What is Searching for Stars?

It's a multimedia memoir — part book, part mixtape, part constellation of memory. Think of it as stories pixelated through sound, image, and nostalgia — a place where music and memory echo together. Imagine getting to know a new friend through her mixtape of memories, each story another piece of a constellation slowly taking shape, like sitting together in a fireside chat beneath the stars.

What does "musical echolalia" mean?

Echolalia is when words or sounds repeat — like echoes that return without being invited. Musical echolalia is how songs and lyrics loop in memory, shaping how we feel, remember, and even communicate. It's the heartbeat of this project.

Is this a book, a blog, or something else?

It's all three, and none at once. Searching for Stars is a living memoir told in fragments — part website, part audio archive, part retro dream. Imagine a mixtape that keeps unfolding into chapters.

Who is this project for?

For readers. For music lovers. Nostalgia chasers. For kids of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s — and for anyone who's ever pressed rewind on a memory. It's for seekers of light in the dark, and for those who feel music deep within their soul. It's for the little girl inside me who dreamed of being a writer, who thought in music video formation and remembered in lyrics long before she had words to explain it. It's for anyone who carries loops of sound and story in their mind and is still searching for ways to make sense of them. It's for my children — the living record of my life and the love story their father and I have built — so they will always know who I was, and how they inspired me to finally share my voice.

The pixel art style was inspired by our kids' love of old-school Nintendo and Sega games — a love my husband and I were proud to pass on to them. Memory itself often feels pixelated — fragments, pieces, little glowing squares that come together into something whole. Vivid sensory-filled memories, retro games, mixed CDs, VHS tapes, and the texture of nostalgia. I usually start with real photos from my life or family albums, then run them through tools like ChatGPT, Canva, and PicsArt, cropping, layering, remixing, and refining until it feels right. The visual art helps bring the stories to life like a pixelated scrapbook.

Can I listen as well as read?

Yes — the site weaves together audio narration, Spotify soundtracks, and pixel art. Each story has its own soundtrack, so you can hear the memory as you read it. You can also listen to the project in its entirety on Spotify, or hear the Searching for Stars soundtrack.

Where should I start?

Anywhere. That's the beauty. The project is a constellation, and you can enter from any star. It never happens in order — it comes in bursts, like shooting stars revealing their story one streak at a time. Certain images throughout the site are clickable, leading you to other pieces that share similar characters, themes, memory vibes, or synced timelines. Small bridges between stories that hum with the same rhythm.

Will this become a book?

That's the dream. Searching for Stars is being built as a digital-first memoir, but its fragments are already shaping into a printed constellation. Someday, you'll hold it in your hands like a mixtape for the soul.

How can I support the project?

Read. Listen. Share. Tell a friend who loves music. Post your favorite piece, or just press play. Every echo helps keep the stars alive.

What inspired Searching for Stars?

It was born from a lifelong love of music, memory, and storytelling — from mixtapes passed between friends, to songs that became soundtracks for entire chapters of my life. It's both a personal archive and an invitation for others to remember alongside me.

Is this project autobiographical?

Yes — it's my story, but told through music, movies, and memory loops that connect to something bigger. While it's personal, it's also universal, because the songs that shaped me are the same songs that have carried so many others, too.

Beyond the Static: Signals I Didn’t Yet Understand

The first time I heard Criminal, I was ten years old.

We were living in an apartment in North Carolina then my mom, my brother, my grandmother, and me it was after everything had already cracked open. The divorce. The affair. The move away from Texas. The kind of upheaval that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but hums under your skin, day and night. I didn’t have language for any of it yet. I just knew I was angry. And sad. And flooded with feelings that didn’t know where to land.

Music was my escape before I knew to call it medicine.

I had a small TV in my room, the kind that glowed more than it clarified, and I watched MTV and VH1 the way some kids watched cartoons. I sat on the floor, close to the screen, letting songs wash over me not for meaning, but for relief. Sound felt like a place I could breathe.

And then this song came on.

I remember being frozen there, cross-legged on the carpet, the room suddenly very still. It wasn’t the video that caught me. It wasn’t shock or seduction or anything I could have named at ten. It was the tone. The piano. The weight of it. The way the song moved slow like it wasn’t trying to impress anyone. It felt transparent and raw…she seemed to embrace real emotional honesty unlike anything I had felt come through that screen before that day.

I didn’t understand exactly what she was singing about.

But somehow I understood the feeling.

It felt heavy. And real.

It felt like truth without decoration.

That was enough.

The song didn’t leave after that night.

It stayed tucked somewhere inside me as I grew quiet, patient waiting for me to grow into it. I didn’t think about it consciously at first. It would surface here and there, on the radio, on a mixtape, years later on a playlist, and each time it felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain. Like running into someone you once knew in a completely different life.

When I was a teenager, I still loved it... but differently. By then, I was starting to understand weight. Emotion. The way love could feel tangled instead of pure. The way wanting something didn’t always mean knowing how to hold it gently. The song began to feel less like a sound I escaped into and more like something that watched me quietly from the corner of the room.

And then, sometime later without a clear moment to point to I caught up to it.

I learned what it feels like to cross an invisible line.

To care deeply and still cause harm.

To love and not yet know how to love well.

