“That’s a lot of people’s story,” she says. “It’s the person you didn’t expect. It’s something that I did not want that happened in a scenario that I did not want.”
After years of therapy, Lawler wrote a song about her journey to help others process the trauma they’ve endured. “I’m Okay” will be available Friday, and PEOPLE is premiering the song’s emotional video in honor of April’s designation as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
“This, for me, is not a #metoo thing,” she says. “I obviously respect that movement, but that is not what this is. This is #healing.”
Lawler, 43, still struggles to tell her story. She wrote “I’m Okay” about her assault and never intended to make the song or story public. However, the singer says it has become bigger than she is. Now she feels a responsibility to others who have been violated to let them know they’re not alone.
The lyrics include: If this body could talk would you want to hear what it’s saying, see the toll it’s taken?
“The more women I’ve played it for as we’ve been on this journey of writing it, I realized that every woman, and there’s men, have stories that range from the most horrible thing you could think of from a violent standpoint to a situation that was uncomfortable,” she says. “Everybody’s got something, and I think the more we talk about stuff like this and make it normal, the more it can’t be normal anymore.”
Lindsay Lawler.Chrissy Nix Photography
The singer — who has performed everywhere from the famed Lower Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee, to the Capitol and the laying of wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. — started working with a therapist she calls her “best asset.” The therapist told Lawler that she knew she asked herself if she did something wrong, but assured her that even if she was “doing naked keg stands,” no one had the right to harm her.
“I kind of have to keep telling myself that because it takes away your power,” she says.
People in her life started talking to her about seeking retribution. Suggestions included sending the man a note, suing him, or taking him to court. But none of the options appealed to Lawler. She thought about it for more than one year and then decided that since she is a creator and hadn’t been able to make music for years, she needed to write a song to take her power back.
Lawler went to a songwriter’s retreat in Florida last year and knew that longtime friend and fellow singer/songwriter Chris Roberts would be her first co-write on the trip. She told him the night before she had an idea and asked him to make sure that she wrote the song that she needed to write the next day.
“I knew if I didn’t have somebody hold me accountable, I would probably lose the courage to do it,” she says.
The following day, Roberts walked into the room, handed her a cup of coffee, and asked what they were writing about that day.
Then he saw the look on her face. The pair went down to the beach. Lawler buried her feet in the sand, stared at the ocean, and Roberts began playing a guitar riff that became the song’s opening.
“It was perfect,” she says. “I sat there for an hour and cried and then looked at him and told him what happened. We wrote this song. I feel like I channeled it from a higher power because it came out so perfectly.”
Lawler thinks that if someone didn’t know the song was about sexual assault, the lyrics could be about mental health. It’s a reminder that being human is tough and that we are OK.
“At the time, I didn’t know why I was writing,” she says. “I’m just really proud of the song and how it’s helped me and how I hope it will help others who maybe don’t feel confident to stand up for themselves. I hope it lets them know that they are not alone.”
source: people.com
