My musical journey began at the age of two.  Obviously I cannot recollect these memories on my own, but home videos portray a three foot tall version of myself pulling the binky from my mouth and belting out hymns in a little Baptist church.  Family members have told me that I could sing on pitch before being able to speak clearly.  My earliest memories of music are the weekly private, classical piano lessons I attended when I was five years old.  So basically, music has been a part of my life since I can remember.  
    I do not recall singing much outside of church until I was about nine years old.  That year I got a CD player for Christmas and LeAnn Rimes was all over the Disney channel singing her song 'Blue'.  The very first CD that I ever bought was her album and I listened to it non-stop.  I learned how to yodel by singing along with her.  When my parents and Grandparents discovered that I posessed this unusual talent,  they placed me in every talent show within the local area of Batesville.  I won most of them and word got around in the small town where I live that I could sing.  I recorded my first demo 'tape' just a little while later at a little recording studio that had just opened, using some karaoke back up tracks.  
    A few years after I had become well known in Batesville, I was introduced to a singer/songwriter/bootmaker who had just moved into town from Nashville.  I was twelve years old at the time and had been teaching myself how to play guitar for a few months.  Drawing much inspiration from Jewel, I was fascinated by her ability to write songs and accompany herself on guitar while singing.  I knew that guitar playing was a necessary skill if I ever wanted to write my own songs in the future.  At this time, the bootmaker began writing songs for me to sing because he believed that I had the potential to move forward in the country music industry.  After working with me for a year, we loaded up and went to Nashville, and I played my first real gig at the famous Bluebird Cafe, where Faith Hill and Taylor Swift got their start.  It was a very exciting time for me, but the future held a lot of heart break and dreams that would later be crushed.  
 As a young teenager, I was promised a lot of 'big breaks' that never happened.  Record deals that fell through, or perhaps were never on the horizon to begin with.. Meetings with important people that never happened. Looking back, I can see that God had His own plans for my life and career.  He had great things in store for me, but I was not yet ready to deal with the responsibility that comes with enjoying music as a profession and not just a passion.  I made a personal decision at that time to quit pursuing the business side of it  and just have fun playing small gigs.  Fate led me to meet back up with a young fiddle player I had known when I first began yodeling, and we joined forces in a bluegrass band called The Slickshuckers.  Our band played free shows almost every weekend in Mountain View, Hardy, or Batesville.  
    Like most teenage girls, I was starting to notice boys around this time and it was making me very emotional!  But instead of going too crazy, I released all of my frustration with a pen and onto paper.  I began writing songs and was eventually given the opportunity to record some of them.  At this point, it became very apparent to myself and my family that music would never just be a way to pass the time for me.  I had become a proficient guitar player, singer, and now it had been discovered that I was a gifted songwriter to boot.  Just when I was beginning to feel confident enough with my material to share it with others, I decided to enter some local talent competitions using my guitar for accompaniment and singing my own songs.  I can still remember the feeling of housing a broken spirit, when time after time I lost to girls who were using karaoke tracks to sing Martina McBride songs with these big, high notes.  My style was different and my entire demeanor was unlike any of the other contestants, but the judges did not care and they were not listening.  My friends and most of my family were my cheering squad though, and they kept me going even when I wanted to lock myself in my room and quit.
    I continued to write songs up until the age of seventeen, when I became pregnant with my daughter.  I married at eighteen, one month after she was born.  Music was put on the back burner and I rarely played my guitar.  Caroline was my life's focus and I did not have much time to spend writing songs, even though I was still inspired to do so.  Around the time that Caroline started toddling, I discovered YouTube and found that other artists were uploading videos of themselves singing right in their living rooms.  So just about every day when I would lay Caroline down for a nap, I would work on setting up the digital camera and recording myself.  It took a while for me to become comfortable with my facial expressions and overall appearance while singing, but eventually I did.  YouTube was able to give me a way to share my music with the world and not just Batesville, Arkansas.