A MESSAGE FROM VANESSA:

My dad was supposed to fly to Nashville with me to watch me record. He died one month before our trip. 

Pancreatic cancer doesn't negotiate, it just takes. Somewhere between his diagnosis and choosing the font for his grave, I started writing songs again.

I didn't know where else to put what I couldn't say out loud.

After my debut album in 2010, I set songwriting down. Life was filling up in all the right ways. I was building a business I love, marrying my teenage sweetheart, and raising three kids who made the world feel full in beautiful ways.

I create custom diamond rings for people in love. It's the kind of work that lets me hold someone's story in my hands and turn it into something they'll wear for the rest of their life.

Music and jewelry have always asked me the same question:  How do you turn someone's story into something meaningful?

And in those months of anticipatory loss, not knowing how to hold what was coming, melodies started flowing. Lyrics scribbled at midnight when I couldn't fall asleep. Voice memos recorded in my driveway before I could walk back inside and pretend everything was fine. Songs that said the things I couldn't say to his face, or what I imagined he might be thinking but didn't dare ask.  

My dad had always been my biggest supporter, the one who believed in this part of me even when I'd set it down. When I nervously shared one with him on Father’s Day, he didn't just encourage me. He made plans to come with me to Nashville and sit in that studio watching me record the songs grief had pulled out of me.

He never made it. But in that studio, I could feel him. There were signs that only he would know.

In 2023, I released an album that unexpectedly aligned with the Five Stages of Grief and the response stunned me. Messages from strangers who'd lost parents, children, spouses… pieces of themselves.  People who said my songs gave words to what they were feeling.

That's something about grief no one tells you: it doesn't just take.  

It gives.

Not in some silver-lining way or in an “everything happens for a reason” way. It’s in the connections that form when you stop pretending you're okay. The friendships I've made through this music are deeper than any I could have formed without it.

C.S. Lewis wrote about losing someone he loved, that it wasn't just the loss of that person that broke him. It was the part of himself that only that person could bring out.

I think about that a lot.

Because until then, my dad believed in my music more than I did. That kind of encouragement doesn't just motivate you, it becomes part of you. And keeping this creative work alive, continuing to show up for it, is how I honor everything he poured into me. It's how I carry him forward.

I also noticed my three kids were watching.

They were learning how I move through the world, how I balance work and family and the parts of myself that don't fit either category. And I decided I wanted them to grow up knowing something important: success isn't linear. You can build something meaningful, set it down, come back to it, and it'll still be yours.

My company and my music have always been about the same thing. LOVE. Capturing a moment in time and making it last. They coexist more beautifully than I expected... Each one makes the other richer.

Here's what I know now that I didn't before: Creativity doesn't expire. It waits. Patient and quiet, humming underneath the fullness of a life, ready to return the moment you have something to say.

I think my dad would love knowing his belief in me helped keep this part of me alive.

Because I love it. And he knew that. (Even when I set it down.)

This music is about love and grief and the unexpected things that arrive when your heart starts rebuilding itself. But really it's about the question I finally stopped being afraid to ask: What if you have more to say than you thought?

I did.

The music was waiting. ❤️