When you see validation for a life's work and dedication, it's a beautiful day.
I have such a good life. It's something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.
I got sober at 27 and started writing around 30 and started playing music in public around 32, 33.
People who have been through trauma, their souls are hurting.
I knew I had that Cajun heritage, that Acadian heritage; I just feel it. And my gut says Irish on the other side. Irish and French, that's what I feel. When you're young, it doesn't matter so much, but as you get older, I would suspect part of the ageing process is to wonder about your ancestors - who were they? What were their lives like?
There's an ocean of misunderstanding. It's called the civilian-military divide. I had a lot to learn about our military - who they are, what burdens they carry.
What I was told is that I was born to a mother who was a Catholic, while her boyfriend was not. They couldn't get married unless they put me up for adoption.
I'm an old-fashioned folk singer. I stand in front of an audience with a guitar and a barstool.
Songs, especially lyrics, have always been really important to me.
I got interviewed by one writer who started with the line, 'Mary Gauthier is a woman who clearly doesn't care how she looks.' I do too. It's just that I'm not very good at it.
I don't really write for catharsis; I get that kind of work done in therapy.
If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree.
It is a form of arrogance to assume that other people are even thinking about you.
A song is an emotional lightning bolt - a good one, anyway.
If somebody in a family is in service, the whole family is in service. I didn't know that. I didn't know our veterans were being deployed seven, eight, nine, 10 times. It's inhumane.
I learn something every time I go to work with a veteran. Every single time.
There's a universal inside of me. So if I tell my story, you're going to see parts of your story in it. I don't know which parts, but we all overlap. We're all very much alike.
I think Bob Dylan showed us that songs can rise to the level of literature, and he proved it over and over again. That's why they keep trying to get him a Nobel Prize for literature: because there is no Nobel Prize for songwriting.
I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth.
I've learned our soldiers are so much like everybody else. They're just put into an extreme situation.
