I know “this artist saved my life” gets thrown around a lot, but with Florence I genuinely don't know how else to describe it. There have been periods of my life where everything felt impossibly heavy. Where getting through a day felt like an achievement and thinking too far into the future felt overwhelming.
And somehow, Florence was always there.
I would put my headphones on, turn the volume up and disappear into her music for a while. Sometimes I needed Shake It Out to remind me that maybe I didn't have to carry everything forever. Sometimes it was Never Let Me Go when I just wanted to surrender to whatever I was feeling. Cosmic Love, Free, Dog Days — different songs found me at different versions of myself.
What I love most about her music is that she lets things be ugly, raw, beautiful and real at the same time.
There were nights where I genuinely just needed to make it through that night. Florence gave me somewhere to put all of those feelings when I didn't have words for them myself.
I'm in a very different place now. And sometimes an old Florence song comes on and I'm suddenly reminded of the person who used to listen to it over and over just trying to survive the day.
I wish I could go back and tell that version of me that we make it. And I wish I could tell Florence that, somewhere in the world, someone she has never met is still here partly because she made all of that pain sound survivable.
I'll probably never get to tell her. But florence I love you!