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.

Yourself or Someone Like You: Long Day, Jamie, and the Songs That Stayed

I’ve loved a lot of voices in my life; raspy ones, silky ones, wild ones, broken ones. But if I’m being honest? It’s probably a tie between Otis Redding and Rob Thomas, with Rob pulling slightly ahead.

There’s just something about the way he sings like gravel and soul had a baby and raised it on broken hearts and sunrise drives. I don’t know how else to explain it. His voice has always felt like something I could trust. Like it knew things I hadn’t said out loud yet.

Matchbox 20’s Yourself or Someone Like You was the third CD I ever owned.

The first was Jagged Little Pill, which I managed to convince a family member to buy for me because Alanis, obviously. The second, Tragic Kingdom, was handed to me by Trey with a smirk and the line:

“You need to add this to your collection especially if you’re getting into talented babe music.”

And then came Matchbox Twenty.

I begged my brother to order it for me through BMG those wild, glorious Columbia House days when kids with no money somehow ended up with stacks of CDs anyway. And when it came in the mail, I swear, I held it like it was a sacred object.

We were living in Bent Tree Apartments in Greensboro, North Carolina at the time...me, Bobby, our mom, and nanny. It was after the divorce. The apartment complex was all hills and trees and these magical little tucked away spots that made it feel more like a forest village than a neighborhood.

That winter, it snowed.

We used plastic tub lids to slide down the hills by the park, laughing and spinning until our faces were numb and pink with joy. It was the first time Bobby and I really got to experience snow, and I can still see it that sparkling hush, the slope, the thrill.

And while the world outside was white and new, I was inside with a borrowed CD player thanks to Bobby, who didn’t have to let me use it, but did.

I played Yourself or Someone Like You over and over and over again, like it was breathing for me.

Track two.

“Long Day.”

That song wrecked me in the best way.

The passion in the lyrics, the sound of Rob Thomas just laying his whole soul bare. It felt like he was singing for all of us who were holding it together on the outside but quietly breaking inside. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I felt it. And I kept feeling it for years.

I thought I might never meet anyone who loved that song as much as I did.

Until Jamie.

A few weeks into falling for each other, before either of us really knew we were falling Jamie handed me his CD case in the passenger seat of his white Mustang and said, “Pick something.”

It smelled like Axe body spray and freedom. The windows were cracked just enough to let the late afternoon air twist through the car, stirring up something electric between us that neither of us wanted to name yet.

I flipped through the thick plastic sleeves of the zip-up binder, scanning the covers, hoping for a sign.

And there it was.

Yourself or Someone Like You.

Like a little universe tucked between everything else.

I smiled to myself, slid the disc out, and popped it into the stereo.

The speakers crackled awake, and suddenly, there we were me, him, and Rob Thomas, all sharing the same stretch of highway.

He started singing along immediately loud, proud, and completely unashamed.

I knew every word, too, but I stayed quiet for a second, just listening, stunned.

Because it wasn’t just that he knew the song.

It was how he sang it.

Like it mattered.

Like it lived inside him the way it lived inside me.

And when “Long Day” rolled around and he hit that first weary, worn out note, it was like a handful of stars lit up inside me at once. It felt like finding a constellation I didn’t even know I was looking for.

Jamie beside me, singing it like a prayer he already knew by heart.

The whole night shifted it was like a quiet kind of gravity pulled me closer.

Like two people finding the same star in a sky full of noise.

When Jamie and I fell for each other, I moved into the townhouse he was already sharing with two roommates. It wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t totally uncomplicated but somehow, in the middle of all that, we carved out a world of our own.

Our bedroom wasn’t just a bedroom.

It was a tiny studio, a fortress, a starting line.

We had a love seat crammed against one wall, a computer desk against another, a washer and dryer tucked into a closet nearby. It smelled like clean clothes and late nights and all the hope you don’t know how to name yet when you’re young and barely beginning.

Jamie helped me pick out my first real laptop—black, sleek, compact, and perfect—and that night, we sat side by side on the love seat, downloading songs we loved. Making mix CDs. Building soundtracks we didn’t realize we’d still be carrying decades later.

And somewhere between the old favorites and the new discoveries, I found it.

Rob Thomas’ cover of “Time After Time.”

I had loved that song my whole life the Cyndi Lauper version, delicate and aching but hearing Rob sing it?

It was like finding a lost language I had somehow always spoken.

His voice, raw and beautiful and a little broken around the edges wrapped around the lyrics like it had been waiting for them.

For me.

I felt a soft tear well up as we sat there, wrapped in the glow of the computer screen, listening.

Not speaking.

Just letting the music say all the things we didn’t know how to say yet.

That night, sitting cross legged on a secondhand love seat in a too big room, I realized something simple and enormous:

Some voices find you when you need them most.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find someone who sings along with you...time after 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