Finding the Road Back: Recovery, Music, and the Map of Your Soul

There’s a kind of road we all walk through life. Twisting, cracked, golden in places, flooded in others. Sometimes it feels like only a thread of tightrope above a canyon, and we have to keep going anyway—by instinct or gut, by the little voice that tells us to take “just one more step.”

For those of us who’ve wrestled with the bottle like I have, that road can feel impossibly dark. Like all the signs are written to purposely lead us astray from our better judgement. The compass spins, and you're not sure which direction is true north anymore.

But here's the thing: every block, every bottom, every bad night becomes part of the map. And if you keep going—if you stay open, even when you really feel like just saying f* it—you find something staggering. You find you.

There’s a quote from On the Road by Jack Kerouac that I love, which goes:

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

Maybe he was writing about the open highway, but to me he was writing about the path back to yourself. To restoration and recovery with constant motion forward until you figure out the next road to take.

And strangely, beautifully—music works the same way. You pick up a guitar … the same wood and wire that you’ve held a thousand times before. But then you hit a wall of resistance. Some kind of mysterious block where you just aren’t “feeling it” anymore and you want to stop. The rhythm escapes you and all you want to do is give up.

But instead, you keep going.

And then, one day, after persistence and swearing and simply staying the course, it starts to click again. You begin to feel your rhythm. You’re changed, and things come together fluidly once more.

Recovery is like that, too. It’s not a straight line. It's a song that unfolds, sometimes rough around the edges, but always worth practicing and refining. Every misstep, every detour, every relapse (if it happens) isn’t failure—it’s another verse in your story. And over time, you grow stronger and more resilient. Your spirit gets tuned in.

You start to see that the setbacks weren’t setbacks at all. They were turning points. Teachers and truth-tellers. They stripped away what didn’t belong and revealed something deep, raw, and real: your essence.

And when you rise—whether from a rock-bottom moment or just another difficult day—you rise wiser, tougher, and more in tune.

You don’t just come back to who you were.

You step forward into who you were meant to be.

So if you're on that road right now, if you're stumbling through the static and trying to stay upright—make sure you keep going. The road ahead may twist and turn, but it is so very bright.

The music is in you.

The strength is in you.

The whole wild journey is still unfolding—

and you're right on time.