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.

Hand in My Pocket: Borrowed Player, Brand New Voice

I didn’t even have a CD player yet.

But I needed that CD.

I’d heard the song on the radio probably a hundred times by then. In our tiny town, the local pop station had no chill when it came to a hit. They’d play the same song on repeat like it was their anthem. And honestly? I wasn’t mad about it. Especially not with this one.

“Hand in My Pocket” hit me like a flash of sunlight through the blinds sharp, warm, weirdly comforting. I didn’t know what all the lyrics meant, not really. I was ten. But I felt them. I felt Alanis.

So there I was, walking through The Galleria in Houston, practically vibrating with urgency. I remember tugging on someone’s sleeve (maybe an aunt, maybe an older cousin) pleading with everything in me: Please, please, please buy me Jagged Little Pill. I’d never wanted anything more.

I knew I could listen to it on my brother’s CD player. He had one, gifted from our nanny. He said I could use it if I was careful, and that was all the reassurance I needed. I had a plan. I had a song. I just needed the album.

Someone caved—bless them. I clutched that CD like it was gold.

I remember the weight of it in my hands...the plastic case, the jagged lettering, the mysterious intensity of her eyes on the cover. It felt grown up, dangerous even. Like I was holding something that knew secrets I didn’t yet know how to ask about. And that was kind of the thrill of it.

Back at home, I waited my turn with the CD player like it was a sacred ritual. My brother made me promise not to scratch it, not to mess with the volume, not to skip tracks too fast. I nodded solemnly and meant every word.

Then I pressed play.

And just like that, the world cracked open.

It wasn’t just “Hand in My Pocket.” It was the whole damn album. I didn’t know what she meant by “every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it”… but I sang it loud. I didn’t know what irony really was, didn’t need to. I could feel it in my bones. That strange ache, that tension between being a mess and being magic. Between having one hand in your pocket and the other giving a peace sign. Or flicking a cigarette. Or hailing a cab.

“Hand in My Pocket” was the one that stuck deepest, though. There was something about that chorus, that list of contradictions, that steady beat behind the chaos. It felt like a permission slip I didn’t know I needed. A way of saying yeah, you can be a little bit of everything and still be okay.

I sang it everywhere. In my room. In the car. Into my hairbrush. Into the wind. Ten years old and already carrying the weight of the world in my small shoulders and singing, “everything’s gonna be fine, fine, fine.”

And somehow, I believed it.

The funny thing is I still believe it.

I still sing it.

Not just in the shower or the car, but in my heart, when life’s a mess and I don’t have answers. When I’m trying to be everything to everyone, or nothing to no one. When the bills are due and the house is loud and the dishes are piling up and I catch a glimpse of my reflection and think, How did I become a whole adult already?

That song still lives in me.

“I’m broke but I’m happy, I’m poor but I’m kind…”

It hits different now, but it still hits.

Because now I know what she meant. Now I’ve lived the tension, the both-ness of being human. Being tired and hopeful. Grateful and confused. Wild and soft. One hand in my pocket and the other holding a diaper bag… or a dream… or the steering wheel as I drive into another unknown.

There’s a kind of poetry in how certain songs become bookmarks in your life. This one marked the beginning for me. The start of caring deeply about music. About lyrics. About being a girl with too many feelings and not enough places to put them.

And Alanis she gave me a place.

I guess I didn’t really know it back then, but the Jagged Little Pill album was possibly the first time I felt seen by a song. It didn’t care how old I was, or whether I understood every word. It just fit. Like it knew something about me before I knew it about myself.

And somehow, “Hand in My Pocket” still fits.

It doesn’t ask me to be put together or have it all figured out. It just lets me be,in the middle of things, in the middle of life. It reminds me that contradictions don’t cancel each other out. They just make us human.

I’m older now, but not all that different from that ten year old kid with the too-big feelings and the borrowed CD player. I’m still walking through this life with one hand in my pocket.

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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