We recently connected with Lily Pierce and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Lily thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Music and my work for mental health are very important to me for a multitude of reasons. I think that the overarching message between the two of them that I try to intertwine is the idea of destroying isolation and loneliness. Mental health and trauma, or even just super hard situations can cause us to become very isolated, and feel so alone in what we are experiencing. But feeling alone in our struggles is a dangerous place to be, and I do not think it is talked about enough. In my mental health journey, there were times where I wanted to give up because of how hopeless and alone I felt, I thought I was the only one going through this thing. This feeling of isolation caused by my mental illness led me to do some very drastic things, and it was not until I found a community that I was able to look outside myself. I do not want anyone to have to endure the pain that eating disorders cause, but if they do, they should never ever go through that alone. Anyone struggling is a human being who deserves care just as much as the next person, because if we feel alone it is even harder to keep going. This is why I am excited to start releasing more music in the future about my experience with mental health and eating disorders.
For me and many others, music has been a solace and a safe space to go when we need to be soothed, when we feel alone in our struggles or detached from life. . Truthfully, there are more of us out there who are going through or have experineced the same thing. Wheather it be mental helath, love life, friendships, family, etc. When people hear honest writing and breautiful music that feels relatable, it is comforting and a real catharsis for us to see that we are not the only ones who are going through somehting. This is what I try to incorporate within my music. I want to impact others in the form of having them hear my music, and visuialize the picture I am painting, and feel in their gut that they are not the only ones who have felt these feeling. This does not just apply to sad songs even. It could be a happy song or a song that brings up many mixed emotions (I have a lot of those in the works). There is no greater joy for me than being in a crowded room of people screaming their guts out to songs we all feel in our core, and this is a fun time but it is also the beauty of breaking down that isolated feeling. Music all evokes something in us, and I want to be able to offer people the same cathartic experience with the words I write and the melodies I sing, and I want to be smiling back at everyone while I sing those words.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Since I was five years old, I have been singing, writing stories, and performing. Originally, I wanted to be an actress (and I still love acting), so I decided to go to NYU Tisch for drama. I am now a senior and graduating this spring! Halfway through my college career, I had a really bad breakup and ended up writing 30 songs, and that is the honest answer about how music and songwriting found its way back into my life. I had a moment where I sat on my bed after finishing writing my now most popular single “Rogue”, and I thought to myself “Wow, I’m actually pretty good at this and I love it. I think I am gonna do this”, and that’s just what I did. I created a ten step plan for myself to start my music career and now its been over a year and I am now on to my 40th ten step plan, which I guess is just the life of being in the music industry. My mental health activism work ties into this as well. It is somehting I will always be passioante about and refuse to give up advocating for.
In my sophomore year of college I had to drop out of school and go part time and also partake in a treatment facility for eating disorders. I have struggled with anorexia for over six years, as well as other mental health diagnoses. When I finally got to a better place, I was determined to give back in any other way I could. I started signing up to volunteer for companies driven to raise awareness and funds for people who face eating disorder stigmas and barriers that prevent their healing. I have written articles, organized events, and recently performed a song about my recovery for a walk for eating disorders here in NYC. Just creating a safe space where people feel seen, can be life-changing. Eating disdorders do a great job of convincing us no one can help us and that no one understands us. They suck out the all the hope, and even reality of the dire situation we find ourselves in. Validation in my struggles saved my life. I thought I was not worthy of getting care and that I wasn’t as sick as I was compared to others. However, this is a huge lie that the eating disorfer fabricates to continue to isolate us. So, helping validate and comfort people in their struggle–whatever it may be– can be life-altering and meaningful for the rest of a person’s life. This is something we can do through any medium that speaks to us whether it be music, therapy, writing etc. I think my personal experience and dedication to my passions sets me apart from others. When I care about something, I care about it so much. I want people to know that my music, and work is a place for anyone to seek joy and solace in. I am most proud of the new songs I am working on. I think it will be the exciting start of a new era of music for me. I am also just proud of how much I have accomplished, mainly just by myself in a very short amount of time. I am working super hard every day to make my dreams my reality. I will say, one of the most meaningful moments was the other day at the eating disorder walk when people came up to me with tears in their eyes about how much my song meant to them. The moments where I can impact people and make them feel seen matter the most to me. I love moments of connection, especially face-to-face. Community and connection is everything. I cherish it, and that is something very central to who I am as an artist and as a person.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
