Category: Lifestyle

This One Is for Her

There are blogs I write because they are timely. There are blogs I write because they are useful. And then there are blogs like this one, that I write because I simply have to.

This Mother’s Day, I am not writing about music in general. I am writing about one woman. My mom. The one who is still here, still strong, still the person I reach for when life gets loud. She has been widowed, she has carried things no one should have to carry alone, and she has done it with a grace that I am still learning from. This blog is for her.

And it turns out, so is a lot of my music.

What Songs Did I Write for My Mom?

When I started looking back across everything I have released this year and last, I realized that my mom shows up in more songs than I ever consciously planned. She is woven into albums about love, about home, about the holidays, about where I come from. She is in the DNA of this whole music project whether her name is in the credits or not.

But there are five songs that belong specifically to her. Five songs that I wrote directly from the experience of being her daughter, loving her, watching her, and being shaped by everything she is.

You Showed Up from Soundtrack of Your Life was one of the first songs I released this year, and in many ways it set the tone for everything that followed. It is about the people who do not just say they love you but prove it by being there. My mom is the original person in my life who showed up. Not just for the big moments, but for the ordinary ones, the hard ones, the ones that no one else would have noticed. This song is a thank you that words alone could never finish.

Still Loved from Through It All carries a different kind of weight. My mom has been widowed, and watching someone you love navigate the loss of a partner is one of the most humbling things a daughter can witness. She did not stop loving my dad when she lost him. She carried that love forward and built a life inside it. Still Loved is about exactly that. About love that does not end when circumstances change. About the kind of devotion that proves itself over decades, not just in the good years but in the years that ask everything of you.

Home from the Unbreakable Sky album is perhaps the most personal of all of them. Because home, for me, has always had my mom’s fingerprints on it. Not just the physical place, though that too. But the feeling of being somewhere safe. The feeling of being known. The feeling of walking into a room and being exactly the right person to be there. My mom created that feeling and I have been chasing it in every home I have tried to build since.

Where I’m From from my Thanksgiving album is about roots. About the people and places and traditions that made you who you are before you had any say in the matter. My mom is the biggest part of where I am from. Her faith, her strength, her way of loving people quietly and completely, all of that is in me. This song is my attempt to honor that lineage honestly, to say I know what I was given and I do not take it for granted.

And then there is Christmas at Mom’s from My Kind of Christmas, which might be the most joyful thing I have ever written. Because Christmas at my mom’s is its own kind of magic. The traditions she has kept alive, the way she makes a room feel like the best version of the season, the table she sets whether there are two people around it or twenty. That song exists because some things deserve to be sung about, and her Christmases are one of those things.

What My Mom Taught Me About Music

She may not know this, but my mom is one of the reasons I finally said yes to music in 2026.

Not because she pushed me. She is not that kind of mom. She is the kind who lets you find your own way and then tells you she knew you would get there. But watching her carry loss with strength and still show up for every person she loves with a full heart, that taught me something about not wasting the things you have been given.

I had songs in journals for years. I had melodies in voice memos that no one had ever heard. And somewhere in watching my mom live her life with that kind of quiet courage, I stopped having good reasons to keep them to myself.

Happy Mother’s Day

Mom, if you are reading this, I want you to know that five songs are not enough. I could write an entire catalog and still not fully say what you mean to me. But I will keep trying. That is what songwriters do.

Thank you for showing up. Thank you for staying strong. Thank you for being home.

I love you more than any song I have ever written. And that is saying something.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, and to every mother who is loved more deeply than words can hold.

May 10, 2026
The Evolution of Maysgiving: A Family Tradition Story

Seven Maysgivings. That is where we are.

If you had told me seven years ago that I would still be doing this, that it would grow into something with recipes and traditions and meaning layered upon meaning, I think I would have laughed. I just wanted a reason to make stuffing in May.

But here we are.

Year One was the experiment. I was not sure anyone would take it seriously. My family showed up a little skeptical and left asking when we were doing it again. That was enough for me.

Year Two, I started taking notes. Not formal ones, just little scribbles. What worked on the table, what felt right, what I wanted to remember. The cranberry sauce recipe got locked in that year. It has not changed since.

Year Three brought more people and more food. I learned that Maysgiving scales beautifully. You can do it for four people or fourteen. The spirit is the same.

Year Four was the one I almost skipped. Life was full. Schedules were impossible. But I set the table anyway, and I am so glad I did. That year reminded me that traditions are most important when they feel hardest to keep.

Year Five, my boys started helping with the cooking. That changed everything. Watching them understand that we do this on purpose, that we choose gratitude, that we make it happen, was one of the most quietly beautiful parenting moments I have had.

Year Six, I realized I had a real body of work on my hands. Seven years of recipes. Seven years of reflections. Seven years of stories from around the table. Something kept nudging me to write it down properly.

Year Seven, I did.

The Maysgiving Table started as a family dinner. It became a tradition. And now it is a book. A cookbook-memoir that holds everything I have learned, cooked, laughed over, and been grateful for across seven years of intentional celebration.

Each Maysgiving has been different. Each one has taught me something. And all of it is in the book.

Available Now!

I even wrote a whole Thanksgiving Music Album!!! Enjoy a listen.

May 7, 2026
What Is Maysgiving?

(And Why May Is My Favorite Month)

Every year, right in the middle of May, something shifts in my house. The good dishes come out. The table gets set like it means something. There is a turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pie. And no, it is not November.

It is Maysgiving. The 4th Thursday of May; this year it’s the 28th!

If you are new here, let me catch you up. Maysgiving is my annual May Thanksgiving tradition, and it has been a part of our family’s life for seven years now. Same feast. Same gratitude. Same intentionality that the holidays bring, but without the cold weather, the travel stress, or the pressure of someone else’s schedule telling you when to be thankful.

