Dear friends, on this memorial day Friday night I thought first of you, remembering how I've made a life of songs that you have shared through years of rugged changes and unlikely developments, and it's been a battle to survive, creatively speaking. I wrote before Dashiell was born that I worked and trained like a soldier to be ready for the unknown, and I'm so glad I prepared as well as I did. I'm so grateful I didn't cruise for a moment, and that I enjoyed not down shifting, but rather kicking my butt into gear even more. This afternoon I listened to the most amazing guitar player lay down tracks on some of the new songs and they sounded better than I thought they could, I heard how the bass from yesterday pulled the piano and vocals together, gave them depth, and now how the guitar is intensifying the mood, challenging the lyrics to speak clearly of a richer meaning. I have found my way, I know what will not work, and opportunities are here. Patience has proven to be a good friend, I mustn't betray her.

Memories, all of them used to be painful, I'm sure many of  you can relate to this. There are some sad moments on the new album, for sure, loss and longing for the reasons things happen the way they do when the feelings are unbearable, but also there are new strengths and completely unsuspected perspectives and desires borne out of the grieving process. We don't get people back, we can't relive a more innocent time, but we can create circumstances to enrich new relationships that vibrate who we are now, and we can let innocence safely flourish within others, and live it in our art, and make time for our own innocence to erupt.

Being Dashiell's mother is so sacred to me, these are the simplest and quietest of times. Sitting on the stoop watching the birds and dogs, giving him his bottle and kissing his wonderful smelling head, leaning over his crib when he's talking and singing to himself in the morning, telling him of Sir Dashiell the Great Knight while he falls asleep on my chest in the swing, under the Eucalyptus tree.  Yesterday is already a memory. In six months I have never experienced so many conscious leaps with another human being, and every six hours something totally new happens. This is how life is when we are present, with or without a child, if we don't habitually re enforce the same story. Dashiell's story is new and unfolding fast, so he is not held back by conditioned responses and ideas from his past, but so is every one's story, if that's how we choose to tell it.

I have definitely opened a new book of life; it's my part 2. I love the old one ever so much, it is in fact addictive, but this new one is nurturing and full of white magic, there is a very bright and strong new character who I am always eager to observe, and the old ones who have crossed over are so much the wiser. There is Owl, speaking of the goddess, wanting me to be her doorman.

So friends, I want to thank you for who you are and for what you have given to me, and I want to especially and deeply thank those of you who serve and protect America, and who ever serves and protects their own nation, it is such a sacrifice and because of it, I can kiss my son goodnight.

See you on the road, Sophie