There were people I loved before I understood the cost of that word. People I confused. People I hurt without meaning to. Not out of cruelty out of immaturity, fear, longing, and the simple fact of being young and unfinished. I didn’t know then how easily hearts could bruise. I didn’t know how long certain echoes last.

When I hear the song now, I hear all of it layered together the child on the carpet in North Carolina, the girl learning the contours of desire and consequence, the woman who can finally sit with regret without flinching. It doesn’t accuse me. It never did. It simply tells the truth and waits for me to be honest enough to listen.

That’s what I’ve always loved about it.

The song didn’t teach me how to feel guilty.

Life did that.

The song just gave me a place to put it.

Music didn’t save me because it fixed anything.

It saved me because it stayed.

It stayed when my life felt rearranged and unfamiliar.

It stayed when I didn’t yet know how to name what I was feeling.

It stayed as I grew, and stumbled, and learned the slow lessons no one escapes.

That song became less of an escape and more of a witness. It didn’t rush me. It didn’t demand resolution. It just existed steady and honest while I learned how to live inside my own contradictions. While I learned that loving someone doesn’t automatically mean knowing how to protect them. While I learned that regret doesn’t always need punishment sometimes it just needs acknowledgment.

There are things I would do differently now.

There are hearts I would hold more carefully.

There are moments I understand with a clarity I didn’t have then.

And I carry that knowledge with tenderness, not shame.

When I hear the song today, I don’t feel frozen anymore. I feel grounded. I hear the accumulation of years in it the way a single piece of music can hold multiple versions of a person without collapsing them into one. The child who needed somewhere to rest. The young woman who made mistakes. The adult who can look back without turning away.

The music didn’t change.

I did.

And somehow, the song knew I would.

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Searching For Stars

She Gave Me a Beautiful Window Back to My Soul: Healthy Is the New Skinny (A letter of light and gratitude for Katie Willcox)

By Lauren Nixon-Matney • February 2, 2026

I don’t remember deciding to look in the mirror. I was already there, half-awake, the house finally quiet in that fragile way it gets after a feeding. Same bathroom. Same light. A body that no longer belonged only to me, still learning its new outline. I tilted my head, not with panic, not even sadness just habit. Like checking a bruise you already know is there. Like waiting for an apology that isn’t coming. What annoyed me wasn’t what I saw. It was how quickly my brain tried to narrate it. The subtle inventory. The mental before-and-after photos. The unspoken timeline of when I was supposed to “feel like myself again.” I remember thinking, with a tired little laugh, Wow. I just made a human. And I’m still doing this. Still scanning. Still measuring. Still standing here as if my body hadn’t just done something borderline miraculous. And the most unsettling part wasn’t the criticism it was how normal it all felt. Like this was just part of motherhood. Like this quiet self-surveillance was simply another thing you were supposed to carry. I didn’t necessarily feel it all at once. There was no dramatic breaking point. It was more like a quiet irritation that refused to go away. The kind that taps you on the shoulder while you’re trying to move on. I remember standing there thinking how strange it was that my body could do something as massive as bringing a whole person into the world and somehow still be treated like a problem to solve. How quickly the conversation had shifted from look what you did to okay, now fix it. I hadn’t failed at anything. And yet, the language in my head sounded like I had. That’s when something finally clicked not so much with anger or rage, but with clarity. This wasn’t intuition. This wasn’t health. This wasn’t even coming from me. It was inheritance. Passed down quietly. Polished to sound responsible. Framed as care. And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Katie this is where you enter the story… Someone who said the thing out loud that I had only felt in pieces. Someone who named the difference between discipline and disconnection. Between health and harm. Healthy Is the New Skinny didn’t tell me what to do with my body. It asked a better question altogether: What if the problem was never your body in the first place? That question rearranged everything. You gave me language where there had only been pressure. You replaced noise with permission. You handed me tools not commandments and trusted me enough to use them. And that trust mattered. Because the moment I stopped fighting my body, I started listening to it. And the moment I started listening, I realized how long it had been trying to take care of me. It felt like getting this beautiful window. Not to change myself or crawl through but to finally see clearly. I kept thinking about how these things actually get passed down. Not through lectures. Not through rules. But through the tiny stuff. The comments made in passing. The jokes you barely even realize are jokes. The way you talk to yourself when you think no one is listening. Especially kids. Especially daughters. It hit me one night, sitting on the edge of the bed, that someday they wouldn’t need me to explain any of this to them. They would just pick it up. The same way I did. The same way most of us did. Quietly. Without consent. That realization felt clarifying. Not heavy. Just honest. Some patterns don’t need a big exit. They just don’t get invited into the next room. And because of you, Katie, I found the strength to stop fighting myself. To stop trying to fit my body into some mold it was never meant to belong in the first place. To me, you are truly one of the most beautiful women and souls in this universe! Beautiful is the woman who breaks cycles. Beautiful is the voice that replaces shame with truth. Beautiful is someone whose work doesn’t just inspire it liberates. Thank you for changing how I live inside my body. Thank you for changing how I mother. Thank you for helping me choose health over punishment, presence over performance, and confidence that doesn’t ask permission. You saved me in ways you may never know. Thank you so much for opening the window. I’m raising the next generation with it wide open to limitless views of beauty! Lauren