human.

The grief.

The anger.

The longing.

The child-self.

The body.

The questions.

The refusal to accept a false God, a false self, or a false life.

All of it belongs.

I belong.

And all of this life, even the broken-open parts, can become holy when it is met with truth.

So no, this album does not drag me backward.

It brings me home, through the pain I survived to become myself, and somehow, by the end, I don't feel weaker.

I feel rooted.

I feel honest.

I feel alive.

And maybe that is the whole point of real art, real healing, and real remembrance.

It was never meant to make us perfect. It is what keeps us true.

To create is to be… HUMAN.