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.

Amazing Grace: A Song That Lives in the Soul

The first time I heard Amazing Grace, I was too young to understand the weight of its words, but I think I felt them. Before I knew what it meant to be lost and then found, before I knew the depth of grace, I knew the sound of it. It was always there, lingering in the background, steady as a heartbeat. My Nanny’s favorite song, the one she hummed without thinking, the one she carried with her like a quiet prayer. I can still hear it in my mind—her voice soft and unwavering, a melody worn smooth by time.

Later, it became something else entirely. A lullaby. A moment in the dark, Jamie holding our babies close, rocking them gently, his voice low and warm, singing the same words that had been sung long before either of us were here. I would stand in the doorway, barely breathing, watching, listening. There was something sacred about it not just the song itself, but the way it belonged to us now. The way it wrapped around our children, like a thread binding the past to the present.

And then, there was Jaxon.

At just three or four years old, he started singing it back to Jamie, his little voice rising up in the same melody he’d heard so many times before. I don’t know if he understood the words then, but he knew them. He carried them. And in that moment watching my son, so small, so full of innocence, repeating those ancient lyrics I realized how deeply Amazing Grace had woven itself into my life. It was no longer just a song. It was a legacy, passed down without effort, without intention, just as naturally as breathing.

It’s strange how music does that, how it plants itself inside of you, how it lingers long after the moment has passed. Amazing Grace is a song that has lasted for centuries, surviving wars, loss, and change. Maybe because it was written in a storm, born from a man who had once been lost in every way a person can be lost. John Newton should have died at sea, but he didn’t. And when he made it through the wreckage, he knew grace had spared him. Undeserved, unearned, but given anyway.

Maybe that’s why it’s endured. Because at some point, we all come to understand that kind of grace.

I have heard Amazing Grace sung so many different ways. Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, Elvis. But Willie Nelson’s version is the one that stays with me. His voice is different from all the others where some take the song to church, Willie brings it home. His voice is worn, familiar, steady as an old Texas road. He doesn’t try to elevate the song. He just lets it be. There’s something about the way he sings it that settles deep inside me, something that feels less like a performance and more like a memory.

And perhaps that’s why I keep coming back to it—because I grew up in Texas, and Willie Nelson is stitched into the fabric of home. Maybe it’s because my parents listened to his records, because my Granny liked his music, because his voice is woven into my roots, even before I knew it. But, when Willie sings Amazing Grace, I don’t just hear it...I feel it. A slow, quiet pull in my chest, a memory rising up from somewhere long forgotten. The first strum of his guitar settles low in my stomach, and then his voice comes in—unrushed, unpolished, real. It’s the kind of voice that makes you stop, makes you close your eyes, makes you take a deep breath you didn’t even know you needed. The kind of voice that doesn’t just carry a song it carries a life lived, a road traveled, a soul weathered but steady.

And somehow his version reminds me of Jamie’s voice. Not in sound but in feeling. Jamie, singing our babies to sleep, his voice filling the space between us like something ancient, something magical, something real.

And then came Gracie.

Our Amazing Gracie.

We didn’t know what life had in store for us in 2023. We didn’t know that in the middle of grief, change, and uncertainty, we would find out that we were being given a new light. A baby. A daughter. A piece of grace in human form.

Because that’s what she was. That’s what she is. A light. A reminder. The kind of grace that finds you when you need it most, even if you don’t realize it at the time.

When Jamie held her for the first time, I knew Amazing Grace would be the first song she ever heard him sing.

Her presence mended the unseen fractures within us, stitching together the fabric of our hearts with threads of newfound joy. She taught us to find wonder in the mundane, to cherish the present, and to see the world through unclouded eyes. Gracie didn’t just enter our lives; she transformed them, reminding us of the boundless grace we hadn’t realized we were yearning for.

It’s strange how something as simple as a song can become part of the foundation of a family, how it can weave itself into the quietest moments, the most unexpected places. It was there when my Nanny hummed it in the kitchen. It was there when Jamie rocked our babies in the dark. It was there when Jaxon, barely old enough to understand what he was singing, lifted his tiny voice and filled the air with it. And it was there in Gracie’s name, in the miracle of her presence, in the way she became the light we didn’t know we needed.

Amazing Grace has lasted through the centuries because grace is never really one moment. It is always unfolding, always moving, always finding a way back into our lives.

It was there in my Nanny’s voice, humming in the background of my childhood.

It was there in Jamie’s lullabies, sung to all three of our babies.

It was there in Jaxon’s tiny voice, repeating the words before he even knew what they meant.

And it was there in Gracie, in the way she arrived at exactly the right time.

Amazing Grace isn’t just a song to me.

It’s our song. It’s a story. A prayer. A thread through time.

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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