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.

If You Write It, They Will Read Stories Built from Stardust

Field of Dreams

I was curled up in our giant beanbag, blankets tangled around me, Max nestled against my side. Our living room was dim, the television’s glow casting soft shadows against the walls. The beanbag itself was part of my parents’ unorthodox approach to home furnishing (hippie pragmatism at its best). My mom had decided one day that we needed a new couch, got rid of the old one, and assumed my dad would replace it. He didn’t. Instead, he got us the world’s biggest beanbag and a couple of recliners, and that was that. We loved it.

That’s where I first saw Field of Dreams curled into that beanbag, transfixed. I was young, maybe Karen’s age, when I first watched it, but I remember being completely drawn in. It wasn’t just a baseball movie. It was something bigger, something that spoke to me in a way I didn’t yet have the words for. I remember my mom loved the film. I sat still, watching it with unwavering focus.

I didn’t understand everything then, but I felt it. The rhythm of the story, the way Kevin Costner narrated with a quiet reverence, the poetry of it all. And then there was Terrence Mann. There was something about him, about the way he carried words like they were sacred, about the way he saw things beyond the surface. He wasn’t just a character to me he was an idea, a spark, a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispering, you could be a writer.

By the time the credits rolled, I knew. I wanted to write. I wanted to tell stories that reached into people’s chests and held their hearts the way this movie held mine. Someday, I wanted to write something powerful, something that helped someone... that inspired them to believe in something bigger than themselves.

Baseball was everywhere when I was a kid. Maybe it was just the time, maybe it was our tiny Texas town, but it felt like a constant, woven into the fabric of our days. My mom had this way of turning boredom into adventure she’d grab our baseball gear, round up my brother and me, and then set off on foot through the neighborhood, collecting kids like a one woman baseball recruiter. “Who wants to play?” she’d call out, and before long, we’d have a whole field of kids gathered at the park. It felt like something out of The Sandlot, like we were part of some great, unspoken tradition of childhood summers.

I wasn’t just tagging along. I played. I wanted to be just as tough, just as good as the boys around me my brother Bobby, the Greer boys, Trey, Billy, Tommy. Most of my mom’s friends had sons, and they were all like brothers to me. I had to keep up. I had to be cool. Playing alongside them, I learned to be tough, to hold my own, and to push through challenges, lessons that stayed with me beyond the game.

One game stands out in my memory. I was on second base when David Greer stepped up to bat. He swung, connected, and the ball rocketed straight into my knee. Pain flared up my leg, a sharp, breath stealing jolt, but I swallowed it down. I could have fallen. I could have cried. But the part of me that was still just a little girl (the one who wanted so badly to impress the boys) refused to. Instead, I ran. I pushed through the pain, rounded third, and made it home. Trey cheered the loudest, grinning as he called me hardcore, telling me how awesome that was. And in that moment, the pain didn’t matter. I had done it.

Field of Dreams isn’t just a movie about baseball. It’s about belief, about trusting in something even when the world tells you it’s crazy. It’s about faith—the kind that pushes you forward when everything inside you screams to turn back.

James Earl Jones’ speech still gives me chills. The way he talks about baseball as something timeless, something that connects generations that resonates with me, but it’s the deeper meaning that truly sticks.

Baseball, like music, has this unshakable way of threading through time, binding people together across years, across lifetimes. A song, like a game, can transport you. Suddenly you’re not just in the present, you’re everywhere you’ve ever heard that melody, everywhere you’ve ever stood beneath stadium lights, the hum of the crowd mixing with the echoes of something unspoken yet deeply felt. Both are more than just pastime or entertainment; they are inheritance, passed from one heart to another, uniting people who may have never met, yet somehow share the same story.

When Karen speaks up and says, Don’t sell the farm, that’s the heart of it. It’s not just about the land; it’s about not giving up, not letting fear make your choices for you. It’s about holding onto the things that matter even when everything feels uncertain.

I don’t think I fully understood that as a child. But as an adult, when I hear his words, I feel them differently. They bring comfort. They remind me to stay the course, to keep writing, to keep believing, even when it feels impossible. To keep searching for stars.

I think back to that little girl on the beanbag, wide-eyed and still, taking it all in. Maybe she didn’t fully understand why she felt what she felt. Maybe she didn’t need to. Because she knew, deep down, that she was supposed to be paying attention. That this story mattered. And that one day, she would tell her own.

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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