When ‘Yield to Reality’ first began to exist, I was entering a new writing cycle. It was late spring/early summer of 2025, and I did some very intentional (and overdue) thinking about what I want my signature sound, and my signature story, to be.

After years of daily wrestling with self-doubt–that quiet, but relentless devil on my shoulder–I woke up one day with a realization that felt almost anticlimactic: that isn’t my story anymore.

Is self-doubt still part of me? Duh.

But, it no longer gets to drive the project.

I made a decision that the things that once crippled might still exist, but they weren’t the focal point, or the voice I am speaking from any longer.

Around that same time, I started noticing feathers everywhere. They felt symbolic: light, airy, and elegant as they drift. But feathers are also easily swept up by forces outside of themselves. Soft things move quickly when the world surges around them.

That’s how I’ve felt lately.

My inner world feels light as a feather, even as the outside world fluctuates wildly…lifting me up, pulling me down.

‘Yield to Reality’ is the anthem for coping with those surges.

Let me share an example: I am extremely anxious on turbulent flights. I am absolutely not the person anyone wants to sit next to when the skies get rough. Recently, I was sent a video encouraging people to relax the body during turbulence, explaining that physical tension actually increases the likelihood of injury. A few weeks later, I was able to put that theory to the test on a very bumpy flight back from California. 

The plane shook hard enough to knock my cup of sparkling water off the tray table and onto my 10+ year old knit uggs (love those shoes). Everything in my body wanted to brace, and resist, and death squeeze my neighbors thigh. But instead, I yielded. I reminded myself that what was happening in the sky was out of my control. That statistically, the odds of making it safely to the ground were quite strongly in my favor. That resistance wasn’t protecting me…it was exhausting me.

So, I softened.

I let the world outside my body cease to matter.

I surrendered.

At that moment, I experienced acceptance. Not as a concept, but as a physical state. And that is the essence of Yield to Reality (yes, I was playing the song in my AirPods during this moment. It may have even been subconsciously born for my flying anxiety).

For the first six months this song existed, the only lyric was the phrase “yield to reality”, repeated over and over like a mantra. I first encountered the phrase in May of 2025, and it completely stumped me. I had many theories, but couldn’t decide what it meant. I oscillated between interpretations, unable to commit to any one of them deeply enough to write around it. Also worth noting here–I struggle with intense decision-making paralysis :) 

The last few years have been financially challenging for many people, myself included. I’ve struggled with tying my self-worth to money (...or the lack of it) as a yoga teacher and musician. I am someone who pours 150% of myself into my visions. Passion is both my gift, and my downfall.

Last fall, after a massive summer/album release/festival season, I experienced a burnout so magnificent it could probably be studied. I had accomplished so much, yet I looked at my bank account and felt like I had so little to show for it. Eighty-hour weeks, whole-hearted devotion, and still…turbulence.

The irony is that I know many people living the opposite reality. Financially comfortable, working just as hard, but feeling hollow and disconnected from meaning. We tend to romanticize the life we aren’t living. 

The realization came: presence is the freedom. Acceptance of right now is the release. The act of creativity itself is freedom.

As artists (and as yoga practitioners) we don’t do this work to line our pockets. We do it because we’re passionate. But when life gets turbulent, it’s easy to forget that we get to do the thing we love.

I study and teach Ayurveda, the an allied science of yoga, which views the world through the lens of the five elements and encourages living in harmony with natural cycles. When you see yourself as a reflection of nature, you stop fighting the seasons, both external and internal.

This song is about flowing with those cycles. Feeling infinite in the blink of an eye.

As we approach the Lunar New Year on February 17th, 2026 (also, Mardi Gras day! Party!) shifting from the Year of the Snake into the Year of the Horse, I feel the symbolism deeply. The Year of the Snake was about shedding skin. And I am not wearing the same skin I wore when it began. But shedding skin doesn’t automatically mean release.

Letting go is often physical and involves removing something from your daily life.

Release is cognitive, emotional, and even somatic. And deals with acceptance of “letting go”.

Release, my friends…that’s the harder part.

Freedom doesn’t come from trying to change people or circumstances to fit your narrative. It doesn’t even come from “letting go”. It comes from full-body acceptance. From releasing resentment, even when it’s hidden behind termination contracts or blocked numbers.

You can wish someone well and still feel resentment deep down. Which begs the question that Release asks:

“Do I actually feel free?”

‘Yield to Reality’ has become my mantra for that ongoing work, and a reminder that healing is not as simple as a removal, or declaring that you have “let go”. I’m finding it to be, rather, awareness of tension, and choosing softness. A conscious decision to stop bracing against the turbulence, and instead…yield to it.

(*I will still be popping a xanax before every flight I take.)