EVERY LIFE HAS MUSIC

We usually think of a soundtrack as something that belongs to a movie or musical. But what if a life can have a soundtrack too?

Long before I began crafting songs about my own life, four songs helped teach me what that could mean

Four Characters. Four Private Conversations.

I have known these songs for much of my life. They come from different stories and different characters, but there is something about them that connects them for me.

Maria, Tevye, Nancy and Arthur are singing to themselves. They are not trying to explain who they are to us. We are simply allowed to listen.

And because we can listen, we learn something about each of them that dialogue alone might never have told us.

Long before I began crafting songs about my own life, these characters were teaching me something important:

Sometimes a song can tell us what the rest of the story cannot.

The Music Was Always There

For most of my life, I never thought of the music I loved as my soundtrack. I simply had songs I remembered.

Some take me back to a particular place. Some remind me of people I loved. Some bring back feelings I understood at the time, and others have taken decades for me to understand.

Looking backward, I began to realize those songs weren’t simply music I happened to hear along the way. They had become attached to the story of my life.

The music was always there. I just hadn’t yet understood that it was telling part of my story.

REMEMBER

Some Songs Never Leave Us

You probably know these songs.

You may even remember the first time you heard them. Or perhaps you don’t remember the first time at all. Maybe they simply seem to have always been there.

Two songs known by generations of listeners. But knowing the same song does not mean sharing the same soundtrack.

Where were you when the song became part of your life? Who were you with? How old were you? What did it mean to you then? What does it mean to you now?

The song may belong to everyone. The memory attached to it belongs to you.

UNDERSTAND

“White Christmas” was never really a Christmas song to me. Traditional Christmas songs felt festive. “White Christmas” felt different. I heard longing and hope—the possibility of the best-case scenario.

“Singin’ in the Rain” gave me something else. It was raining. That didn’t mean you couldn’t dance. You could make the best of a bad situation and still experience happiness and joy.

Neither song was written about my life. Yet somewhere along the way, I gave each of them a meaning that belonged to me.

I didn’t understand any of this as a child. I simply knew I loved the songs.

Understanding came later.

CREATE

What If the Song You Need Doesn’t Exist?

For most of my life, my soundtrack was made from songs other people had written.

I could hear my hopes in one song, recognize a feeling in another, or attach a memory to music that had become part of my life. Sometimes a song seemed to say exactly what I needed it to say.

But not every part of my life had a song.

Some memories were too personal. Some relationships belonged only to me. Some feelings didn’t fit the songs I already knew.

Then I discovered that I could create the missing songs myself.

The First Missing Song

On April 30, 2025, I crafted You Don’t Have to Say a Word Tonight.

Someone I cared about was hurting. I wanted to say something that wasn’t advice and wasn’t an attempt to make everything better. I wanted simply to say: I’m here.

I couldn’t think of a song that said exactly what I wanted to say.

So I created it.

One song became another. Memories became songs. Relationships became songs. Questions I had carried for years became songs.

I wasn’t simply creating music.

I was building the soundtrack of my life.

Your soundtrack is the music that has become part of the story of your life.

It includes the songs you remember because they carry people, places and moments with them.

It includes the songs you understand differently because your experiences have given them meaning.

And it can include the songs you create when the music you need doesn’t already exist.

Your soundtrack isn’t necessarily one playlist. It can change as you change. Different chapters of your life can have different music—and sometimes, different parts of who you are can have soundtracks of their own.

One Woman. Three Soundtracks.

I said earlier that I was building the soundtrack of my life.

That isn’t quite right.

I was building soundtracks.

The songs I craft come from the same creative imagination, but they don’t all come from the same version of my life. Three distinct musical stories have emerged. Each has her own experiences, her own perspective and her own music.

The music that belongs to one would often make little sense coming from either of the others.

VERONICA GLENNE

VERONICA BROYLES

VERONICA TAZMAN

The life I envisioned

The life I lived

The life I found

One creative imagination. Three different lives. Three different soundtracks.

What About Your Soundtrack?