I started it because I wanted a reason to slow down in the middle of an otherwise full season. May is this beautiful, busy, blooming time of year, and I kept rushing through it. I wanted to mark it. To sit at the table and mean it.

So I made one up.

The first Maysgiving was simple. I cooked too much food, the house smelled amazing, and somewhere in the middle of it, something clicked. This was going to be a tradition. And it has been, every single year since.

Over the years, Maysgiving has grown. The table has gotten fuller, the recipes have gotten more refined, and the meaning behind it has deepened in ways I did not expect. It is not just about the food. It is about creating a moment in the calendar that belongs to gratitude. A reset. A breath. A reason to gather before the summer heat takes over and everyone scatters.

May is also, not coincidentally, my favorite month. The weather in Southern California is just right. Everything is green and blooming. There is this collective feeling in the air of something good coming. Maysgiving fits right into that.

I share all of this because I want you to understand what Maysgiving is before I tell you about the book. It is not just a themed dinner. It is a philosophy. A decision to say that gratitude does not have to wait until November. That the table is worth setting any time of year.

Now, seven years in, I have written it all down.

Buy your copy today!!

May 4, 2026
Left Out Song Cycle: Writing About Family Exclusion Through Music

What is the Left Out album about? Left Out is an eight-song cycle by Melanie Grace about the experience of family exclusion, the particular pain of being on the outside of relationships that should have included you, and the long process of healing from that kind of hurt. If you have ever felt left out by your own family, this album was written specifically for you.

When the Hardest Songs Are the Most Necessary

There are songs you write because they are joyful and the melody just arrives and you ride it all the way to the end. And then there are songs you write because you have no other choice, because the thing has to get out or it will keep accumulating weight inside you forever. Left Out fell firmly and completely into the second category. Writing an eight-song cycle about family exclusion required me to go back into rooms I had locked up carefully and sit there until the songs came all the way out.

When you write about family pain, when you are drawing from actual experiences of being on the outside of something you should have been included in as a matter of course, you cannot do it from a safe distance. You have to go all the way in. You have to be willing to feel the thing with full presence in order to translate it accurately into something a stranger could recognize as true.

How Does Personal Songwriting Create Universal Connection?

What I found in writing Left Out was the central paradox of all deeply personal music: the more specific you are about the actual texture of an experience, the more universal the result becomes. When you name the precise quality of a feeling rather than gesturing toward it in general terms, something remarkable shifts in the listener. They stop being an outside observer and start recognizing themselves in what you wrote.

The responses have confirmed this completely and repeatedly. People send messages that say I thought I was completely alone in this. They say I did not know this particular hurt had a soundtrack until now. They say thank you for being willing to say the thing out loud so I did not have to say it alone. Those messages are the entire reason to write songs about family exclusion rather than keeping those stories locked inside where they cannot reach anyone.

What Did Writing Left Out Teach You About Songwriting?

It taught me that restraint is one of the most powerful craft tools available. There is a version of a song about family pain that is pure catharsis, all volume and accusation and unfiltered grief. And then there is the version that is controlled and precise, where the most devastating lines are delivered quietly, almost conversationally. Left Out pushed me consistently toward the quieter version and I believe the album is significantly stronger for it.

I am proud of this project. Not just for what it says about the experience, but for the fact that I said it at all. If you have ever felt left out by the people who were supposed to keep you in, those songs are for you. You were seen in the writing of them. You were not the only one.

April 21, 2026
Through It All: A Wedding Anniversary Song and What 15 Years of Marriage Really Looks Like

What is Through It All about? Through It All is a love album by Melanie Grace released in February 2026. It explores what it means to love someone through the hard seasons as well as the beautiful ones, drawing on fifteen years of real marriage. It is about the kind of love that does not quit even when quitting would be easier.

Fifteen Years

Today is our anniversary. Fifteen years. I have tried to write this blog post four separate times this morning and every single time I reach this sentence I stop and sit with it for a moment. Fifteen years. When I think about the girl who stood at that altar in 2011 and said yes, I want to take her by the hands and tell her: you have no idea what is coming. And it is so much more than you are imagining right now.

Marriage is not a fairy tale. Anyone who has actually been in one for fifteen years will tell you that plainly and without hesitation. It is two very real people, with very real flaws, choosing each other on the easy days and the hard ones, the days when love feels completely effortless and the days when it requires everything you have and then asks for a little more.

What Is a Wedding Anniversary Song About?

That question is what led me to write Through It All. I started the album in February with Valentine’s Day as the anchor point, but the deeper I went into the writing, the more the project revealed itself as a philosophy of love rather than just a collection of romantic tracks. What does it mean to love somebody not just on the peak days but through the ordinary and the difficult ones? What does it mean to stay, to choose again, to rebuild when something breaks, to say I am still here even when everything else is hard?

My husband is woven into every single track on that album. Not because every song is a literal love letter to him specifically, but because the way I understand what love is at all, the way I know what it means to be chosen by someone and to keep choosing them back, comes entirely from fifteen years of building a shared life with this person. He is in the foundation of every word I wrote.

Why This Anniversary Feels Different

This year, celebrating fifteen years feels qualitatively different because I am also celebrating the version of me who finally started releasing music. He has believed in my songwriting longer than I have believed in it myself. He has listened to voice memos at midnight and said that one is really something. He has watched me build this entire music career in 2026 and cheered from the front row without ever once making me feel like it was too much or too ambitious or too late.

There is a lyric in the Through It All title track about the kind of love that shows up even when it is tired. The love that laughs even when it is scared. That lyric is about him. Happy anniversary to the man who has always believed in my music, even on the days I did not. I love you more than any song I have ever written. And I have written a lot of songs.

April 16, 2026