In the Summer of 2022, I was going through my worst-ever relapse with my eating disorder. I was so consumed with the voices it put in my head and I felt like I was under a whole other person’s control and just had to follow orders because that was the only way I would ever be happy. While in the thick of it, I was hurting myself and the relationships around me. I finally had a really hard decision to make, and ended up going to treatment for the sake of mainly maintaining the relationships that meant a lot to me. But deep down, I did want to get better. I walked into that place being so angry. I was so angry and scared of everything. I spent the next 7 months of my life fighting this disease and re-writing my brain. We are taught so many harmful messages about our bodies and about food, and each day I would have ten thoughts pop up, and I would have to use learned coping skills to combat them. That takes so much energy. I really did want to give up for a while. Eventually, with support from others and the strength within myself, I was able to keep going. That is a testament to my resilience. My resilience is luckily the thing that has kept me alive. I cannot always explain where it comes from, but it is what makes me special and successful. I want to also add that my recovery is still going on and no healing is ever linear. I am not in the dark place where I used to be anymore, but living in recovery from an eating disorder requires resilience, especially when we live in a world that is hugely responsible for the negative messages we are taught.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I think a lot of my career so far is just pivoting. I started out thinking I wanted to be solely a film actress and I always thought that I would only want to do that. One of the coolest and scariest things about growing up in the artist industry is that the possibilities of finding out what you like creating are honestly, endless. I found out I love directing, and I love songwriting, and costume styling, etc. and I found a way to intertwine my theatre performance with my new music concert performance. However, the pivot from acting to music was a big shift for me. I was very familiar with the acting industry and the ways it worked to get jobs, to get an agent, how to train etc, and the music industry is kind of similar, but also completely different. I had to work my way up, down, and around to create the opporunties I have experienced. I only knew about two people in the industry and I had to figure out how to make my own network and how to really even make music for the first time. And I had to research like crazy, which I am still doing. There is always something to learn in this business and it takes a lot of work and dedication to the craft, and the reasons you want to be there. It is also important to note that I would have never been able to do any of this if I had not done the work that it took to heal from my eating disorder. I never thought I would be where I am today.
In addition, being an indie artist is one of the hardest things I have ever had to navigate. It is a lot of it is throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. 9/10 times I think something is going to work and then it doesn’t, and when something does work, you never know how long that is gonna end up working until you have to pivot to the next thing. These are mostly very little examples, but they all add up to the same goal I am trying to achieve. There are times when my social media posts do well, and other times when they don’t. There are times when I have full crowds at shows and others when I don’t. Or, when my song gets onto a playlist or does not make another. You have to have a thick skin to keep going, and figure out what you can do to improve.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lilypierceofficial.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilypierceofficial/profilecard/?igsh=ZHVvdnl6OTUyOWp5 https://www.instagram.com/lilypierceofficial/profilecard/?igsh=ZHVvdnl6OTUyOWp5
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100025736773540
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lily-pierce-5aa9b5252/
- Other: https://www.theprojectheal.org/blog/more-than-eating-disorder
Image Credits
Cathrine Herber
https://www.catherineherber.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabbhFV7ZvIq9FKeUCkNCXvB3eEoUqWw5etG0N5keFD0AxQZSGMIvzDyOl0_aem_NSFAORWhvc3KZW9FhStxzw
https://www.catherineherber.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabbhFV7ZvIq9FKeUCkNCXvB3eEoUqWw5etG0N5keFD0AxQZSGMIvzDyOl0_aem_NSFAORWhvc3KZW9FhStxzw