{"id":4085,"date":"2009-07-27T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T20:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/uncategorized\/the-road-to-recovery\/"},"modified":"2009-07-27T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-27T20:56:00","slug":"the-road-to-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/uncategorized\/the-road-to-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know if everyone knows this but Liz and I (Lilli) started The Shiz under relative duress.  I mean to say, when we decided to ditch Phoenix, AZ on account of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/wp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Liz&#8217;s first real brush with bigotry<\/a> back in January 2009, we felt pretty lost in the world.  We landed in Hammond, LA, a place you only land when it was also the place from which you launched, and thought &#8220;What the hell?  We&#8217;ve got nothing left to lose.  Let&#8217;s start a band.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We were pretty shaken, but we thought the situation gave us an opportunity to build our reality from the ground up.  Here were the objectives:<\/p>\n<ol><\/p>\n<li>Place ourselves in an environment where at least a half-dozen people feel immediately compelled to treat us with kindness.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Secure a living space that has warmth and personality but doesn&#8217;t require we sell all of our time to the highest bidder.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Empower ourselves by listening to our inner wisdom and making something out of <br \/>whatever it speaks.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Engage in creative work that is rich with truth, love and light vibrations (yes, I sound like a hippie, I know) as an offering to the world around us.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Minimize on the time spent doing things we simply don&#8217;t want to do.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Smile and laugh as much as possible.<\/li>\n<p><\/ol>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure there were others but these were the fundamentals.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is Hammond is the last place I thought I wanted to live, but in the time we&#8217;ve been in Louisiana we&#8217;ve seen our family grow.  We&#8217;ve seen unlikely relationships foster healing where hope was all but lost.  We&#8217;ve watched people we love struggle socially, mentally, emotionally and financially.  We&#8217;ve experienced satisfaction.  We&#8217;ve wanted more from our families, our band, each other.  We&#8217;ve been broke.  We&#8217;ve experienced abundance.  We&#8217;ve been bored.  We&#8217;ve been silly.  We&#8217;ve been productive.  We&#8217;ve procrastinated.  We&#8217;ve watched our minds and the minds of <br \/>loved ones turn experience into distortion.  We&#8217;ve felt anxious pangs tighten our chest, causing the natural rise and fall of the chest to draw too much attention to itself and betray our fears and yearning.  <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been six months (give or take) and here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve learned so far:<\/p>\n<ol><\/p>\n<li>Life is everywhere.  Not just in the mountains.  Not just in the city. Everywhere.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>I can&#8217;t save anyone from their suffering.  They can&#8217;t save me from mine.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Love is a good thing, but it only goes so far.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Laughter is my best friend.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Music is magic. I am proud to be a music maker.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>I really like <a href=\"http:\/\/bandofskulls.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Band of Skulls<\/a><\/li>\n<p><\/ol>\n<p>&#8230;<br \/>I&#8217;m sure there is more, but those are the fundamentals.<\/p>\n<p>Songs related to this post from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdbaby.com\/shiz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Where We Stand<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shizrock.com\/mp3s\/05_gold.mp3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Good As Gold<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know if everyone knows this but Liz and I (Lilli) started The Shiz under relative duress. I mean to say, when we decided to ditch Phoenix, AZ on account of Liz&#8217;s first real brush with bigotry back in January 2009, we felt pretty lost in the world. We landed in Hammond, LA, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.folkrockdiva.com\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}