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.

Neon Moon: Spinning Through the Beams

Part I: Joy on a Dusty Dance Floor

You didn’t have to be a country fan to know Neon Moon.

If you were alive in the early ’90s especially in a place like Texas it was just in the air. It drifted through jukeboxes, gymnasium dances, car stereos, and late-night radio. With its steel guitar, slow ache, and soft glow, it became one of those songs that somehow belonged to everyone. A little sad, a little sweet, and impossible to forget.

But for me, it’s more than a classic it’s a memory. A moment. A moonlit thread running through two very different versions of myself.

It’s the sound of small town Texas, homecoming dances.

It’s the sound of teenage heartbreak, windows rolled down, and friends singing through the ache.

It’s the sound of everything I’ve ever loved about music how it meets you where you are, and stays with you as you change.

I was just a little girl in Normangee, Texas the kind of small town where Friday night lights weren’t just a tradition, they were a heartbeat. My dad had gone to high school there. People knew his name. Kerry Nixon. He had that kind of presence-walked into a room and people noticed. Not famous, not flashy. Just unforgettable. To me, he was everything.

Every fall, after the homecoming football game, there’d be a dance in the local 4H show barn. The air was usually cool, and the night always smelled like the remains of smoke lingering in the air from the bonfire the night before and my Dads cologne, Obsession. I remember the smell like it’s bottled in my bones.

My favorite part of those nights was getting dressed up and dancing with my dad. He was a good dancer smooth, confident, always on beat. He’d take my hands, lift me up onto his shoes, and we’d spin across the show barn floor like the world didn’t know what to do with all that joy. The music didn’t matter as much as the moment except when Neon Moon came on. That one felt like ours. Something about the way it glowed, the way it lingered. I didn’t understand the lyrics then, but I felt the emotion. Even as a kid, I knew it was a song that meant something. Even if at the time all it meant to me was joy and light.

When I hear it now, my mind wanders right back there. The lights. The laughter. The music. And my dad spinning me through the kind of memory that stays bright long after the music fades.

Time moves like music sometimes slow and steady, sometimes out of rhythm entirely. One day, you’re dancing on your daddy’s shoes in a Texas show barn, and the next, you’re riding shotgun with a cracked heart, trying to sing your way through the ache.

Because Neon Moon didn’t just belong to one chapter of my life.

It showed up again when the light was different, when love had already bruised me once.

Part II: Passenger Seat Anthems and Heartbreak Harmony

I was just out of high school freshly heartbroken, freshly untethered. The kind of break that feels like the end of everything, even though you’re barely getting started. One of my best friends Becky—also dealing with her own wave of hurt was right there with me. We had a small crew back then, and when the nights got too quiet or the silence hit too hard, we’d drive. Me, Becky, Daniel, sometimes others cruising small town backroads like we were trying to outrun what we felt.

Neon Moon came on during one of those drives. I don’t know if we picked it, or if it found us. But once it played, that was it. It became our anthem. We didn’t cry—we belted it. Windows down. Voices cracking. Every word, loud and dramatic and kind of hilarious, but also weirdly healing. We’d lean into the lyrics like they were gospel:

“I spend most every night beneath the light of a neon moon…”

There was something about singing it together that made the heartache feel lighter. Like if we sang it loud enough, we might sweat it out, burn it off, or just turn it into a memory that didn’t hurt so bad. And somehow, it worked. That summer, the heartbreak didn’t disappear, but it softened. It became just another thing we shared. Another song that held us in the dark.

Now, every time I hear Neon Moon, I think of both versions of me the little girl spinning in the show barn, and the teenage girl singing through heartbreak and laughter in that car. And I smile. Because somehow, both needed the same song. And both were blessed in some way by it.

Some songs don’t fade with time. They follow you. They shape-shift. They show up in show barns and passenger seats, in moments of joy and moments of ache. Neon Moon is one of those songs for me. It’s been a slow dance and a shout-along. A childhood keepsake and a teenage lifeline. A song that knew me before I knew myself—and has traveled with me throughout this journey.

I hear it now and feel something like gratitude. For my dad. For my friends. For the heartbreak that didn’t destroy me. For the music that caught me when I fell. And maybe most of all for the way light can still find you, even when it flickers in strange places.

Sometimes it’s not the sunrise that saves you.

Sometimes, it’s the glow of a neon moon.

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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