We caught up with the brilliant and insightful JULIE HARPER a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

JULIE, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me? I’ve had so much kindness come my way over the years. Kindness that I didn’t feel deserving of at the time. There is one story of kindness that stands out to me because it’s the one that changed my life. I’ve only shared this story once before publicly. There was a time in my life when my children (triplets) were about 7 years old, it was not long after my divorce and a lot of unaddressed trauma, shame and exhaustion had finally caught up to me. I ended up homeless / living in my car and on food stamps. At the time I was living in Minnesota and it was in the late fall and coming up on the winter which is brutally cold in there. By then I had been homeless for a couple of months sleeping/living in my car between a Homewood suites parking lot and an Extended stay. And I remember one night there was a bad storm and at about 11 pm as I was trying to fall asleep, an employee from the hotel knocked on my car window and asked me to leave because people staying at the hotel had complained. That was definitely one of the lowest moments of my life. But the next day I finally put my shame and humiliation aside and called one of my dearest friends in the world, Abbie. I told her everything and she just said, “I love you…drive to my house immediately.” And then she said the words that changed everything. She said, “you always have a home with me. And you can stay here for a week if you want, or you can stay here until you’re 80 years old. I’ve got you.” And this insane culmination of life and circumstances and trauma and grief and the greatest kindness, taught me that we can only love people back to life. We can’t judge them or scold them or rub their face in how they f*cked everything up. We can just see them, hug them and remind them how precious they are. And not because of anything they’ve done or failed to do, but because they exist. And Abbie reminded me that my existence was enough. And that it mattered when I was sure that it didn’t. And slowly but surely she loved me back to life as she does for everyone who is lucky enough to enter her atmosphere. I started to regain my sense of self and confidence. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but this, her, was a lesson that I’ll never forget. And it changed me at a cellular level…a soul level. My life, my work, and whatever I create now comes from Abbie’s kindness. Loving people back to life. Loving them forward. Withholding any sort of judgment because life is the f’ing hardest. I think it’s impossible to be a person most days. And I think once you find yourself at the bottom, you also find what matters there. it forces you to get really clear about what you give a shit about and what you don’t. And I guess I’m a rebel in that way. I know what I give a shit about and it’s protecting women and elevating them
In any way that I possibly can while I’m on this Earth.

JULIE, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Music has always been and will always be the love of my life. I remember the exact moment in 1986 that I knew music was it for me. I was in a school music program standing on the risers dressed as a butterfly, and the song, The Greatest Love of All, came on and I was never the same. It was written by Linda Creed and Michael Masser, sung by Whitney Houston, and it was the most magical thing I’d ever experienced. I went to college for music, but then life happened – marriage, babies, divorce – and it was a long road before I actually got to Nashville, where I am now. Over the last decade I’ve worked with incredible women who have also gone through massive life changes and are committed to evolving and leveling up in every way possible – mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally and creatively – I became a writer so that I could tell our stories and then founded a movement/company called I AM HER. Fast-forward a decade to Nashville and my deep love for music and women has finally culminated into the company that I recently co-founded called HER HAUS. An all women run agency, a home for female creatives of every era in the music world – songwriters, producers, musicians, artists, managers and other business badasses. I envisioned a safe place, a place that honors us fully, so that we can build and create without limits. So that we can share our lives and experiences in raw form, without even considering gatekeepers, bullshit numbers or the status quo. I’ve witnessed woman after woman leave music behind, because of her horrific experiences. Objectification. Sexism. Ageism. Abuse. Assault. Compromise. Trauma and power dynamics and other insanities that degrade and strip us of everything we love. Sounds dramatic but it’s not. It’s woman after woman, story after story…and as simply as I can state it – I’m just done. And so is every single woman that I talk to. We want more. We deserve more. We’re going to give ourselves more. We’re done begging for a seat at the table. We’re building our own – it’s called HER HAUS.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social Media. I show up the exact same for thousands of followers as I did when I had 3. Building a community that’s as loyal and engaged as mine, has taken years of showing up every single day with the only intention being – to make one person in this big world feel less alone. I write what is true for me and I post it. When I learn something new and helpful, I share it. When I have something to say, I say it. I don’t post just to post. I don’t post for numbers or validation. I don’t have an automated schedule. I don’t buy followers. I don’t babysit anything that I write. I just release it into the world and trust that it will find the right ones. The people who need what I have to offer, pick it up when I put it out. It’s for me. It’s for them. I leave the rest.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Yes. I have read so many life-altering books in the last 10 years, but one that stands out to me in this moment is a book by Daniel Pink called A WHOLE NEW MIND – as a creative/ gypsy soul, who has always felt behind and out of place until now, this quote was a big exhale for me.

“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

And what I love the most about this, is that it feels tied to what I’m learning about the feminine – the lover, the creator, the nurturer, the orchestrator of all things powerful and good and lasting. The feminine has historically been grossly undervalued and dismissed (in women and men). It’s been treated as silly and irrelevant, when in reality we can’t exist without it. We don’t have a future without it. I watch huge organizations right now scrambling to manufacture the authenticity and heartbeat that the feminine has been embodying since the beginning of time. This is the foundation of HER HAUS. And I have never been so excited about something in my whole life – to experience a movement, an organization, built from the ground up through the eyes and hearts and souls of women. Her vision. Her vision only. Beginning to end. Bottom all the way to the top.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @iamherstagram
• Other: Our website and social media accounts are in the hands of our marketing / branding teams and will be live shortly – I will get those links over to you once we’re about to go live.

Image Credits

I am getting photos from my team and will submit.