(Photo: Linda Brownlee/The Guardian)

I hadn’t listened to Sinéad O’Connor for many years, until today. That voice calls for strong lyrics. A lyric that spits out the truth and hurls it in your face. A lyric like The Times They Are a-Changin’. 

This morning I scrolled through images and videos of her early work and the infamous 1992 SNL ripping up of the Pope’s picture. People do all sorts of stuff for publicity, but that wasn’t Sinéad O’Connor. When needed, she delivered a truth which only in the last few years caused an earth-shaking admission by “the church:” moral turpitude dressed up in the religious cloaks of shepherding in many denominations. Those abused children grew up and some found a voice. But how many didn’t or couldn’t?

In 1966 I taught myself to play guitar. It gave me a voice on the University of Tennessee campus and a coffeehouse nearby while I was still in high school. I teamed up with a boy a couple years older who introduced me to Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and of course, the songs of Dylan. What a time it was. And I felt the fire of injustice that I heard in those voices. 

But somewhere in the next few years through my college years and on to NYC then Nashville, my fire dimmed and I found myself fighting the oppression of my distinct and authentic voice in the songs foisted upon me by the Nashville music machine of the 1970’s. I now fully understand the ache in the gut and depression that comes with not speaking your truth. 

My truth was smothered as a recording artist, then further boxed in by a detour down the rabbit hole of religion. And climbing out of the pit both put me in, literally took decades. But even then, I didn’t understand how the roots of self-suppression finally caused me to become seriously ill. The emotional body supports the physical body. When we break, the cracks may not be visible, but they’re straining to burst through the walls that we’ve girded ourselves with. Eventually, peace is all that’s important. And I found mine.

Untimely death. What does that mean? Maybe Sinéad O’Connor needed peace more than living another day in this world. Maybe she had journeyed far enough and the weight of her son’s passing made each minute feel like years. Whatever her reason, the strength and pure rawness in her delivery of The Times They Are a-Changin’ will forever reverberate in the bones of all who aspire to the courage of Sinéad O’Connor.