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.

Strawberry Fields Forever

The soil is cool between my fingers, damp from the early morning dew. The scent of earth rises in the air, mixing with the faint sweetness of ripening strawberries. A warm breeze rustles through the garden, carrying the quiet hum of spring. I don’t know why I look up just then, but I do...two redbirds perched on the fence, watching. Their feathers catch the sunlight, burning bright against the pale sky. They don’t move, don’t startle. They just sit. And something in me stills.

The song is suddenly there, playing in the back of my mind. Strawberry Fields Forever.

I hear your voice, Dad.

That’s where you’ll find me. Strawberry Fields, Strawberry Fields Forever.

I never really understood what you meant. Maybe I do now.

Strawberries have been somewhat of a quiet thread through my life. My favorite fruit. Jaxon’s too (the only food he’ll ever declare his love for). A few years ago, he wanted to plant them in our garden. The first year, they struggled, beaten down by the Texas heat. We thought they were gone. But then, the next spring, they came back on their own, stronger, sweeter. And now, once again, here they are, growing without effort, like they belong here. Like they were always meant to return.

You would have loved that, Dad!

My dad always had a way with growing things. Mom could make flowers bloom, but he could take a bare patch of dirt and turn it into something that fed people. His garden wasn’t just plants—it was proof of patience, of care. Of knowing when to let nature take its course.

Jamie and I lived in California for a brief period, and even though it wasn’t long, it left its mark on me. There was something dreamlike about it;how the mist rolled over the hills in the early morning, how the sky turned gold in the evenings. We’d take long drives just to soak it all in, past endless stretches of strawberry fields, their rows of red and green blurring together in the afternoon light. Stopping at roadside stands to buy baskets of fruit still warm from the earth. We had a burned mix CD we played in the car, and Strawberry Fields Forever was on it. We listened as we watched the fields blur by, the song drifting through open windows. The air smelled sweet, heavy with the scent of earth and fruit, and sometimes it felt like we had stepped outside of time. We’d dance to old records in the kitchen with the windows open, have fishing adventures in the cool air of the Pacific, and wake up to slow, quiet cool mornings wrapped in the kind of peace that only exists when you know you’re living inside a moment you’ll look back on forever.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons the song stayed with me... not just because of my dad, but because it was woven into so many different corners of my life. The song, the fields, the feeling of things quietly growing all around me. It’s funny how we don’t always recognize the things that will follow us, the ones that will take root in our memories and return when we need them most.

John Lennon wasn’t just a musician to my dad he was a great thinker and writer, someone who peeled back the layers of the world and put them into words. He used to quote Watching the Wheels, “No longer riding on the merry-go-round I just had to let it go”, like he saw something of himself in it. He thought Lennon was brilliant, deep, someone who didn’t just make music but left something behind in it.

I’ve always felt that, too. He was my favorite Beatle his music, his words, the way he seemed to search for something bigger. Some of his solo work moves me even more than what he did with The Beatles, maybe because it feels rawer, more exposed. His bed-in movement, the way he and Yoko turned protest into art, into something so simple yet so bold. I’ve always been deeply impacted by that! There was something about the way he lived, the way he created, that makes me keep looking for meaning, for connection, for stars in the dark.

John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever about a real place, a children’s home near where he grew up. But it wasn’t really about a place at all it was about memory, about perception, about how reality blurs when you look back at it. The song doesn’t just sound psychedelic it is psychedelic. The way the instruments bend and shift, the way Lennon’s voice sways between clarity and distortion. It’s a trip through nostalgia that isn’t comforting so much as it is unsettling memories that don’t sit still, always changing shape the more you examine them.

Maybe that’s why you connected with it so much, Dad. Because your childhood wasn’t just a straight line of memories it was a mosaic of feelings, of moments, of time spent in the dirt beside Dora.

Some of your best childhood memories were in the garden with Dora. You told me once that was where you felt happiest digging in the dirt, planting, pulling weeds, playing ball in the yard. That was your sanctuary. The smell of earth, the rhythm of planting, the satisfaction of watching something grow.

And then you grew up. Life got harder. But maybe when you heard Strawberry Fields Forever, it took you back there. Maybe that song, like the dirt under your nails, like the leaves between your fingers, reminded you of something pure.

Eleanor was another reminder of how things grow under the right hands. We picked out the aloe vera cactus together, Dad, Jaxon, and I, walking through the Walmart garden center, scanning the rows of cacti. Dad chose one, took it home, and turned it into something enormous. It even bloomed once, the way only the most cared for things do. He built a cart for her, wheeled her inside when it got too cold. He broke off her babies, handing them to us like heirlooms.

Jaxon named his Planty, deep in his Pee-Wee’s Playhouse phase. Dad thought it was just too perfect. And just like Dora had taught him to nurture life he set out to do the same with his own grandson.

Maybe that’s why, when you told me that’s where I would find you, I should have believed you.

Dad, I think about what you said all the time. About how I’d find you here.

I’m starting to believe you were right.

Strawberries keep coming back. Even when they shouldn’t, even when I think they’re gone, they find their way home.

And you do too, in ways I never fully understood before.

I hear you in the music, in the rustling of leaves, in the lessons you left behind. I see you in the redbirds, watching over me, over Jaxon and the girls, over the garden we’re growing together.

And I know now. This is what you meant.

Strawberry Fields Forever.

And just like John Lennon left behind a piece of himself in the song, you left a piece of yourself here, too. In the dirt. In the music. In us.

And we will keep searching for you in the places you loved, in the things you taught us to cherish. In the stars. In the fields. In the quiet moments where love remains long after we think it’s gone.

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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