Music for me is an emotional necessity. It's therapy. It's what I live and breathe.
I had a PET scan, and it was cleared. Not one cell of cancer after three rounds of chemo. But I still had seven more just for safety, which was stupid. I should have just worked on therapy.
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
'Paul's Boutique' was a bust, right? That was a bummer. We didn't pause on it for a long time - we didn't go through therapy - but it was weird. And because it was a bust, we didn't go on tour.
Acting has made me embrace my childhood. It's become some weird form of therapy. It's like I have a place where I can release all of these emotions. When I was playing Ira Hayes, I didn't have to think about the death of my parents directly. It's just there. I can blend it into Ira's character. I can use Ira's emotions as an outlet.
On slower days, when I was only needed for coverage or reaction shots, the set of 'The Newsroom' was better than therapy. Chris Chalk and I would debate life's dilemmas... until Sam Waterston would chime in and set us both straight.
2014 was a terrible year for me. I got a lot of help from psychiatrists, doctors, and my family, but also from group therapy. I met people from so many different backgrounds, and we were all able to relate to each other. It felt like a real community, and I stole that concept for Gurls Talk.