“There were nights I begged the morning not to find me where I lay.” Heather Faye wrote those words in a journal she never meant anyone to read. Today they open “Healing Out Loud,” the most personal song yet from the Dallas, Texas, pop songwriter. It tells the story of a woman who lost her mother, lost her hair, lost her sense of safety and came close to losing her life. Faye survived all of it, and now she is singing about it in the hope that someone in that same darkness hears it in time.
“I never set out to become a songwriter,” says Faye. “In fact, until a few months ago, I never imagined that some of the most painful chapters of my life would become songs that other people could hear and relate to.”
The writing began with a phone call no daughter is ready for. Faye’s mother died on June 26, 2026. “Our relationship had its complexities, and losing her brought emotions I didn’t know how to process,” she says. “There was grief, love, regret, unanswered questions, and the painful realization that there were conversations we would never get to have.”
Faye opened a journal to survive the grief. “What started as private thoughts and emotions written on a page slowly began turning into lyrics. Before I knew it, I was writing songs,” she says. Her first three releases were letters to a mother she could no longer call. Then the pages started leading her somewhere harder, to the years she had spent trying to forget.
“In October 2023, I experienced a traumatic sexual assault that completely changed my life,” says Faye. “In the years that followed, I battled severe PTSD, depression, and debilitating anxiety. The trauma affected nearly every part of my existence.”
Her body carried the trauma too. “I developed stress-induced alopecia and lost all of my hair within a matter of months,” she says. “I lost my confidence, my sense of safety, and the ability to recognize the woman looking back at me in the mirror.” In the song she sings it plainly: “I’ve watched my own reflection and not known the girl I saw.”
Then come the hardest words of the song. “There were periods when I genuinely didn’t want to be alive anymore,” says Faye. “I survived seven suicide attempts. That’s something incredibly difficult to say publicly, but it’s also an important part of why this song exists. When I say I’ve tried to leave this world seven times, I’m not using a metaphor. I’m telling the truth about just how close I came to never having the opportunity to tell my story.”
The chorus of “Healing Out Loud” holds that truth and answers it with hope: “Seven times I tried to leave this world; seven times I wasn’t meant to go. When I couldn’t find a reason to stay, God was holding one I didn’t know.” In the second verse she sings about faith at its rawest: “Sometimes faith is crying on the floor and whispering, Are You there?”
The bridge is where many listeners will break down. Faye speaks to the woman she used to be: “There was a version of me who never thought she’d make it here. I wish I could go back and tell her, just stay.”
“That lyric means everything to me because there truly was a version of myself who never believed she would live long enough to see better days,” says Faye. “For so long, I thought healing meant somehow becoming the woman I was before the trauma. But I’m learning that maybe healing isn’t about returning to who I used to be. Maybe it’s about discovering who I can become despite everything I’ve survived.”
Every lyric comes from Faye’s own journals. She gives them a voice through AI-assisted production with Suno. “I’m a songwriter, not a performing vocalist,” she says. “My lyrics come from deeply personal experiences, and technology has given me a way to share them with the world.”
She refuses to wrap the story in a bow. “I still have difficult days. I still struggle with the effects of trauma, grief, and mental health challenges. There are still days when it storms in my mind,” says Faye. “But I’m here. And after spending so many years feeling silenced by everything that happened to me, I’m finally learning how to use my voice.”
She also knows exactly who she wrote it for. “If someone listening to this song is struggling with PTSD, depression, anxiety, or simply trying to survive another day, I hope they hear something that reminds them they aren’t alone,” she says. “I survived seven times when I didn’t believe I could survive one more day. Now I’m turning the words I once wrote through tears into songs that I hope will help someone else find a reason to stay.”
“I started writing because I was grieving someone I lost,” Faye adds. “Somewhere along the way, I realized I was also grieving the person I used to be. Songwriting became a way to honor both, while learning how to live again.”
The woman who once begged the morning to pass her by now greets it with a question. “I didn’t always want tomorrow,” she sings in the final lines. “Now I want to know what God kept me here to do.”
“I’m still healing. I’m still learning. I’m still rebuilding,” says Faye. “And for the first time, I’m doing it out loud.”
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